Category Archives: NSW general

Threlkeld Working in the Wilderness

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 student [YAS] 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 as the realisation must have grown that fewer and fewer people were ever likely to see or be able to appreciate what he was doing for them, as the Aboriginal people dwindled in numbers in his neighbourhood, by moving away, or dying. Until finally there were none left.

So when Threlkeld one day re-looked at what he had translated in one particular passage, he spotted what he thought must have been an error, and changed it. There was no-one he could discuss the matter with, and so the change went ahead. Here it is:

It is verse 6 of Chapter 14 of St Mark’s Gospel, the King James version of which reads:

[6] And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work on me.

Before looking at the correction itself, it is worth considering the marginal note that is barely legible in this photograph of the page, it being partially lost in the binding of the notebook. But the English translation allows the guess to be made that it is trouble, underlined, to match the underlined word in the text alongside: ‘koakilleen’. This was Threlkeld’s method: he would underline a word he had devised or chosen to use in his translation for which there was no readily known word in the Awabakal language, and then would make a marginal annotation to indicate what he had done.

‘koakilleen’, or guwa-gi-li-n is ‘scold-be-ing-now’, or ‘scolding’, ‘rebuking’, ‘quarrelling’ and similar ideas, and hence ‘trouble’.

Now for the correction, the subject of this short essay.

A word-for-word translation of Threlkeld’s translation of verse 6 reads:
AND JESU-ERG he speak-did, move-permit-IMP! her; what-because you-all scold-be-ing-now her? good make-done to her-of me

of which the key part is the final phrase:
good make-done to her-of me

which ought to mean:
she hath wrought a good work on me.

but it does not. In fact Threlkeld should have left it as it was in the first place, for the following reason:

	BEFORE CORRECTION	AFTER CORRECTION
original	murroróng umatoara bountoa ba tia.	murroróng umatoara bounnoun ba tia.
respelt	marurung umadwara bunduwa ba diya	marurung umadwara bununba diya
word-for-word	good make-done to she DONE me	good make-done to her-of (hers) me
idiomatic	she has done me good	hers me good
Bible King James Version	she hath wrought a good work on me.	[nonsense]

What happened? Why did Threlkeld make the correction? One can only speculate, but the reason might have been this.

On one day doing a quick check of the text, Threlkeld must have spotted the words ‘bountoa ba’, and assumed them to be a simple wrong rendering of ‘bounnounba’ or ‘bounnoun ba’, and made the alteration accordingly.

Reasoning: ‘bountoa’ [bunduwa] is ‘she’ while ‘bounnoun’ [bunun] is ‘her;
and ‘bounnoun ba’ is the possessive (genitive) form, ‘hers’.

Threlkeld just saw ‘bountoa ba’ (she-of), automatically assumed he had blundered, and so ‘corrected’ it to ‘bounnoun ba’ (her-of, or hers) (bununba). Evidently he was distracted by the presence of ‘ba’.

But in fact the original translation was not an error: ‘bountoa’ in this instance just happened to be followed by the particle or clitic ‘ba’.

In this Aboriginal language, and in many others, very short words like this (ba) can have a variety of roles. And so in Awabakal, ba, apart from changing a pronoun from the accusative case to the genitive, may when suffixed to verbs convey the sense of ‘do‘; or it can express the idea of ‘done’ in a phrase, to indicate achievement, as it was doing in the instance here, prior to its erroneous altering.

Alas, Threlkeld had no-one looking over his shoulder that day, or indeed at any time, and hence no-one he could discuss such matters with. He was working in a virtual vacuum, with only his occasional Aboriginal informant Biraban to consult, who was poles apart from Threlkeld in his level of education and power. Mostly Threlkeld must have worked entirely on his own, grappling with having to come up with words for ‘wrought’, ’whensoever’, ‘aforehand’, ‘anoint’, ‘gospel’, ‘preach’, ‘memorial’ and ‘betray’ to take examples only from the next four verses, none of which words would likely feature in the day-to-day vocabulary of a member of a hunter-gatherer society.

At least your modern-day amateur student, likewise with no-one to consult, but possessed of a computer of unimaginable capability to someone of a century and a half ago, can write a blog entry like this one and post it on the internet, in the hope that someone might chance upon it, and comment on it, and even tell him he is wrong.

JEREMY STEELE
Friday 25 May 2018
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Awabakal conjoined pronouns

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Awabakal conjoined pronouns

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, thougn 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 vitrtually the only one for the language, there is nothing against which to check his assertions about meaning and usage.

One matter in particular concerns the short form pronouns, which in the Sydney language are bound on as suffixes to the stem of verbs, following any other previous suffixes such as for meaning amplification and tense.

Table 1: Extract from Threlkeld’s pronoun table, p.17*

	1sg: I	2sg: thou	3sg m: he	3sg f: she	1pl: we	2pl: you	3pl: they
Full form nominative	Nga-toa	Ngin-toa	Niu-woa	Boun-toa	Ngé-en	Nú-ra	Ba-ra
Short form nominative	Bang	Bi	Noa
Accusative	Emmo-ung	Ngiro-ung	Ngiko-ung	Boun-no-un	Ngear-un	Núr-un	Bar-un.
Short form accusative	Tia	Bin	Bón

* THRELKELD, L. E. (1892a) An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal, the people of Awaba or Lake Macquarie (near Newcastle, New South Wales) being an account of their language, traditions and customs / by L.E. Threlkeld; re-arranged, condensed and edited with an appendix by John Fraser, Sydney, Charles Potter, Government Printer.

Threlkeld provides a table for the ‘conjoined dual’, or nominative-accusative short-form pronouns:

Table 2 Conjoined dual forms

Conjoined Dual.
Ba-nung	Ba-noun	Bi-tia	Bi-núng	Bi-noun	Bi-loa	Bin-toa
I-thee	I-her	thou-me	thou-him	thou-her	he-thee	she-thee

What seems to be probably correct in this table are the short forms for:

I: ba me: tia
thou: bi thee: bin
and possibly:
her: noun
as picked out in blue in the table above.

Possibly correct, though not appearing in Table 2, is:
him: nung.
This is an accusative suffix, so could well be used for ‘him’

Troubling points include the following:
nung: used for both ‘thee’ and ‘him’
loa/toa: ‘thee’: –luwa, –duwa are actually causative, comitative or proprietive suffixes
bi-loa: bi actually means ‘thou’, not ‘he’
bin-dua: bin actually means ‘thee’, not ‘she’

In the whole of the Threlkeld body of work there are almost no examples of the pronoun combinations in Table 2 other than for ‘thou me’, e.g.

original	Kotåra bi tia ġuwa buwil koa bón baġ
respelt	gudara bi diya nguwa buwilguwa bun bang
original translation	Cudgel thou me give to-strike (ut) {in order} him I. /
word-for-word	club thou me give-IMP! beat might-having him I
idiomatic	Give me a club so that I can beat him

A more likely set of nominative-accusative pronouns than in Table 2 would seem to be as in Table 3:

Table 3: Proposed complete set of singular conjoind dual pronouns

I thee	ba bin			I him	ba nung	I her	ba nun
thou me	bi diya			thou him	bi bun	thou her	bi nun
he me	nuwa diya	he thee	nuwa bin			he her	nuwa duwa
she me	nun diya	she thee	nun bin	she him	nun bun

All the words shown in blue can be found in Threlkeld’s table.
Words in red are speculative inventions.
Words in pink are speculative combinations.
Spellings in Table 3 are as used in the Bayala Australian Language Databases <bayaladatabases.blogspot.com>

Jeremy Steele
Tuesday 8 May 2018

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damara or mara: HAND

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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’:

Table 1 Cook’s party’s records of ‘hand’

However, some linguists doubt the authenticity of the lists attributed to William Monkhouse, Isaac Smith and Zacchary Hicks, but they seem realistic to your researcher.

Dawes

William Dawes, the most reliable recorder of the Sydney Language, confirmed damara as the word for ‘hand’:

Table 2 Dawes’s damara record

More precisely, he noted damara as ‘To wipe the hands’, but at the stage when he did so he was still a beginner in learning the language.

Collins, King, Blackburn

Other First Fleeters, notably David Collins and Phillip Gidley King …

Table 3 Other First Fleet ‘hand’ records

… recorded much the same damara form. It is tempting to suppose that these additional records were independently arrived at. However, it is likely that often in those early days, when the senior figures in the Settlement were so few in number, and when all knew one another and knew each other’s affairs, word lists were shared around and copies made. Thus, for example, nearly every one of David Blackburn’s 136 words has a precise match in the Dawes notebooks — including the ‘To wipe the hands’ entry in Table 2.

It was much the same with the King entry. King had been on Norfolk Island. He returned to Sydney at the expiration of his leadership there, on 3 April 1790, on the Supply. This was the moment when the Settlement learnt of the wrecking of its greatest asset, the Sirius. King was to leave the colony for England a fortnight later, on 17 April, again on the Supply. Its destination was Batavia, from where King was to make his own way to England. In his short time in Sydney King was able to include in his journal a word list of over 280 entries. Of this he wrote: “I shall now add a vocabulary of the language, which I procured from Mr. Collins and Governor Phillip, both of whom had been very assiduous in procuring words to compose it; …*. And there is an added footnote in the 1793 edition: * This Vocabulary was much enlarged by Captain Hunter.

[Hunter, John. An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island: Including the Journals of Governors Phillip and King, since the Publication of Phillip’s Voyage: With an Abridged Account of the New Discoveries in the South Seas / by John Hunter. To Which Is Prefixed a Life of the Author and Illustrated with a Map of the Country by Lieut. Dawes and Other Embellishments. London: Printed for John Stockdale, 1793.]

It is not important whether it was Dawes or Collins who made the first record of damara for ‘hand’. They might even have both done it virtually simultaneously, given the similarity in the records, from the same interview with an Aboriginal person.

Paine

There is another record, made by freeman Daniel Paine on the voyage to Sydney, from February to September 1795, on the Reliance. This ship was carrying the new governor, John Hunter, and also Bennelong, returning from England. Paine developed a list of about 80 words, obviously from Bennelong, including:

Paine’s original record

Hale, Lang and Mathews

Three entries nearly half a century later are of interest. Whether the first two (Hale) were genuinely made from personal experience by the American linguist Horatio Hale when in Sydney in 1839, or whether he too copied them from earlier lists, it is impossible to say.

The third entry in Table 5 occurs in an 11-page vocabulary in the papers of the Rev. J.D. Lang. This list is undated but might be around 1840. It shows evidence of a professional linguistics background, being set out in columns for English, Chinese and Aboriginal, together with references to Polynesian and Malaysian languages. Perhaps it was also prepared by the linguist, Hale, given that he was in Sydney around this time.

Table 5 damara record from around 1840

Much later evidence from around 1900 was provided by the surveyor-linguist R.H. Mathews. This too supports the existence of the damara form:

Table 6 Mathews’s dama record of around 1900

Records for mara

There are, however, several Sydney Languages entries of mara for ‘hand’, the earliest of these having been provided, mistakenly, by Dawes:

Table 7 Dawes’s mara record

Here Dawes was seeking to ask his young informant, Patyegarang, how her finger was, which she had somehow hurt. He composed his enquiry using words he had heard, but clearly had not properly understood. He thought he was asking about her ‘finger’, and whether it was ‘better’. Her reply clarifies the matter, but still Dawes, at this early stage just learning the language, again got it wrong:

Table 8 Response to Dawes’s mara record

Dawes thought he was asking ‘Is your finger better?’ In fact the question was: ‘Does your hand hurt’, which elicited the reply, ‘No, it’s my fingernail (that hurts)’. Dawes erroneously formed the impression that garangan meant ‘worse’. Be that as it may, Dawes recorded the word for ‘hand’ as mara and not damara.

mara: Mahroot, Fulton, Brown, Bowman

Others to record ‘hand’ as mara were: the Aboriginal Mahroot the Elder in 1798; the Rev. Henry Fulton in about 1801; the botanist Robert Brown in 1803; and a record here attributed to James Bowman, in around 1835. All attest to the existence of the mara form of the word.

Table 9 Various other mara records

The Fulton’s ‘murrat’ record for ‘hand’ [row 2 in Table 9]

The Fulton ‘Marrah’ record for ‘hand’. This entry, along will all other vocabulary items, were crossed out of the notebook in which they were written, which was then used as a register of births, deaths and marriages by Fulton in his role as minister of religion.

The Bowman’s ‘murrat’ record for ‘hand’ [row 4 in Table 9]

damara or mara?

The Sydney records lean more heavily towards damara rather than mara as the form for ‘hand’. However, when other languages around the country are considered, the argument lurches decisively the other way. Of ‘hand’, Dixon* writes: “One form is found right across the non-prefixing languages – mara”, and he specifies the areas in which it occurs as follows:

* Dixon, R.M.W. Australian Languages, Cambridge Language Surveys. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002—p.106.

In fact this comprehensive list is basically the whole of the continent apart from the north-west corner where the ‘prefixing’ languages are located. Interestingly, Dixon’s list does not include ‘O: SYDNEY SUBGROUP’, in which the Sydney Language is placed.

Digression on demonstratives

da, or something like it, is occasionally seen possibly as a demonstrative, ‘that’. Similarly, di for ‘this’:

Table 10 Demonstrative forms: da and di

The records for such da/di forms are not plentiful, and are often open to interpretation. Nevertheless they may be sufficient to indicate the existence of a demonstrative function representing ‘that’/‘this’.

There is another form of the demonstrative as well, based on na, as attested by the following sample records:

Table 11 Demonstrative forms: na—in Dharawal, Darkinyung, Gundungurra and Sydney languages

Réné Primavera Lesson’s records

Lesson was a French medical officer, who served on the La Coquille, which visited Sydney in 1824. Several of the records he made, possibly after an interview with the Aboriginal Sydney identity Bungaree, might have included a demonstrative. These were not recognised as such at the time:

Table 12 Possible demonstratives in the Lesson examples

• In row 1, ‘Date’ could be either the English ‘that’, or the demonstrative da.

• In row 2, the difficulty Aboriginal speakers had with the consonant /s/ (which does not occur in most Aboriginal languages) is evident. Lesson might have been pointing to a scar, on Bungaree’s head.

In rows 3 and 4, row 4 is the correct transcription, as can be seen from the original record reproduced below.

Lesson’s original record

It is possible this was a transcription of du buli (rather than dubul, as shown in the table), conceivably intended to be ‘da BELLY’, or ‘that (is my) belly’, for which Lesson then recorded ‘ventre’ (belly) as the translation. An alternative possibility, there is a single record for bul (actually bul bul), which might allow the possibility of ‘belly’ as a meaning:

But this is irrelevant: the point is that the record du bul might have included a demonstrative, ‘that’.

• Finally, row 5, might reflect the use of the demonstrative form na (nan).

Possible explanation

Demonstratives beginning da, di and na have been presented in Tables 10 and 11.

Could it be that damara is actually a sentence:

da mara

that hand

That (is my) hand

It is not hard to envisage a situation where a European is asking for vocabulary from an Aboriginal informant, pointing to one part of the body after another. In due course the hand is singled out. ‘da mara’, says the informant: ‘That (is my) hand’.

This does seem plausible, but is it right? The following questions arise:

—Can all the damara situations in Tables 1–6 have arisen from ‘this is my hand’ replies? —Even if there were copying, could all of the damara examples provided here be copies? From 1770 through to Mathews in about 1900?

—And what about other body parts? If Aboriginal informants said ‘this is my hand’ so often, then why not ‘this is my eye / leg / tongue’ etc. Other than for Lesson in Table 11, there seem to be no such instances.

Conclusion

Once again there is no real conclusion. The existence of both damara and mara in the Sydney records is just another of the many mysteries that cannot be resolved now owing to the lack of data. It would certainly be much neater if the word for ‘hand’ were really mara, consistent with so much of the rest of the country. But the numerous damara entries cannot be denied. In short … inconclusive.

JEREMY STEELE

Thursday 30 June 2016

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STARS SHINE

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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 say, sea levels would rise, around 60 metres. Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) really knows nothing of all this, but this much can be reasonably surmised. If many of the land masses on the planet in the last ice age looked like Antarctica today, with ice stacked on them say to a depth of two kilometres, and if the same amount of water existed then as now in one form or another, there would be lots of it on the land, and correspondingly much less in the oceans. Everywhere, not just in the Bass Strait. So often you could get from one place to another without a boat.

But eventually the ice age mostly went away, and water returned to the oceans. The sea levels rose and Tasmania was isolated. Thus the Aboriginals who had lived there for say 40 000 years were separated from the rest — let’s say 10 000 years ago. That’s twice the time from the building of the Pyramids to the present. A huge long time, and all the while with nothing ever written down. Now back to today.

marama

So marama means ‘star’, according to the records:

Fig. 1 Marama: stars

This appears to be the record that various others have subsequently copied. The author of it was one Jorgen Jorgenson, who produced one of the best lists of Tasmanian words. This actual record is from the papers of T.H. Braim, held by the Mitchell Library (State Library of NSW, reference MLA 614). It is in turn recorded on the Tasmanian Bayala Database as follows:

Fig. 2 marama: ‘star’

‘T-W’ (i.e. Tasmania West) in the ‘Source’ column reveals that the word was taken down on the western side of the island.

So what? Well, for those who might wonder whether the Tasmanian languages arose entirely separately from those on the mainland, there is the following evidence, or coincidence, to consider.

SYDNEY

In the Anon notebook, compiled by one or more of the First Fleeters around 1790-91, there is the following entry:

Fig. 3 ‘The sun setting red’

This record also features in the Bayala databases, the one entitled ALLSYD, as follows:

Screen Shot 2015-12-14 at 3.44.28 PM

Fig. 4: dyara marama guwing: red shine sun

The question arises, which actual word means what?

Red

While there are several other records suggesting that dyara means ‘bone’ and ‘distress’, there are also the following where it (or a word like it) indicates ‘redness’:

Fig. 5: dyara: red

Sun

While YAR could readily provide a comprehensive table to show that guwing means ‘sun’, the following simplest one will do:

Fig. 6: guwing: ‘sun’

Shine

So that leaves marama, for which the meaning suggested in the yellow column of (Tasmania) Fig. 2 is ‘star’, and in (Sydney) Fig. 4, ‘shine’. Stars shine, that’s a fact. And it could be just a coincidence that the same word for these ideas is used by different languages far apart in space, and by languages far apart in time (Sydney language: AD 1790; Tasmanian: from pre ice age).

More coincidences

Can it also be a coincidence that the Wiradhuri language [Wira] in central NSW, and Muruwari [Mrwi] up on the Queensland border, also have words identical or similar to marama for ‘shine’ / ‘star’, as indicated in the table below?

Fig. 7 Inland examples of ‘shine’, ‘star’

CONCLUSION

While ‘star’ and ‘shine’ are from the point of view of modern speakers of English — and other languages — quite different concepts, Aboriginal people might well have used one word for both ideas. Stars do shine. And when Aboriginal informants were asked what those little lights in the night sky were they might have stated the obvious: ‘Shine’.

Perhaps marama is the only such example of a trace of the mainland in Tasmanian languages. In fact it is not. Other words with mainland links include dark, dive, eat, eye, fear, laugh, path, quick, rise, swim, tongue and others. Some of these might possibly have been recorded from Sydney men who had been involuntary visitors to Van Diemen’s Land in the early days. In some such way, ‘kangaroo’ from far north Queensland was recorded in Recherche Bay in south-east Tasmania in the 1790s. However, it would seem unlikely that all such words can have been imports of this sort, and that some at least must have been residual forms from the ancient Australian language presumed to have been common across much of the land mass in prehistoric times.

Jeremy Steele

Monday 14 December 2015

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TRUNKETABELLA

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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 hard to translate (What are the meanings of Paris, London, Berlin?), and that in Australia some might have arisen from misunderstandings between whitefella and Aboriginal informant. For example, the reputed name of Sydney Cove, Warang, might have been a comment about one side or of the bay or cove, rather than the informant providing the actual name of it — if it had one, even.

Table 1 William Dawes’ records for warang for ‘side’ and ‘Sydney Cove’

Nevertheless it is likely that in many of the definitions provided in booklets suggesting names for houses by McCarthy, Tyrrell, Endacott and others there is an element of authenticity. For example, for Parramatta, bara is recorded as meaning ‘eel’ from around 1875. It is the ‘place where they lie down’ that is suspect.

To make a suggestion as to meaning of a place name means a trail through the records. For Trunketabella, there are several strands to follow.

bila

First, start with the easier final portion. It has nothing to do with the Italian bella meaning ‘beautiful’. Almost certainly it means ‘stream’ in one of its guises: ‘creek’, ‘river’, ‘brook’ and so on.

Trunketabella is in south coast, Yuin, country, a little north of Narooma,

IMG_3331 TRUNKETABELLA

round about the bottom of the right-hand leg of the ‘n’ in ‘Yuin’ in the map below, extracted from the AIATSIS map ‘Aboriginal Australia’.

YUIN coast

The surveyor and language enthusiast R.H. Matthews recorded ‘forest oak’ for bila in the Dhurga language, possibly spoken in the area:

Table 2 bila: Forest Oak [Data derived from the Bayala Databases <bayaladatabases.blogspot.com>]

The present writer, Your Amateur Researcher [YAR], has few records for this region. However, among them are two other words collected by Matthews:

Table 3 bila: ‘wide’ and ‘smell’

If bila really means ‘stream’, then these two might conceivably have been obtained when a wide stream was being considered, or a smelly one.

In view of YAR’s paucity of appropriate South Coast data, the following bila references are some of many obtained from the Wiradhuri language, territorially the largest language group in New South Wales:

Table 4 bila: ‘stream’ — Wiradhuri

That this word bila might have extended from Wiradhuri country eastwards across the Great Dividing Range, to Trunketabella is not so surprising when the following are also considered, from the south-west corner of W.A. on the other side of the continent:

Table 5 bila: ‘stream’ — Nyungar, W.A.

Wiradhuri too provides support for the idea that bila also denoted the tree often found beside streams, the River Oak, comparable to the Dhurga Forest Oak in Table 2 above:

Table 6 bila: ‘oak’ — Wiradhuri

These are the trees that grew beside the creek, the same word seemingly being used for both concepts. Interestingly, Wiradhuri bila also forms part of bilabang (billabong):

Table 7

Table 7 bila-bang: stream or stream-like feature — Wiradhuri

The component -bang, in the opinion of YAR, is formed of the stem-forming suffix ba– signifying ‘do’, combined with the nominalising or noun-forming ending –ng, together making bila-bang to mean ‘stream doing’.

When bila as ‘River Oak’ is further considered, perhaps it is no coincidence that bila in certain areas is the word used for a spear—made of wood, of course:

Table 8

Table 8 bila ‘spear’ in Kamilaroi and in the Sydney Language

In summary then, the final portion of Trunketabella appears to denote ‘stream’, or possibly the tree type growing beside it. So what about the Trunketa… portion?

Trunketa–

From the south coast there are numerous possibilities of which the following are a few:

Table 9

Table 9 d@r@ng [where @ denotes any letter] — NSW south coast

Of these, dara is a common word for ‘thigh’ across numerous NSW languages.

Not quite so widespread are durun/dirin-type words indicating ‘hair’.

Several Coastal—and Inland languages, too—have words for ‘stream’ beginning dar- or dara-, such as the commonly accepted word for the Hawkesbury River, ‘Deerubbin’, and even the Tarban Creek Bridge immediately northward of the Gladesville Bridge in Sydney.

Tarban Creek Bridge

Coastal languages from Sydney southwards have dara- words for ‘stand’, but not northwards, nor Inland.

There are as well quite numerous examples in Coastal and Inland languages of birds beginning d-r-, making the last example, ‘the little night owl’, not altogether out of place in the list.

In short the first part of Trunketabella could indicate any of the ideas in Table 9.

Perhaps the Wiradhuri or other Inland records offer other insights. The following tables present some of the many possibilities from that language area.

Table 10

Table 10 diran-: ‘high’, or ‘red’

From Table 10 it would appear that perhaps diran/dirang might mean ‘high’ or ‘red’. The glosses ‘bank’ and ‘spider’ in the second-last column, derived from the original translation, are almost certainly incorrect.

Table 11

Table 11 durung: ‘snake’

Perhaps durung or similar means ‘snake’ of something long, thin and wriggly.

Table 12

Table 12 d@r@ng: something to do with trees

The Table 12 tree words return us to the realm of the River or Forest Oak concept for bila.

Such d@r@ng-word speculation could readily be extended, but the principal possibilities have probably been canvassed. The examples also ignore the suffixes following the stem not because they are considered irrelevant (far from it), but because of the possible unreliability of their precise recording, and because of YAR’s unfamiliarity with the languages of the region.

Assuming for a moment that bila should mean ‘stream’, then Trunketa– [darangada ?] might have meant something appropriate to a stream, otherwise why juxtapose the words? Of all the ideas presented above, perhaps the tree concept is the most likely: trees line creeks just about everywhere. Now wait a moment … the very proposing in this paragraph of darangada as the possible re-spelling for Trunketa– brings to mind some words provided by the Sydney-based botanist George Caley in the early 1800s:

Table 13

Table 13 George Caley’s Dharug tree names collected southwards of Sydney

The first of these tree names, daranGura, looks much like the postulated darangada for Trunketa–. Could it be that the meaning sought is as follows:

Trunketabella

darangura bila

Ironbark creek

And just when that seems settled, this crops up:

LONG DICK Extract

Extract from Mann, John Frederick. c.1842. Australian Aborigines—A few notes on their language etc. Information obtained from Long Dick an influential native of the Cammeray Tribe a son of Bungaree and Queen Gooseberry. Sydney (Mitchell Library).

In the middle of concluding notes to a word-list provided by Long Dick, is a portion marked ‘on the Coast, together with a mention of the very place being looked at in this essay. Appended is a reference to ‘convenient localities’. Perhaps Bodalla, Eurobodalla, Bergalia [?], ‘Trunkabella’ and Ulladulla were all regarded as convenient localities, this phrase not being an actual translation of anything, and thus the gloss for Trunketabella here tentatively arrived being allowable to stand.

Jeremy Steele

Wednesday 2 December 2015

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REPETITIVE yar

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When reviewing Wiradhuri records made by Archdeacon James Gunther around 1837, your database compiler chanced upon:

Australian	respelt	English	JSM	source
“Yarbarra”	yarba-ra =	“to dig, scrape with the spade.”	dig :	Günther (Fraser) [:108:31] [Wira]

This called to mind a Threlkeld entry from Awabakal (or the Hunter River language), which was then found:

“yarr-bulliko”	yarba-li-gu =	“to saw …”	saw :	Tkld/Frsr AWA 1892 [:101:27] [Awa]
“yarr-bulla”	yarba-la =	“saw (mandatory): do saw”	saw IMP! :	Tkld/Frsr AWA 1892 [:101:34] [Awa]
“yarr-bulli kolaġ”	yarba-li-gulang =	“to be about to saw [about to be sawing]”	saw ing about to :	Tkld/Frsr AWA 1892 [:101:28] [Awa]
“yarr-bulli-ġél”	yarba-li-ngil =	“the sawing-place; a saw-pit”	saw ing place :	Tkld/Frsr AWA 1892 [:101:32] [Awa]

In fact there were several more , with variations of yar… meaning ‘to saw’.

The full entry for the first item in the above group is:

“yarr-bulliko”

yarba-li-gu =

“to saw [‘to be in the act of causing by its own act the sound of yarr’; or, in English, ‘to saw’]”

saw :

Tkld/Frsr AWA 1892 [:101:27] [Awa]

The Rev. Lancelot Threkeld has taken ‘yar’ to be the indigenous best effort of capturing the English word ‘saw’, a logical-enough conclusion given that there is no /s/ in indigenous languages of the region.

However, the slight similarity between the actions of ‘digging’ in the initial example to ‘sawing’ noticed by Threlkeld led to further enquiries concerning ‘yar’ words. There are a great number of these across the languages of south-eastern NSW, but when ‘repetitive action’ was looked for, the following were uncovered.

SWIM
“Yar´-ruh”	yara =	“to swim”	swim :	Enright GDG 1900 [:114:83] [Gdg]
“Yarromarrie”	yaru-ma-ri =	“Swimming”	swim :	SofM 19000322 [28: Thomas–Clarence R] [:28.4:43] [Bjlg]
“Yeromilla”	yaru-mi-la =	“To swim”	swim :	SofM 19000922 [132.1 Rankin–Richmond Tweed R] [:134.1:65] [Bjlg]
“yerra”	yira =	“Swim”	swim :	Mathews NGWL [:305:41] [Gga/Ngwl]
“[Boó-roo yar´-râ-min, gool-ân´-doo yar´-râ-moó-goo-moon]”	yara-mi-n =	“[kangaroo swims, at sometime swims not]”	swim he:	M&E: GGA 1900 [:273:27.2] [Gga]
“[Boó-roo yar´-râ-min, gool-ân´-doo yar´-râ-moó-goo-moon]”	yara-mugu-mu-n =	“[kangaroo swims, at sometime swims not]”	swim not he:	M&E: GGA 1900 [:273:27.4] [Gga]
NOD
“Yurbarra”	yurba-ra =	“to nod in sleep, to be sleepy.”	nod [sleepy]:	Günther (Fraser) [:109:58] [Wira]
“Yurbayurba”	yurba yurba =	“sleepy”	nod nod [sleepy]:	Günther (Fraser) [:109:59] [Wira]
SHARPEN
“Yāra”	yara =	“To sharpen the points of a muting or fish gig”	sharpen :	Dawes (b) [b:23:22.1] [BB]
“Yurūlbaradyú”	yuru-l-ba-ra-dyu =	“I am sharpening the tyi bong (by rubbing it on a stone)”	sharp do I:	Dawes (b) [b:23:20.1] [BB]
FLUTTER (FLY)
“Yar´-rat-ba-ga”	yara-d-ba-ga =	“Fly”	flutter fly I:	Mathews DGA 1901 [:72:54] [DGA]
“Yurreemillemañ”	yari-mi-li-ma-ny =	“to fly”	flutter he:	Mathews 8006/3/7- No 7 [:22:23] [Gga]
OTHER
“Yar-ra-ran-jar´”	yara-ra-ndya =	“Spread”	spread :	Mathews DGA 1901 [:73.1:1] [DGA]
“Yarrakál”	yaragal =	“Clean”	clean :	Dawes (b) [b:23:21] [BB]
“Yarra-yarra”	yara yara =	“ever flowing”	flow ing :	SofM 18960912 [12.2 JJB-Narrandera] [:12.3:64] [Wira]
“Yarrarbai”	yara-ba-yi =	“creaking, as shoes”	creak as shoes:	Günther (Fraser) [:108:51] [Wira]
“Yarradunna”	yara-da-na =	“to beat on the bargan, q.v.”	clack :	Günther (Fraser) [:108:39] [Wira]
“Yarra”	yara =	“Birds singing”	chirp :	SofM 19010321 [26 Thomas–Wiraiari] [:26.3:2] [Wira]

The second (respelt) column gives words spelt yar-, yur- and yir-. The variations can be ascribed to different hearing by different recorders, and to the spellings those recorders used. It is plausible to assume that, say, ‘yar-’ with an audible /r/ as in say ‘yarba’ and ‘yurba’, indicated repetition.

Some of the examples have the syllable ‘-ba’ attached. This is a suffix indicating ‘do’, as was suggested in ‘Five verbal suffixes’ of March 2012 in the naabawinya blog [“-ba and -ma do not appear to be ‘status suffixes’ but rather stem-forming suffixes, indicating ‘do’ and ‘make’ ”

Dig, saw, swim, nod, sharpen, flutter (fly), as well as spread, (to) clean, flow, creak, clack and chirp all are repetitive actions.

———–

As to the word ‘flutter’, it was used simply to distinguish the verb ‘to fly’ from the insect ‘fly’. The need for an alternative word to distinguish similar forms occurs from time to time, producing occasional oddities. So the alternative for ‘bark’ (of a tree) is ‘woof’ (for what dogs do). And ‘light’ (such as given by a torch) is distinguished by ‘lite‘ — an admittedly invented spelling to indicate ‘not-heavy’.

Sometimes English lacks convenient words, where there is no such problem in Australian languages. For example: young man, young woman, old man, old woman. There are also words for boy, girl and child, but English has these ready equivalents. The Bayala Databases have opted for:

young man	youth
young woman	lass
old man	patriarch
old woman	matriarch

For the last two, ‘crone’ and ‘codger’ were considered but rejected as being pejorative in tone. ‘Patriarch’ and ‘matriarch’ are not right either, but they are not offensive.

If anyone can think of better solutions, they can leave suggestions as a response to this blog entry. They would be welcome.

JEREMY STEELE

Sunday 1 July 2012

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SYDNEY Words: ‘koala’

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‘KOALA’: what does it mean

A koala is one of Australia’s favourite treasures of the animal kingdom. It looks almost unbearably attractive and cuddly. On closer scrutiny koalas seem to spend most of their time asleep, and they are scarcely cuddly, with claws, and perhaps with a temperament that has never made them household pets in the manner of cats and dogs.

‘Koala’ is an indigenous word that might have been retranscribed as ‘guwala’, but probably more properly as ‘gula’ as the following examples suggest.

Original	respelt	English original	Eng JSM	source
“Cola”	gula =	“koala”	koala :	Caley REFLECTIONS [:140:31] [DG]
“kula”	gula =	“bear”	koala :	KAOL Rowley GeoR [:104:14] [DG]
“coola”	gula =	“A new and remarkable species of Didelphis has lately been brought in from the southward of Botany Bay. It is called by the natives coloo or coola.”	koala :	Brown, Robert: LTR to Banks 16 Sept 1803 [::] [DG]
“Koolah”	gula =	“Sergeant Packer of Pitt’s Row, has in his possession a native animal some time since described in our Paper, and called by the natives, a Koolah”	koala :	Sydney Gazette [9 Oct 1803:3b:] [Syd]
“kula”	gula =	“native bear”	koala :	AL&T Rowley GeoR [:259:11] [DG]
“coola”	gula =	“our coola (sloth or native bear) is about the size of an ordinary poodle dog, with shaggy, dirty-coloured fur, no tail, and claws and feet like a bear, of which it forms a tolerable miniature.”	koala :	Cunningham, Peter [:156:37] [DG?]

Mt Colah in Sydney’s north is probably this same ‘gula’. So too, a little further north, Koolewong.

Hitherto, until the moment of preparing this text, the writer had thought that the animal’s temperament was the source of its name, from the following:

“kular”	gula =	“Angry”	anger :	Mathews DG 1901 [:160:17] [DG]
“goo-lar-ra”	gulara =	“Angry”	anger :	Collins 1 [:508.1:18] [BB]
“kulara”	gulara =	“angry”	anger :	KAOL Rowley GeoR [:106:6] [DG]
“Ghoólara1”	gulara =	“Cross, or ill natured1.”	anger :	Dawes (b) [b:8:1.1] [BB]
“Ghoólara murry2”	gulara mari =	“Very cross2.”	anger big :	Dawes (b) [b:8:1.2] [BB]

In reviewing a wordlist, the following was encountered:

“Kaliya”

galiya =

“Squirrels”

glider possum:

SofM 19010622 [82 Brown–NSW] [:82.2:46] []

‘Squirrel’ was often used for ‘possum glider’, and so that was the retranslation provided for this entry. However, the database also automatically supplies matches to the respelt word in any entry—here, ‘galiya’, and the main retranslation (Eng JSM) entry—glider, in this case. Among those that appeared was:

“Kalianna”

galiya-na =

“To ascend; climb up”

climb :

McCarthy [:26:4] []

Perhaps, this entry suggested, ‘galiya’ did not really mean ‘possum glider’ but ‘climb’ instead. Possums certainly climb. This led to a search for ‘climb’, with illuminating results. There was a multitude of examples for ‘climb’ beginning gali-, gala- and gula-. Here is a sample:

ALLSYD
“Cal-loo-a”	galu-wa =	“To climb”	climb :	King in Hunter [:408.1:31] [BB]
“kalua”	galu-wa =	“Climb”	climb :	Mathews DG 1901 [:160.2:17] [DG]
SOUTH
“Kul´-la-wal-ga”	gala-wa-l-ga =	“Climb”	climb I:	Mathews DGA 1901 [:72:44] [DGA]
“gulligimbilli”	gali-gi-mbi-li =	“Climb”	climb :	Mathews NRGU 1908 [:340:37] [Nrgu]
NORTH
“kullimulliko”	gali-ma-li-gu =	“to make use of the toe; hence, to climb; because the blacks cut notches in the bark, and, to ascend the trunk of a tree, place the toe therein”	climb make :	Tkld/Frsr AWA Lex [:220:23] [AWA]
“kulliwá”	gali-wa =	“climbed; did climb”	climb move :	Tkld/Frsr AWA Lex [:220:24] [AWA]
“Cull-e -wull-ar”	gali-wa-la =	“Climb up or ascend”	climb IMP!:	Tkld KRE c.1835 [:131:29] [Kre]
“gulliwai”	gali-wa-yi =	“Climb”	climb :	Mathews DARK 1903 [:281.3:55] [Dark]
“kulliwai”	gali-wa-yi =	“To go over”	climb :	Mathews DARK 1903 [:274:26.3] [Dark]
“Kalliwai”	gali-wa-yi =	“Climb over”	climb did :	Mathews 8006/3/7- No 7 [7:80:19] [Dark]
“Cully-wo wil-go-bang”	gali-wu-wil-gu-bang =	“Climb up.”	climb might I:	Long Dick [:4.1:21] [LD]
CURR
“Calliwer”	galiwa =	“to climb”	climb :	Curr v. III Bk 15 §186 [340: Branch–Pt Macquarie] [:344.1:2] [Bpi]
ANTSOC
“Gulliwaing”	galiwang =	“To climb”	climb :	McCarthy [:25:9] []
WIRADHURI
“gullê”	gali =	“Climb”	climb :	Mathews KML/Dwl [:279.3:48] [KML]
“Cullicatha”	galigaDa =	“Climb, to”	climb :	SofM 19010422 [44 Thomas–Wiraiari] [:44.2:4] [Wira] KAMILAROI
“Cullicatha”	galigaDa =	“Climb, to”	climb :	SofM 19010422 [44 Thomas–Wiraiari] [:44.2:4] []
“kullial”	galiyal =	“climb”	climb :	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:33:23.2] [KML]
“kolië”	galiyi =	“climb”	climb :	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:33:23.1] [KML]
“Kaliambirra”	galyambira =	“to let go up.”	climb, permit let go up, to:	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:95:36] [Wira]
“kulliana”	galyana =	“Climb”	climb :	Mathews WIRA 1904 [:302:81] [Wira]
“Kalianna”	galyana =	“to ascend, climb up.”	climb ascend, to:	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:95:37] [Wira]
“Caleertha”	garlirDa =	“Climb, to”	climb :	SofM 19010422 [44 Thomas–Wiraiari] [:44.2:1] [Wira]
MURUWARI
“kula”	gula =	“to climb”	climb :	Oates [:168:27.1] [Mrwi]
“kula-wi”	gula-wi =	“to climb back”	climb back :	Oates [:168:27.2] [Mrwi]
“kula-y-ku”	gula-yi-gu =	“will climb”	climb will :	Oates [:144:17.2] [Mrwi]

Koalas, as has been noted, have claws, and as a consequence koalas are excellent tree climbers, and can leap agilely from branch to branch and use their claws to hang on securely to the branch they arrive at.

If so many parts of NSW have gali/gula-type words for ‘climb’, what about words for ‘koala’ from regions beyond Sydney, which is where the examples cited at the outset derived from. Enquiry reveals that there are many different words for ‘koala’, many not of the gali/gula-type:

“Pucawan”	bagawan =	“A native bear”	koala :	AntSoc 456 [42 Critchett Walker–NSW] [:64:75] []
“Banjorah”	bandyura =	“The native bear (Woodenbong district)”	koala :	AntSoc 456 [42 Critchett Walker–NSW] [:42:9] [Bjlg]
“Banjoral”	bandyural =	“A native bear”	koala :	SofM 19000322 [28: Thomas–Clarence R] [:30.1:17] [Bjlg]
“bur´runda”	baranda =	“for the male, [[koala]]”	koala male:	Mathews DGA 1901 [:52:19] [DGA]
“Barrandang”	barandang =	“a native monkey”	koala [?]:	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:72:66] [Wira]
“Boorabee”	burabi =	“A native bear (Byron Bay district)”	koala :	AntSoc 456 [42 Critchett Walker–NSW] [:43:45] [Bjlg]
“Tugaree”	dagari =	“Native Bear”	koala :	SofM 19010221 [8 McDougall] [:8.1:30.1] [Gmbgr]
“Dun-gear-ah”	dangira =	“Native bear”	koala :	AnthSoc 456:36: MINES [:36:50] []
“Toon-ga ri”	dungarayi =	“Native Bear”	koala :	SofM 18990921 [144 Rudder-Orara R] [:144:20] [Gmbgr]
“toon-gool”	dunGul =	“Bear”	koala :	SofM 18990921 [146: Larmer-LchHlra] [:146:3] [Wira]
“Turgaree”	durgari =	“Native bear”	koala :	AntSoc 456 [42 Critchett Walker–NSW] [:51:19] [Gmbgr]
“Gumbâwur”	gambawur =	“native bear”	koala :	Mathews DGA 1901 [:52:18.2] [DGA]
“Kurraloo”	garalu =	“Monkey”	koala :	Larmer (RSNSW) BBay [:226.1:39] [DGA]
“Gooda”	guda =	“Native bear”	koala :	SofM 19000521 [62 Tibbetts-Ulamogo Pl] [:62.3:51] [Wira]
“guda”	guda =	“Native bear”	koala :	Mathews KML/Dwl [:277.3:1] [KML]
“Koor´-a-ban”	guraban =	“Native Bear”	koala :	Mathews DGA 1901 [:69.2:3] [DGA]
“yarre”	yari =	“a native bear”	koala :	Mathews D-GDI 1904 [:233:12] [Dgdi]
“yarri”	yari =	“Native bear”	koala :	Curr v. III Bk 15 §185 [334: Spencer–Lwr Macleay R] [:335.1:22] [Dgdi]

There were also many ‘koala’ words of the gali/gula-type, but they were predominantly in the Sydney and coastal region.

What conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? So far, nothing for certain. The gula-koala could derive from either ‘anger’ or ‘climb’, but the following stem-forming suffixes featuring -wa- indicating ‘move’ seem more applicable to ‘climbing’ (which is to do with activity) than ‘anger’ (an abstract noun).

“Cool-oo-wine”	gulu-wan =	“Native Bear or Monkey”	koala :	Tkld KRE c.1835 [:130:17] [Kre]
“kuluwañ”	gulu-wany =	“Native bear”	koala :	Mathews DARK 1903 [:280.3:11] [Dark]
“koolewong”	guli-wang =	“bear”	koala :	Tuckerman W&R Gaz 1896 [::8] [Tkmn]

Each of the non-gali/gula-type ‘koala’ words could be investigated much as has been done above. The results can be no less tantalising. For example, ‘barandang’ (in the list a little above) might be connected to ‘night/black’, but also to ‘sleepy lizard’, ‘crane’, ‘gnaw’ and ‘cut’ among other things. Possibly a koala is a ‘night’ (even ‘sleepy’ perhaps) animal; possibly it is seen as gnawing/cutting the leaves it eats.

And with that, this topic will be left for the present. Others might care to take it up.

JS Thursday 22 December 2011

NSW WORDS: Yarrangobilly

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Meaning of ‘Yarrangobilly’

Yarrangobilly is in the Snowy Mountains, about 40 km west from the southern portion of the ACT. This places it in Ngarigo country. Consequently ‘yarangu-bili’ might be a Ngarigu word. It probably comprises two or three parts:

—yarang (or one of yarang, yarung; yurang, yurung; yirang, yirung)

—gu

—bili

-bili

‘bili’ is a widespread suffix in NSW languages and appears to convey the idea of ‘act’ or ‘do’. ‘-bi’ and ‘-ba’ can do this too.

‘-li’ can indicate reflexive and reciprocal (i.e. to ‘self’ or to ‘each other’): ‘I hurt myself’ (rflx); ‘we spoke to each other’ (recip);

‘-li’ can also indicate continuation: in English, ‘-ing’, as ‘singing’ as opposed to ‘sing’.

Sometimes ‘bili’ might combine the separate functions of ‘bi’ and ‘li’. At other times it seems as if it might be best considered simply as ‘do’ in English. Sometimes, too, ‘bili’ might be preceded by an ‘-m-’, and this is because some of the languages seem to prefer it that way, just as in English we prefer to say ‘an orange’ rather than ‘a orange’. Here are some examples:

AUSTRALIAN	re-spelt	English (original)	JSM re-translation	source
SYDNEY
“Boam bill…”	buwa-mbili =	“Shark Island”	blow do :	Larmer (RSNSW) SydHbr [:229:2] [Syd]
“Car-re-nar-e-bille”	garin-ari-bili =	“To cough”	cough having do :	King in Hunter [:408.1:2] [BB]
“ton-ga-bil-lie”	dunga-bili =	“Did cry”	cry do :	Collins 1 [:511.1:2] [BB]
“tuabilli”	duwa-bili =	“hide”	hide do :	KAOL Rowley GeoR [:107:10] [DG]
“Da-me-la-bil-lie”	damila-bili =	“A name sake, or a person with whom the name has been exchanged”	name exchange do :	Anon (c) [c:23:7] [BB]
SOUTH
“dhambilli”	Da-mbili =	“Eat”	eat do :	Mathews NRGU 1908 [:340:17] [Nrgu]
“yangabilliñ”	yanga-bili-ny =	“Sing”	sing do I:	Mathews NRGU 1908 [:340:34] [Nrgu]
NORTH
“tungngun-billiko”	dungan-bili-gu =	“for to show as a mark”	mark do :	Tkld AWA Key 1850 [K:21:13.2] [AWA]
“turukónbilliko”	durugan-bili-gu =	“to punish.”	punish do :	Tkld/Frsr AWA Aust Voc [:62:47] [AWA]
“yuaipilliko”	yuwa-bili-gu =	“to push away, to thrust out.”	push do :	Tkld/Frsr AWA Aust Voc [:64:18] [AWA]
KAMILAROI
“bubilli”	bu-bili =	“blow (as in smoking a pipe)”	blow do :	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:33:11] [KML]
“karabille”	gara-bili =	“return (trans.)”	give back do :	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:34:36] [KML]
“Woonabillee”	wuna-bili =	“To give up”	give do :	SofM 18980221 [13: Parker-YWLYI] [:13.22:2] [Ywlyi]
“yena billi”	yinab-[b]ili =	“To catch (as a fish with hook) (imper. yenabilla)”	hook do :	AL&T Greenway (Ridley) [KML] [:240:23] [KML]
“ghimabilli”	gima-bili =	“To make (in any way)”	make do :	AL&T Greenway (Ridley) [KML] [:240:13] [KML]
“Yunnimebillee goo”	yani-mi-bili-gu =	“To release”	release make do :	SofM 18980221 [13: Parker-YWLYI] [:13.22:1] [Ywlyi]
“[Naia bubillini]”	bu-bili-ni =	“[I am smoking]”	smoke do :	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:39:8.1] [KML]
WIRADHURI
“[Wiray-dyu gari-dyi winhanggabili-girri.]”	winanGa-bili =	“[I don’t credit what you say.]”	believe do :	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:114:27.21] [Wira]
“[Gooyabudthinbilly]”	buDi-nbili =	“[Fishing]”	bite do :	SofM 19000521 [62 Tibbetts-Ulamogo Pl] [:64:58.1] [Wira]
“Ubelle”	yu-bili =	“Rain”	rain do :	SofM 18991021 [154.2: Kable/Coe-Cowra] [:154.2:5] [Wira]
“Gaddambilli”	gada-mbili =	“[NO TRANSLATION]”	rinse do :	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:61:59] [Wira]
“[Ngadhu birrumbullayambool dhirraubilli]”	Dira-bili =	“[I was throwing a boomerang for play]”	rise do :	Mathews: 8006/3/4- Vol.1 [:89:6.2] [Wira]
“[Karidyidin maindyu winnangabilligi]”	winanga-bili =	“[you will not make me believe that.]”	think do :	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:115:30.31] [Wira]
“Boonbilly”	bu-nbili =	“Tobacco”	tobacco :	SofM 19000521 [62 Tibbetts-Ulamogo Pl] [:63:118] [Wira]
ANTSOC
“Kiarabilli”	giyara-bili =	“Milson’s Point”	:	Larmer HARBOUR 1834 [:229:7] [Syd]
“Warr-Billy”	war-bili =	“Natives wrestling”	:	Tyrrell [:42:2] []
*“Yarrangobilli”**	yarangu-bili =	“”	:	UNKNOWN AnthSoc 456:21 [:21:9] [Nrgu]
“Adjungbilly”	ngadyan-bili =	“Permanent stream”	creek :	McCarthy [:5:3] []
“Yarrangobilly”	yarangu-bili =	“Flowing stream”	water flowing:	McCarthy [:18:26] []

In the JSM retranslation (fourth) column, nearly all entries end in ‘do’, reflecting the role of ‘bili’. In the very first example, the name of Shark Island in Sydney Harbour, it is suggested that the indigenous name bu-mbili (Boambilly) means ‘blow-do’, because of the winds blowing there.

The last group, headed ANTSOC, are mainly words from The Science of Man, the Australian Anthropological Journal published at the turn of the last century, and placenames. Mostly the recorders of placenames did not provide meanings. Nevertheless, from the preceding examples, it would seem that placenames in the list might have indicated something to do with ‘doing’.

Left out of the above group are certain examples that did not fit that reasoning. They include:

“bâhmbilly”	bambili =	“a level cleared space on the margin of the main camp, where all the chief men meet for private consultations”	earth flat:	M&E: GGA 1900 [:277:1] [Gga]
“yeppungbilli”	yibang-bili =	“Large”	big :	Mathews NRGU 1908 [:339:58] [Nrgu]
“Indooroopilly”	nginduru-bili =	“”	:	Postcodes [::] []
“Boonbilly”	bu-nbili =	“Tobacco”	tobacco :	SofM 19000521 [62 Tibbetts-Ulamogo Pl] [:63:118] [Wira]

It might be possible to attempt some explanation even of these, for the first two most probably are mistranslations (‘earth flat’ and ‘big’). The third might not fit the scheme being a language appreciably distant (Queensland). And the fourth, ‘tobacco’, is a repetition from the first list (Wiradhuri): for rather than ‘tobacco’ the meaning is really ‘blow do’, the same as for Shark Island: for that is what a smoker of tobacco appears to do: blow the smoke out.

If ‘-bili’ means ‘do’, what about the first part of the word, ‘yarang’ (or its variants)?

yarang

A y@r@ng computer search (i.e. for ‘yarang’ and its variants) yields a considerable number and variety of results. In the examples below several themes can be identified:

—mouth: tooth

—beard: chin

—pronoun: they-all

—tree: spotted gum

—duck: dive

—youth (young man): wicked, strong, jealous (?)

—hunger: edible grub

—depart: go

—dawn

—rain: cloud

—other: above, emu, long, splinter

Although the examples provided are numerous, many more were omitted. For, apart from the near duplicates, none of the results with ‘-i-‘ — ‘yirang’ and ‘yirung‘ — were included, as it seemed unlikely that ‘yarangu-bili’ with its ‘yara (as opposed to ‘yira’) stem might have derived from them. Similarly also omitted and for the same reason were examples in the form ‘yaring’, ‘yuring’ and ‘yiring’. Here are the examples:

AUSTRALIAN	re-spelt	English (original)	JSM re-translation	source
ALLSYD
“yoo-rong-i”	yurangayi =	“A wild duck”	duck :	Collins 1 [:512.1:6] [BB]
“Yourong”	yurang =	“Mrs. Macquarie’s Point”	Mrs Macquaries Point :	Larmer (RSNSW) SydHbr [:228:32] [Syd]
“: Yerúng :”	yarung =	“A tree”	tree :	Dawes (b) [b:23:7] [BB]
“yourong”	yurang =	“wicked applied to a man with two wives”	wicked :	Mahroot [:80:27] [Syd]
NORTH
“U-rong”	yurang =	“Above”	above :	Tkld KRE c.1835 [:132:32] [Kre]
“Yarrang”	yarang =	“whiskers and beard”	beard :	SofM 18980521 [88: Brown-Hastings & Wilson R] [:88.24:7] [Wrmi]
“yarang”	yarang =	“Dawn”	dawn :	SofM 18991121 [192.4 McDougall-Grftn] [:192.4:15] [Gmbgr]
“yarong”	yarung =	“To Go Away”	depart :	SofM 18991121 [192.4 McDougall-Grftn] [:193.4:35] [Gmbgr]
“yuróġ”	yurang =	“dive”	dive :	Tkld/Frsr AWA Aust Voc [:64:22.1] [AWA]
“yurungai”	yurangayi =	“Black duck”	duck, black:	Mathews DARK 1903 [:280.3:32] [Dark]
“yarang”	yarang =	“To Walk”	go :	SofM 18991121 [192.4 McDougall-Grftn] [:193.4:30] [Gmbgr]
“yarang”	yarang =	“They”	they-all :	SofM 18991121 [192.4 McDougall-Grftn] [:193.4:1] [Gmbgr]
SOUTH
“yerrañ”	yirany =	“Beard”	beard :	Mathews NRGU 1908 [:337:14] [Nrgu]
“yarrooñ”	yaruny =	“spotted gum”	gum spotted:	Mathews 8006/3/7/ – CRITERION [:73:19] [DWL]
“yurung”	yurung =	“Jealous”	jealous :	Mathews KML/Dwl [:279.1:1] [DWL]
“Yar´-ung-arn”	yarangan =	“Long”	long :	Mathews DGA 1901 [:71.2:5] [DGA]
“yoorwang”	yur-wa-ng =	“strong”	strong :	Mathews 8006/3/7- No 7 [:16:0.2] [Gga]
“eurong-a”	yuranga =	“Man (young) “	youth :	SofM 18990921 [146: Larmer-BBay] [:147.1:11] [DGA]
CURR
“urung”	yurang =	“Cloud”	cloud :	Curr v. III Bk 16 §190 [386: Cameron–Forbes] [:365.7:18] [Wira]
“urung”	yurang =	“Hungry”	hunger :	Curr v. III Bk 16 §190 [384: BENCH–Carcoar (Bthst)] [:385.2:15] [Wira]
“yerong”	yarang =	“Mouth”	mouth :	Curr v. III Bk 16 §190 [374: Keightly–Wellington] [:375.1:1] [Wira]
“yurong”	yurång =	“Rain”	rain :	Curr v. III Bk 17 §196 [430: du Vé–Moneroo] [:431.1:38] [Nrgu]
“yerong”	yarang =	“Teeth”	tooth :	Curr v. III Bk 16 §190 [396: Gordon–Deniliquin] [:397.1:2] [Wira]
“yoorung”	yurang =	“A young man”	youth :	Curr v. III Bk 17 §193 [418: Ridley–Wollongong] [:418.2:14.21] [Dwl]
KAMILAROI
“uruŋaöa”	yurungawa =	“diver (duck)”	diver duck:	KAOL Ridley [KML] [:20:34] [KML]
“yerrungun”	yarungan =	“Edible grub (gum tree)”	grub edible:	Mathews KML/Dwl [:277.2:7] [KML]
WIRADHURI
“Yarrang”	yarang =	“Chin”	chin :	SofM 19001121 [166: Thomas–Dubbo] [:167.1:36] [Wira]
“Yurong”	yurang =	“a cloud”	cloud :	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:109:62] [Wira]
“Eurong”	yurang =	“Emu”	emu :	Larmer (RSNSW) YYeo [:227.1:15] [Wira]
“Yerong”	yarang =	“rain”	rain :	SofM 18960912 [12.2 JJB-Narrandera] [:12.3:73] [Wira]
“Yourong-guinty”	yurangGu windayi =	“sheltering from rain”	rain wait :	SofM 18960912 [12.2 JJB-Narrandera] [:12.3:22] [Wira]
“Yarrang”	yarang =	“splinters”	splinter :	Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:108:49] [Wira]
“Urong”	yurang =	“Teeth”	tooth :	SofM 18970227 [16.5: HP-Bland] [:17.5:25] [Wira]
ANTSOC
“Yarrangobilly”	yarangu-bili =	“Flowing stream”	water flowing:	McCarthy [:18:26] []
*“Yarrangobilli”**	yarangu-bili =	“”	:	UNKNOWN AnthSoc 456:21 [:21:9] [Nrgu]

What did Yarrangobilly mean?

From the above sets of examples, can any deductions be made as to the meaning of Yarrangobilly? Let us consider them under the themes identified earlier.

First, in the Sydney Language, ‘yira’ is ‘tooth’ and ‘yaring’ is beard (both ‘-i-’-words), and so words in the tooth/mouth and beard groups seem unlikely to be candidates for yaranga-bili. The pronoun group seems an inappropriate basis for a placename; and the ‘bili’ (‘do’) suffix seems equally improbable on a pronoun.

As to the other themes listed, in the Yarrangobilly area there is no shortage of trees, and there might be ducks on the Yarrangobilly River. A young man might have had some connection with the place, or indeed anywhere, and someone might have been hungry there. In addition, someone might have departed, gone or walked at Yarrangobilly. Day might have been noticed breaking (dawn), and likewise in the Yarrangobilly mountains, rain and clouds might be frequent occurrences.

This leaves just the remaining ‘other’ theme including ‘long’, for which no link to Yarrangobilly springs to mind; nor were other examples of ‘yarang-’ meaning ‘long’ uncovered. Much the same applies to ‘above’, ‘emu’ and ‘splinter’.

With none of the examples providing an obvious suggestion as to the meaning of Yarrangobilly, where to turn next? Given the southern highlands location of Yarrangobilly, it would seem best to concentrate attention on the ‘yarang’ examples geographically closest to it, Wiradhuri and SOUTH. CURR and ANTSOC comprising words from all around the state might also be more keenly examined. The least likely words are in the Kamilaroi, North and Allsyd collections.

With nothing leaping out, it is time to look seriously at the hitherto dismissed ‘Yarrangobilly’ examples in the ANTSOC group, as well as to one of the Wiradhuri examples. These three are reproduced below:

“Yourong-guinty”	yurangGu windayi =	“sheltering from rain”	rain wait :	SofM 18960912 [12.2 JJB-Narrandera] [:12.3:22] [Wira]
“Yarrangobilly”	yarangu-bili =	“Flowing stream”	water flowing:	McCarthy [:18:26] []
*“Yarrangobilli”**	yarangu-bili =	“”	:	UNKNOWN AnthSoc 456:21 [:21:9] [Nrgu]

All have the form ‘yurangu’ (or similar). And the first, ‘yurangGu windayi’ (rain wait), looks as if it might readily be modified to ‘yurangGu-bili’: ‘rain do’, which could lead to a translation ‘it rains’, or ‘rain place’.

Where McCarthy got ‘flowing stream’ from has not yet emerged from the present ongoing investigation into indigenous words. However, such a meaning does seem plausible, even if not substantiated by any of the examples so far cited. For ‘yara’ may be associated with a ‘river’, or ‘stream’—as is plain to anyone standing on the Swanston Street Bridge in Melbourne. Here are some relevant examples of ‘yara’:

“Yarra”	yara =	“A beach in Botany Bay. See Yerrah”	beach :	AnthSoc 456:42: Walker [:104:28] []
“yarro”	yaru =	“fresh water”	water fresh:	Tkld/Frsr AWA Aust Voc [:53:30] [AWA]
*“ Yarra Yarra”**	yara yara =	“Flowing Water”	water :	SofM 18991221 [209.1 Gostelow-Bathurst] [:209.2:54] []
“Yarra”	yara =	“Water running through trees and shadows”	water running:	Tyrrell [:47:17.1] []
“Yarroom”	yarum =	“River or beach shingle”	beach :	Tyrrell [:47:26] []

Consequently Yarrangobilly might conceivably be:

yara -ngu -bili

stream SFX do

flowing stream

And McCarthy might have been right after all. But equally, Yarrangobilly could have other interpretations, including ‘rain/cloud place’, too.

NSW Words

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Tracing the Bokhara and other NSW rivers

In a press report in the Sydney Morning Herald for the last day of 2010, there was the following entry:

“Moderate to major flooding is expected along the Culgoa, Bokhara, Birrie and Narran rivers over the coming weeks.’

And a little further on in the article:

“… floodwater from west-flowing NSW rivers is still causing minor to moderate flowing along the Barwon River.”

Perhaps this was a clue to a puzzle of ‘bagara’ in the Minyung language, on the far north NSW coastal region, found in the following two examples:

[1] “bukkora goa” bagara-ga-wa = “’go past’” past -go: Livingstone [:19:31.1] [Mnyg]

[2] “kunde bukkora” gandi bagara = “’over there.’” there xxx : Livingstone [:26:8] [Mnyg]

There was also the further question as to the meaning in this language of ‘goa’ (gawa).

In the second example, ‘kunde’ probably did mean ‘there’, it having been spelt out in:

[3] “kundy” gandi = “it there; it. (n.)” there : Livingstone [:7:36.1] [Mnyg]

Investigation of ‘bagara’ through searches conducted in the NORTH Bayala Database bayaladatabases.blogspot.com proceeded along the following lines:

BAGA

Could ‘baga’ mean ‘river’? Or some aspect of water?:

[4] ” bokatoġ” baga-dang = “the surf of the sea; a wave” foam : Tkld AWA Lex [:203:31] [Awa]

GAWA (’goa’)

[5] “goagwoin” gawagwan = “water” water : G. Bass (Cowagary) [:111.5:29] [NrN]

[6] “Ko-guin” gugwin = “Water” water : Tkld KRE c.1835 [:131:37.1] [Kre]

BAGA red herrings

[7] “bukka” baga = “anger; ferociousness” anger : Tkld AWA Lex [:204:19] [Awa]

[8] “Buk´-a Buk-â” baga baga = “savage” anger very: Enright GDG 1900 [:110:9] [Gdg]

[9] “bukka-kei” baga-ga-yi = “ferocious, savage” angry person/actor : Tkld AWA (Fraser) 1892 [:14:6.2] [Awa]

[10] “Bukker” baga = “knee” knee : SofM 1898 05 21 [p.88: Brown] [:88.24:52] [Bpi]

[11] “Buk-â” baga = “the knee” knee : Enright GDG 1900 [:109:11] [Gdg]

[12] “Bukkar” baga = “Knee” knee : Tkld GDG Aust Voc [:125.1:36] [Gdg?]

[Explanation of some of the source abbreviations for languages:

AWA (Awabakal); KRE (Karree, near the Hawkesbury R; GDG (Gadang, central coast); BPI (Biripi)]

———-

BUT, perhaps ‘knee’ might not be a red herring, if ‘bagara ga-wa‘ were a stream. It might be a STREAM (ga-wa?) with a knee-bend (bagara) in it.

Likewise, ‘baga-dang’ cited above might be a ‘knee-bend’ effect in the SEA: i.e. ‘a wave’.

And the ‘go past’ gloss in the first example [1] might be a reference to the water FLOWING past.

And in the second example [2], the gloss ‘over there’ might have reflected an informant’s pointing to the river ‘over there’ (this tenuous conjecture could apply to practically any unknown example).

The INLAND database

Although Minyung was a coastal language, the rivers ran inland, so it seemed appropriate to see what the INLAND database might suggest. Thus:

[13] “bogarru” bagaru = “Grass, collectively” grass : Mathews WIRA 1904 [:300:85] [WIRA]

‘Grass’ is a possibility for ‘bagara’, given that there might have been grass near the river Bokhara.

The INLAND database suggested many other directions in which the trail might be pursued but nothing definitive. So at this point investigation into the meaning of the Bokhara River petered out.

THE OTHER RIVERS

But what about the Culgoa River? ‘Culgoa’ features the same ‘goa’ element found in the first example [1] given. Two main cataloguers of Australian placenames provide the following:

[14] “Culgoa” gulgawa = “Running through or returning” returning : McCarthy [:10:2] [Kamilaroi]

[15] “Culgoa” gulgawa = “River running through” returning : Tyrrell [:17:14] [Kamilaroi]

The second of these examples [15] specifically mentions a ‘river’. Could ‘Culgoa’ be a gul (or gal) river? The COASTAL database offered no clues, with nothing akin to ‘running through or returning’ for gul/gal. But the INLAND database—and these are inland rivers—offered a useful possibility:

[16] “kulli” gali = “Rain “ rain : Mathews KML/Dwl [:276.4:1] [Kamilaroi]

[17] “kolli” gali = “Water” water : AL&T Greenway (Ridley) [KML] [:236:24] [Kamilaroi]

A further thought is that the suffix ‘-wa’ (forming part of ‘goa’ (ga-wa) suffix) often denotes MOVEMENT, as noted by Threlkeld:

[18] “wa” wa = “Actuality of motion, has changed place, moved, &c.” move : Tkld AWA Key 1850 [Key:28:13] [Awa]

So Culgoa (galgawa) might be about ‘water-moving’.

Finally, consider the other rivers mentioned: Birrie, Narran and Barwon.

Birrie.

The Birrie River is in the Brewarrina local government area. And Brewarrina itself means ‘tree standing’:

[19] “burree” bari = “tree” tree : AL&T Greenway (Ridley) [KML] [:239:13.1] [Kamilaroi]

[20] “boree” bari = “hard heavy timber tree” tree hard: Mitchell, J.F.H 9CY reel 681 [:85:] [Wiradhuri]

[21] “Warranna” warana = “to stand” stand : Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:105:8] [WIRA]

[22] “warrana” warana = “Stand” stand : Mathews NYMBA 1904 [:230.3:53] [NYMBA]

and this ‘tree’ meaning is confirmed by records for the spelling ‘biri’:

[23] “Birri” biri = “the box-tree” box : Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:74:70] [WIRA]

[24] “birri” biri = “box (tree)” box : KAOL Ridley [KML] [:23:10.2] [Kamilaroi]

There are often trees along river banks, so the recorded name might have arisen from an informant’s pointing to the riverside trees.

Narran

There are several possibilities for the ‘narran’ name. McCarthy gives:

[25] “Narran” naran = “Hungry place” hungry : McCarthy [:14:51] [Ngwl / Wira]

Others meaning possibilities are:

[26] “nhurrin” narin = “Flank” flank : Mathews KML/Dwl [:276.1:31] [Kamilaroi]

[27] “nhurran” naran = “Jew- lizard “ lizard jew: Mathews WIRA 1904 [:301:31] [WIRA]

[28] “[Narang, Narra]” narang = “slowly” slow : SofM 1897 02 27 [HP WIRA] [:16.5:36.1] [WIRA]

[29] “ŋurruŋ” narang = “night” night : KAOL Ridley [WIRA] [:126:4.2] [WIRA]

[30] “Nurroong” narung = “Dark” night : SofM 1900 05 21 [Tibbetts] [:63:66] [WIRA]

Of these, ‘flank’ might refer to the ‘bank’ of the river; ‘lizard’, and ‘slow’ might be the same concept if the lizard were moving ‘slowly’; and ‘night’ and ‘dark’ are the same idea’, and such words can be used for ‘black’.

These examples confuse rather than clarify what the name of the Narran River might have meant in reality.

Barwon

An apparently convincing meaning for ‘Barwon’ is given by the following:

[31] “Barwon” bawan = “Barwon (river), great, wide, awful.” big : AL&T Greenway (Ridley) [KML] [:239:11] [KML]

As is often the case, further enquiry muddies the picture:

[32] “Báwan!” bawan = “no, no! by no means!” no : Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:73:22] [WIRA]

which might have been said in light of the next entry:

[33] “Boin Boin” bawin bawin = “Mosquitoes” mosquito : Tyrrell [:9:6] []

[34] “Ba-wen” bawin = “Wallaroo” wallaroo : Mathews 8006/3/7/ – CRITERION [:28.1:18.1] [Wira-secret]

[35] “bouan” buwan = “Thigh” thigh : Curr, E.M.: 3 [:381.1:10] [WIRA]

[36] “Báwán” bawan = “a white stone….” stone white: Günther WIRA (Fraser) [:73:21] [WIRA]

Collectively, these leave the meaning of ‘Barwon’ in doubt.

And after all that, we are very little the wiser about what these several river names might have meant.

Jeremy Steele

Friday 31 December 2010

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