PAPUAN GRAMMAR

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23093, 19 July 1938, Page 6

PAPUAN GRAMMAR

MISSIONARY'S WORK MASTER OF THE LANGUAGE NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT [BY IELKGRAPH —OWN CORRKSPONDES'T] WELLINGTON, Monday The only white man in the world who can speak the Papuan language, the Rev. 13. T. Butcher, a member of the London Missionary Society, is at present in "Wellington He is going to London 'to supervise the publication of a Papuan grammar and translations of the four gospels and three epistles. Mr. Butcher has given the natives a written language. Before lie went to Papua they knew nothing of writing in any form. To them it was something utterly mysterious. When Mr. Butcher was building a house soon after his arrival he' wrgte on a chip of wood a message to his wife, asking for a certain tool. He gave the chip to a native, who rushed hack with the tool, his eyes almost bulging from his head. "See what the whito man has done," he exclaimed. "He's made this chip talk." Later Mr. Butcher learned that th* same thing had happened to the famous missionary, John Williams, in the South "Seas, 100 years before.

Mr. Butcher's first task was to get the natives to break their sentences up into words; they thought and spoke, he found, only in sentences. When he had isolated the simplest verbs and names he was gradually able to build up a vocabulary, and reduce it to writing, using phonetic spelling. Constant similarities of expression showed that there were definite grammatical rules underlying the language, and these Mr. Butcher lias formulated for tho first time.

Ho has introduced to the language a number of new words, chiefly for articles from the western world and for the expression of abstract ideas. Incidentally the Americans were not first with the term, " Forget it"; Papuans have been saying it for years, meaning "forgive." The gospels and epistles translated by Mr. Butcher, and the grammar, are both to be published in the Kerawo dialect, which is spoken in a large area of south and west Papua.