CURIOUS NEW LANGUAGE

Evening Star, Issue 18852, 29 January 1925, Page 9

CURIOUS NEW LANGUAGE

SEX DISTINCTION IN TALKING. Three White Indian children who were presented by the American explorer, Mr K. O. Marsh, to President Coolidge, are being closely studied by men of science of the Smithsonian Institution. Their language is being reduced to writing by Dr John P. Harrington, the ethnologist of the institution. Dr Harrington, in the course of an interview, remarked that the language of the White Indians was the most melodious and smooth-sounding variety of speech that could be found anywhere in the world, and was made up of the smallest number of sounds.

“It is,” he .said, “an exceedingly easy language to learn. It has no sound in it that cannot he pronounced hy anybody, without any training or practice. All of its sounds occur in the English language. The effect on the ear is much more pleasant even than that of the melodious Spanish, while by comparison English, French, and Russian sound harsh and bar barons.

“ The structure of the language is represented by the formula cv, j; representing a consonant- and v a vowel. It produces an alternating flow of consonant and vowel, consonant and vowel; no two consonants ever come together. This structure is responsible- for the great melodiousness of the language. The accent follows such regular rides that it is not even necessary to indicate it by accent marks such as arc used in French. “ It is an analytical language, in which ideas _ are expressed by separate words. In this it is sharply contrasted with practically all other Indian languages, which are of the ’agglutinative’ type, building long, complex words hy .sticking separate roots and word elements together. “The number of sounds is very small; hence the alphabet will be the shortest one in existence when the language is reduced to writing. It is the shorthand of languages. The sounds used consist of the five vowels, the two semi-vowels W and Y, and the consonant sounds K, T, Ch, Sh, Ts, S. L, M, N, R, and P. This gives eighteen letters; the English alphabet contains twenty-six, and we use many other sounds like Ch and Ag that are riot represented by single letters. “ The Polynesian languages, for example, the Hawaiian, have been thought of as being similar ‘shorthand’ languages. In print they do look simple, hut when spoken they are full of ‘choky’ sounds in the throat that make them really difficult. Thes-e sounds are entirely lacking in the language of tho AVliite Indians. “It may -he- asked how they can make a sufficient number of roots and affixes to carry on the business of a language with so small a number of sounds. This is clone by a very ingenious device similar to one employed in Finnish. Each sound has two forms, a short and a long. In this way the number of sounds is doubled. In learning the language that is the only thing that must be watched. If a double ‘ T ’ occurs it must ho pronounced double, and not jammed together, as we frequently do in English. “One of the most interesting things about this study has been the discovery that girls are taught a different pronunciation from that of bo vs. There is a distinct ‘feminine’ method of speech, which is softer and more lisping Hum the ‘masculine’ pronunciation. Where the two White Indian hoys, 010 and Sippu, use Ch, Margarita, tho girl, uses Ts. For tho masculine Sh she substitutes S, and she uses Y and L where they use the harsher K and R. “It is somewhat reminiscent of the ‘ polite accent ’ that was taught to little girls in English and American ‘ genteel ’ society in the last century. Sometimes this ‘feminine’ pronunciation quite distorts a word. The word for ‘chief,’ for example, is ‘ sakla ’ ; Margarita calls it ‘sayla.’ This peculiar ‘feminine lisp’ makes it possible for one to tell the sex of a speaker oven in tho dark. “ A similar thing is to ho noticed in the speech of animals told of in their folk tales. Each animal has its own ‘lisp.’ It is not necessary to add, as in English, that ‘ Bre’r Wolf said’; the listening youngster knows from the ‘ lisp ’ that it is a wolf speaking, or a turtle, or a fox. This makes the story more realistic.

“Tho language is very descriptive. Instead of seeking new stems for names of animals, they call many of them by descriptive terms. For instance, the manatee, or sea cow, is called ‘ ti moli,’ which means ‘ water cow.’ The sea lion is ‘ti achu,’ or ‘ water Tiger.’ “ The children are very eager to tell what they know. They will keep at the game as long and as late as there is anyone to listen. They are at tile same lime very insistent that tho words bo learned correctly. If a word is mispronounced they will go back and say it over and over until they ‘get it across.’” Ur Harrington learns the language from tho children" by playing with them. He gets down on the floor, with toys, games, and pictures; and the three children point out the various parts and objects and give the names, which he notes down. Many words for the dictionary of the Indian speech which Dr Harrington is compiling were learned on a trip to the Zoological Garden, where the three children recognised and named all the animals native to their home. Dr Harrington is continuing the study of the children’s language, with frequent visits, and expects to Build up a fairly complete_ vocabulary before they return to the tropics,