Lately I've been spending a lot of time poking around in elderly grammars and dictionaries of Aboriginal Australian languages. Here are a few of my favourite (i.e. most horrifying) finds:
From a language sketch from 1858, the following sentences are translated (since presumably these are the sorts of communications one might need to make with the "natives"):
"Now my blackfellows, make haste and get your breakfast. We will be going."
"Go and fetch them, there's a good fellow!"
"You are lazy! Dry your trousers!"
"Come here tomorrow and cut me some wood and me give you white money."
From a book of a similar age, the paradigm for "you are a harlot, she is a harlot, they are all harlots".
And from the latter book, a word is given that is translated as "intercourse, in both the good and the crude sense".
(And here was me thinking that the "good" sense was the crude sense.)
Sunday, August 22, 2010
How to communicate with the natives
Posted by StyleyGeek at 2:16 PM
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Filed under: australia, linguistics
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