Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2Grey, George
History
Journals of Two Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, Volume 2
Grey, George
Natural history -- Australia -- Western Australia; Western Australia -- Discovery and exploration
The principal causes of difference between the dialects of these two
places are, 1st, that at King George's Sound the terminating syllable of
all names is dropped; and 2nd, that all verbs, with a very few
exceptions, end in gur, instead of the varying termination which is given
to them at Perth. Any person who can speak the Perth dialect will, by
observing these two rules, be able to converse freely with the natives of
King George's Sound.
(TABLE OF EXAMPLES TO ILLUSTRATE THIS DIFFERENCE OF DIALECTS.)
From these examples it will be seen that the King George's Sound dialect
is the simplest of the two; and indeed I am inclined to believe that the
dialect there spoken is more simple than that in use at any other portion
of the continent.
If we now proceed to Adelaide in South Australia we still find the same
language spoken, but the dialect here is considerably softened; the hard
g of Perth is exchanged for k, and b becomes p and w. Many of the nouns
take -anga as a termination, and the verbs take -andi and -endi. This
addition of soft terminations and a general sweetness of sound appear to
be the peculiar characteristics of the Adelaide dialect. No large
vocabulary of this language has yet been published, but one-eighth of the
words known as belonging to the Perth dialect have been found also in
that of Adelaide; we may therefore fairly conclude that when the latter
language is better known a still greater degree of identity will be found
to exist.
Natives from several parts of the Murray and Murrumbidgee and from Port
Phillip have been brought into communication with natives from King
George's Sound, scanty vocabularies from some of these points are also
extant, and the amount of evidence thus gained clearly establishes that
the several dialects are all derived from a common root.
The labours of Mr. Threlkeld in the vicinity of Hunter's River and Lake
Macquarie enable us to compare the language of that portion of Australia
with those of the other points which we have just considered, and the
result of this comparison also shows that the languages are radically the
same.
TABLES OF EXAMPLES.
The following Tables will give a sufficient number of words common to
those four dialects to show the degree of similarity which exists among
them.
(TABLE OF SUBSTANTIVES.
TABLE OF VERBS.)
VARIATIONS OF DIALECT.
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