The Language of Australian Blacks.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIC, Issue 13337, 13 July 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Language of Australian Blacks.

The language of the Australian blacks is regarded by Father McKillop, of Melbourne, as the meet extraordinary one he knows of. "It is," he says, "more highly inflected than -the Greek. They make numerous distinctions that we never think of. There are four ganders under two heads, namely, with--and without life. A shadow also is of the third gender, and that probably is because it moves, and is thus supposed to have life, live blacks have, I believe, one of the most elaborate grammars in the world, and none of_ it is written. They have no means of making written communications, and that makes the complexity of their grammar all the more wonderful." There are only two tenses, past and future. They do not recognise any present tense, and in that they are, strictly speaking, right, because there is no present time; it is always the past. The personal pronouns aro more complete than those of other languages, and, although they have the plural number, they seldom use it, as when they wish to signify more than one they strengthen tlio verb to meet the case, as if to imply that) it requires a more elaborate and masterful verb to convey the idea of two or morei articles than is" required t oexpress a single article or object. "It is," he says, "a. wanderful language, indeed, and I believe if the German Philological Society knew of its existence, it would send a man to the Northern Territory to make a life study of it. The language lends itself to the. word-building in a most remarkable manner, and when we wanted a word to signify ' Mass,' they responded with ai sound meaning 'voice of prayer,' or 'voice of blood.' They have words to represent two kinds of future, and two kinds of past, namelv, the immediate and the remote. I take it that the language of these people is incontestable proof that they aro on it lip down grade, for they could not, in their present state of intelligence, have evolved such a language. It must have come down through some higher condition in life, and, the wonder to me is that it has been retained so fully in the absence of written characters. The parents are very careful to teach the children the grammatical rules, and to this care must be attributed tho present completeness of the mode of expression. The language lends itself to poetry, rind I have written several long classic meters in it. with less trouble than would be required for the linguist poet to perform a similar task in Latin, Hebrew, or other civilised tongue.?." Though they do not write, as we understand the art, they make mystic marks on trees that convey much. "When I was out with a. bliickfollow one time," trays the speaker, " I Ki\v 'him cut some marks on a tree with his axe, and when I asked him what his object was. he said that the sign would let any member of his tribe know who had made "it, also when it was cut, which direction he wais going, and various other facts of importance."