Produced by anonymous
(Read October 4, 1901.)
The Dhar′rook and Gun′dungur′ra tribes respectively occupied thefrom the mouth of the Hawkesbury river to Mount Victoria, and thencesoutherly to Berrima and Goulburn, New South Wales. On the south andsoutheast they were joined by the Thurrawal, whose language has thesame structure, although differing in vocabulary.
Besides the verbs and pronouns, many of the nouns, adjectives,prepositions and adverbs are subject to inflection for number andperson. Similar inflections have, to some extent, been observed incertain islands of the Pacific Ocean, but have not hitherto beenreported in Australia. I have also discovered two forms of the dualand plural of the first personal pronoun, a specialty which haslikewise been found in Polynesian and North American dialects. Tracesof a double dual were noticed by Mr. Threlkeld at Lake Macquarie, NewSouth Wales, and traces of a double plural by Mr. Tuckfield in theGeelong tribe; but the prevalence of both forms of the dual and pluralin different parts of speech in any Australian language has, up to thepresent, escaped observation.
Orthography.
Ninteen letters of the English alphabet are sounded, comprisingfourteen consonants—b, d, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, t, w, y—and fivevowels—a, e, i, o, u. Every word is spelled phonetically, the lettershaving the same value as in English, with the followingqualifications:
Unmarked vowels have the usual short sound.
Vowels having the long sound are distinguished by the following marks:
ā as in fate ī as in pie oo as in moon
â as in father ô as in pole ee as in feel
ou as in loud
It is frequently difficult to distinguish between the short orunmarked sound of a and that of u. A thick or dull sound of i isoccasionally met with, which closely approaches the short sound of uor a.
G is hard in every instance.
R has a rough trilled sound, as in hurrah!
Ng at the beginning of a word, as ngee=yes, has a peculiar sound,which can be got very closely by putting oo before it, as oong-ee′,and articulating it quickly as ony syllable. At the end of a word orsyllable it has substantially the sound of ng in our word sing.
The sound of the Spanish ñ is frequent, both at the beginning or endof a syllable.
Y, followed by a vowel, is attached to several consonants, as in dya,dyee, tyoo, etc., and is pronounced therewith in one syllable, theinitial sound of the d or other consonant being retained. Y at thebeginning of a word or syllable has its usual consonant value.
Dh is pronounced nearly as th in “that” with a slight sound of the dpreceding it.
Nh has nearly the sound of th in “that” with an initial sound of then.
The final h is guttural, resembling ch in the German word “joch.”
T is interchangeable with d, p with b, and g with k in most wordswhere these letters are employed.
A sound resembling j is frequently given by the natives, which can berepresented by dy or ty; thus, dya or tya has very nearly the samesound as ja.
In all cases where there is a double consonant, each letter isdistinctly enunciated.
W always commences a syllable or word and has its ordinary consonantsound in all cases.
At the end of a syllable or word, ty is sounded as one letter; thus,in beety-bal-l