INTRODUCTION.
I. The Grammars.
No large effort has yet been made to master the difficulties that present themselves in the study of the comparative grammar of the Australian languages. The only thing in this direction, that is known to me, is a paper on the "Position of the Australian Languages, by W. H. J. Bleek, Esq., Ph.D.," published in 1871. Dr. Bleek was a philologist who, in 1858, assisted in cataloguing the Library of His Excellency Sir Geo. Grey, K.C.B., then Governor of Cape Colony. Twenty years previously, Sir George (then Captain Grey), as leader of an expedition into the interior of our continent, had excellent opportunities of seeing the native tribes in their original condition; and the knowledge thus gained was enlarged by him and matured, while he was Governor of South Australia. The records of the knowledge of so intelligent an observer as Sir George Grey are sure to be valuable. These records are now in the South African Public Library, Cape Town, having been presented to that Library by him, along with his collection of books and other manuscripts.
The catalogue of Sir George Grey's Library was published by Trübner & Co., London, and Dr. Bleek devotes a portion of the second volume to the philology of the Australian languages.[1]
The earliest of individual efforts to deal with any single language of the Australian group was made by the Rev. L. E. Threlkeld, who, for many years, was engaged as a missionary among the blacks of the Lake Macquarie district, near Newcastle, New South Wales. His Grammar of their language was printed in Sydney in 1834, at the "Herald Office, Lower George Street." A few years previously, Mr. Threlkeld had translated the Gospel by St. Luke into the same language. This translation remained in manuscript and had disappeared; recently I discovered that it still exists, and is now in the Public Library of Auckland. This "Grammar" and the "Key" and the "Gospel," and some smaller fruits of Mr. Threlkeld's labours on that language, are now published in a collected form in the present volume. But Threlkeld's Grammar deals with only one dialect, and, for the purposes of comparative grammar, more languages than one are required.
- ↑ Throughout this Introduction I say "languages," although, in fact, there is but one Australian language with many dialects; I also use the word "language" instead of dialect, wherever the meaning is clear.
