Dieri is an Aboriginal language once spoken to the east of Lake Eyre in Cooper Creek country  in the Sturt Stony Desert in north-west South Australia. In 1874 a 51-page text, “The Dieyerie tribe of Australian Aborigines”, by local resident Samuel Gason, was published.  Information from < https://www.southaustralianhistory.com.au/gason.htm > reveals that Gason, in 1864 in his early twenties, accepted a position in the South Australian police force and was posted to Lake Hope,

Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, born in 1788, is, or was, exactly 150 years older than your modern-day amateur student of Awabakal , the Lake Macquarie language he worked on, all by himself, with no-one to discuss things with. Your amateur researcher [YAR] knows the feeling well, as probably no-one else has worked closely on this language, apart from book editor John Fraser in 1892. So for Threlkeld in the 1830s, translating the gospels must have been a lonely business, especially

Picture the lonely austere missionary the Rev. Lancelot Edward Threlkeld, deep in Aboriginal country sometime between 1834 and 1837 in his property at what is now Toronto on the peninsula on the western side of Lake Macquarie. He is in the throes of translating the obscure Biblical prose of St Mark’s Gospel into the local Aboriginal language spoken in the vicinity of this lake north of Sydney. This was a language that had developed to cover daily indigenous life of living, h

The Lake Macquarie missionary the Rev. Lancelot Threlkeld produced a grammar of the language where his mission was established. This language came to be known as Awabakal , though now also referred to as the Lake Macquarie–Hunter River language. Threlkeld’s grammar and other language works are remarkable for their volume and detail. But as his record is virtually the only one for the language, there is nothing against which to check his assertions about meaning and usage. One

THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MISSION TO THE ABORIGINES, LAKE MACQUARIE, FOR MDCCCXXXVIII Ebenezer, Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, December 31, 1838 TO THE HONORABLE THE COLONIAL SECRETARY, E. DEAS THOMSON, Esquire, &c. &c. &c. SIR, During the present year I have attempted to carry into effect the plan contemplated in my last year’s Report, of endeavouring to meet the Aborigines in the neighbouring districts; but the numbers are now so very much reduced, that it is almost imposs

Body parts are the best documented category of words for many Aboriginal languages because they were the most immediate and most unambiguous items to enquire about, when investigating a new language without shared vocabulary between the investigator and the informant. The earliest records of the Sydney language were made at Botany Bay by three members of Captain James Cook’s party in 1770, two of whom noted the word for ‘hand’: Australian respelt English EngJSM source "dammir

Just to the west of Hornsby, a northern suburb of Sydney, is Old Mans Valley. One might reasonably assume that the name was inspired by an old man once living there. It would have had its share of old men, as does anywhere else. In Old Mans Valley an occasional black wallaby is to be seen, and the name might actually relate to kangaroos. In some Aboriginal languages there is a connection between words for ‘man’ and ‘kangaroo‘ — especially male kangaroos. The by now fairly wel

How did this translation come about? An Aboriginal singer-songwriter acquaintance sent an email inviting Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) to look at what he had just done. He had produced a draft of a translation of the Australian National Anthem. It was soon apparent that this was more a collection of concepts than a grammatical narrative. It prompted a new attempt, one that a speaker such as Mr Bennelong might have understood. A line-by-line consideration of this alternative t

Meeting some Tasmanians It’s the year 1793, and the place later known as Tasmania. Ten years before the first European settlement to be established. There had been occasional European sightings and visits since 1642, and this was one such, by the French. It was the expedition, under Bruny d’Entrecasteaux, that was looking for the lost explorer La Perouse. They were in Recherche Bay, named after their own ship, on the south-east coast. Fig. 1 Tasmanians in 1793 preparing food,

It is something of a thrill for Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) when a little bit of the curtain shrouding the mysteries of the Tasmanian vocabularies is pulled aside. Take as an example of this the following records for ‘sun’ collected by French sailors in Recherche Bay on 11 February 1793, and again on a second visit two days later: Australian respelt English EngJSM source "panubère" ba-nubiri "{sun}" sun Willaumez [d.1:1:18] [SE] [Tas] [1793] Fig. 1 ‘sun’ according to Willau

The word marama in the Tasmanian word lists caught the attention again today. The meaning given for it is ‘star’. DEEP TIME No-one quite knows when the last person was able to walk from the Australian mainland to Tasmania. Why it was possible at all was because it was the ice age — or more precisely the last ice age. In fact we are still in the remnants of that ice age, because ice is still piled up, sometimes kilometres thick it is said, in Antarctica. If it all melted, they

One can only surmise what the euphonious NSW place name Trunketabella  might mean. We yearn for a translation such as ‘pretty trinkets’, and for an account of the exchanging of beads and looking glasses with the local people by explorers. It is commonly said that Parramatta means ‘the place where eels lie down’, Berowra the  ‘place of many winds’, and Wahroonga ‘our home’.  Where did these endlessly repeated interpretations come from? The reality is that place names can be ha

The Tasmanian Bayala database keeps throwing up small insights into the Tasmanian languages, and suggests the launching of a goose chase. Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) happened to be checking the word munwaddia , given as meaning ‘feather’. Australian respelt English EngJSM source "munwaddia" mun-wa-dya "[feather]" feather Plomley jj [A610.jj:163:8] [OyB] [Tas] [c.1835] Fig. 1 ‘Feather’ When this word is analysed into what are assumed to be its component parts, in this case

Affixes: prefixes, infixes, suffixes — the lot Joseph Milligan, who provided more extensive vocabularies than anyone else, famously stated about the Tasmanian languages: The affixes, which signify nothing, are la, lah, le, leh, leah, na, ne, nah, ba, be, beah, bo, ma, me, meah, pa, poo, ra, re, ta, te, ak, ek, ik , etc. He further declared: The distinctly different pronunciation of a word by the same person on different occasions is very perplexing, until the radical or essen

Working on the Tasmanian vocabularies Here is a typical fragment of Tasmanian vocabulary: Fig. 1 Extract from the Joseph Milligan list held by the Mitchell Library < http://www.acmssearch.sl.nsw.gov.au/search/itemDetailPaged.cgi?itemID=430548 > It is by Joseph Milligan, in 1857. It features long words. Here is part of what Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) has made of this particular fragment: Fig. 2 Extract from the Tasmanian database, in the Bayala series of Australian language

Europeans encountered Aboriginal people from before the upheaval that began in 1788. Lists of words were obtained in Botany Bay in 1770,...

Hair? In Aboriginal languages there are often different words for it. Hair on the head, beard, and the not-politely-mentioned pubic hair....

For those of us who actually speak English we often fail to see what the difficulties in it are. English seems the simplest of languages:...

Trying to make sense of the Tasmanian language records is difficult, and akin to reading the future from tea-leaf arrangements in a cup....

It is very easy to grab the wrong end of the stick. It is very easy to jump to wrong conclusions. Perhaps that is being done here. In the...