This site looks at some Australian indigenous languages. It draws on databases formed from word lists by largely nineteenth-century people. The databases respell the words consistently, and consistent meanings are given to the words. Thus any reference to 'river', 'creek' and so on is always rendered as 'stream'. This device enables comparisons to be made, and word-matches to be uncovered, by using the searching capabilities of databases.
The naabawinya.blogspot.com blog began in 2006 as an attempt to explain some points about the Sydney Aboriginal language, Biyal Biyal. Further posts about the Sydney and other Australian Aboriginal languages continued on the blog until 2017 when it moved to the present location, aboriginallanguages.info, with a name more likely to be chanced upon by internet visitors.
Now the blog has become part of the Aboriginal Languages of Australia website (https://www.aboriginallanguages.com). To find previous and all future posts, just click on the last big circle on the home page, the orange one –
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, in Dieri country about halfway between Lake Eyre and the Queensland border. He was to stay there until 1871, after which he transferred to Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory. It was during this time that the government published his work on the Dieri people. By the time he resigned in 1876 he had completed around twelve years of outback police service. The final twenty years of his life were spent mainly in Beltana midway between Lake Hope and Port Augusta, as a manager/proprietor of several hotels, apart from a 2-3 year stint as an auctioneer there. He died in this vicinity in 1887 in his early fifties.
Gason hardly had a sympathetic view of his subject. He wrote: “A more treacherous race I do not believe exists. They imbibe treachery in infancy, and practice it until death, and have no sense of wrong in it.” However, he described their way of life in detail, and provided an extensive vocabulary. He also included the following translation of ‘a selection’ from the Ten Commandments:
The challenge to your researcher was to work out which Commandments were represented, and what the words meant.
First, the Commandments are numbered in a multiplicity of ways by different denominations, but in Exodus chapter 20 in the King James Version [KJV] of the Bible the following is given:
1
I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
3
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
4
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
5
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
6
Thou shalt not kill.
7
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8
Thou shalt not steal.
9
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
10
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
When Samuel Gason was writing in the early 1870s, the KJV is what he would have used.
Using Gason’s own vocabulary, your researcher came up with the following analysis:
Athona yoora Goda
1st. [commandment]
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
child [?] love GOD
Watta yoondroo aunchanapitta, paroo, ya ya pittapilkildra windrie Goda, yondroo aunchana
2nd. [commandment]
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing …
no you father xxx [bida], stop and and [all?] something else xxx [bida] only GOD, you(r} father
Watta Goda yoondroo caukooelie dikana
3rd. [commandment]
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
no GOD you(r) nothing-of dub-ing
Apirrie, ya andrie, parabara oondrana thana thipie aumanunthoo
4th. [commandment]
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
father, and mother [with force and strength] think-ing they-all live breast milk
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
no you property stranger eye-xxx (covet) and, spouse stranger no you eye-xxx nothing breast milk
Gason’s vocabulary consisted of about 1800 entries, and when these were added to a database it became possible to analyse the words used in the Commandments translations and to speculate as to which Commandment was which as the following exposition by means of tables derived from the database reveals.
Athona yoora Goda
aDana yura GODa
1st. [commandment]
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
child [?] love GOD
In these tables, the grey columns are the original entries. Those to the right of them, in dark orange and yellow, are modern simplifications: respelling in the first case and a standardised English form in the second. The final pink column shows the source of the entry, including page and line number, and a reference to the language (often in abbreviated form, for reasons of space)
Table 1
As seen above, in the database some visually distinguishing capitalising (and other) conventions are used in the ‘respelt’ column to distinguish usages in the original record, but which do not affect the computer’s sorting capability.
The very first word, Athona, is doubtful in the context of the Commandment. It appears to mean some form of family relation. The next word yoora is ‘love’ as the two examples from around twenty show:
Table 2
The final word, Goda, is simply ‘God’. If the terminal -a is a suffix, perhaps nominative or accusative, such information is not revealed in the Gason wordlist.
There is no Commandment about ‘love’ in the standard 10 Commandments set, but ‘loving’ certainly does occur in the basic set of two in St Matthew’s gospel (22:37-40):
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Perhaps this is what this 1st Commandment relates to.
Watta yoondroo aunchanapitta, paroo, ya ya pittapilkildra windrie Goda, yondroo aunchana
wada yundru andyana bida, baru, ya ya bida bilgildra windri GODa, yundru andyana
2nd. [commandment]
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing …
no you make any [bida], stop and and [all?] something else any [bida] only GOD, you make
The word Wata is to feature frequently in the following Commandments. It means ‘no’:
Table 3
Likewise Yondroo occurs often, meaning ‘thou’:
Table 4
The next word, “Aunchana”, is also the next significant problem. Respelling enables links to be uncovered, but they offer limited assistance. ‘Father’ is unlikely, as there is a more normal form as will be encountered later. Perhaps the word indicates a positive emotion or sentiment, such as ‘caress’, ‘desire’, ‘wish’, as might apply in wishing for a graven image.
However, should this really be the Commandment ‘Thou shalt not make …’, and as ‘no thou’ has already occurred, could the word be ‘make’?
Table 5
The final two examples in Table 5 suggest this might well be the case, revealed when a search was undertaken for ‘mak(e)’. The original spellings, and subsequent respellings, did not suggest this likely interpretation at first.
Another problem arises with Pitta:
Table 6
How can ‘wood’, or more unlikely ‘navel’, fit into the Commandment? Perhaps the ‘image’ might be made of wood, to stand for ‘graven’ The third example in Table 6 features ‘dinDi’, for which explanations are offered in two examples below it.
If the word sequence concept were to be followed once again, and given that that in the English Commandment only one word occurs twice (‘any’), and here is Pitta for the second time, then ‘any’ would seem to be a possible interpretation notwithstanding the apparent irrelevancies in Table 6.
The next group, paroo, ya ya, is challenging. ‘baru’ signifying ‘fish’ is improbable, but the meaning ‘stop’ could possibly fit.
Table 7
What about ya ya for which there are no examples in the Gason record, other than ya = ‘and’. Perhaps the second ‘ya’ might be valid as ‘and’, and the fist intended to be attached to to the precious word to make ‘baruya’. There are no such examples. Could paroo, ya ya be a misprint, say, for Parchana, for which the meaning as given in Table 7 is ‘all’? All this seems unconvincincing, leaving the possibility suggested by the English word sequence, ‘image’ … ‘ any graven image’. There are no words in the vocabulary for ‘image’.
… ya pittapilkildra windrie Goda, yondroo aunchana
… and something else xxx [bida] only GOD, you(r) father
… or any likeness of any thing
Assume ya, ‘and’, is an equivalent for ‘or’. Next, the mystery pitta occurs again —possibly ‘any’— followed by Pilkildra.
Table 8
Table 8 suggests ‘other’ as a possibility for ‘bigildra’, perhaps representing ‘any thing’.
‘windri’ might be ‘only’, as Table 9 suggests.:
Table 9
The word following is Goda again, making ‘only God’.
The final two words yondroo aunchana were encountered at the beginning of this Commandment, meaning ‘you make’.
In summary then:
Watta Goda yoondroo caukooelie dikana
wada GODa yundru gaguwili digana
3rd. [commandment]
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
no GOD you(r) nothing-of dub-ing
In the 3rd Commandment, the first three words are now familiar: no God thou.
The next word, caukooelie, had no matches in the Gason vocabulary but computer searches came up with the possibility of Baukoelie, as shown in Table 11.
Table 11
This might be the intention, and shows that misprinting might also be an obstacle in trying to make sense of the translations.
The final word, dikana, was relatively simple to resolve.
Table 12
The word ‘dub’ in the yellow column might seem odd. The reason for it is that in the databases it has been found useful to have words not subject to confusion, words such as ‘light’ (weight/illlumination), ‘fly’ (insect/travel in the air), swallow (bird, throat ingest). So for these three pairs the following are used: light/lite, fly/flutter, swallow/gulp. In the case of ‘dub’, a verb, it is used to distinguish it from ‘name’, a noun. This is helpful when conducting searches, to arrive at results without ambiguity.
In summary:
Table 13
Apirrie, ya andrie, parabara oondrana thana thipie aumanunthoo
abiri, ya andri, barabara undrana Dana Dibi ama nunDu
4th. [commandment]
Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
father, and mother [with force and strength] think-ing they-all live breast milk
In the 4th Commandment, Apirrie is ‘father’, ya ‘and’ and andrie ‘mother’:
Table 14
parabara is not so simple:
Table 15
From Table 15 perhaps the notion: ‘father and mother big (i.e. with force and power)’ can be derived.
Then, as this Commandment appears to be clearly the one about ‘honour(ing) thy father and thy mother’, the following three words oondrana thana thipie are likely to be related to “days may be long”.
Tab;e 16
Thus ‘(you must) think they (might) live’ …
The final word(s) aumanunthoo seem to be ‘breast’ and ‘milk’.
Table 17
In summary then, and simplified, this might be:
father and mother strong(ly) think they might live breast milk
Watta yoondroo narrie nundrala
wada yundru nari nundrala
5th. [commandment]
Thou shalt not kill.
no you dead/corpse dead-towards
In the 5th Commandment, the first two words, wada yundru, are ‘no thou’, for ‘Thou shalt not’.
Table 18
The next two words, narrie nundrala, for ‘dead strike’, represent ‘kill’.
Table 19
‘No thou dead strike’: or ‘Thou shalt not kill’.
Watta yoondroo pulakaunchie
wada yundru bula gandyi
6th. [commandment]
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
no you desire [?] certain
The 6th Commandment begins in the same way, with ‘no thou’. This is followed by the word(s) pulakaunchie.
Table 20
From Table 20, ’bula’ seems to convey the idea of advancing or promoting an idea, thus imploring, or doing what lobbyists might do in modern times, seeking to obtain an outcome. Hence the word ‘desire’, and the summary: ‘thou shalt not desire’ … someone else’s wife/woman being implied.
‘gandyi’ at the end is an emphatic: ‘certain(ly):
Table 21
A similar emphatic, ‘gangayi’, was recorded by William Dawes in faraway Sydney in around 1790:
Table 22
Watta yoondroo kooriekaunchie
wada yundru guri gandyi
7th. [commandment]
Thou shalt not steal.
no you thief certain
The 7th Commandment likewise begins with ‘no thou’, and concludes with the same emphatic ‘gandyi’. The only new word is ‘guri’, meaning ‘thief’, and ‘steal’.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
no you(r) man own friend nothing-of threaten-ing.
The 8th Commandment repeats the ‘no thou’,beginning. The next three words are kurna komanelie, caukooelie. While there are several examples of ‘gurna’ for ‘man’ there is only one for Koomanlie, which is reproduced in Table 24, meaning ‘own friend’. The third word of this group, caukooelie, occurred in the 3rd Commandment above, and was taken to be a misprint for Baukooelie, with the meaning ‘nothing’.
Table 24
The final word(s) ulchulchamuna has only a single record, ‘threaten’. A similar word, ‘ulgadya’, has a similar meaning. The third example in the table for comparison, is also similar though less so.
Table 25
This Commandment might be summarised as ‘do not nothing (i.e. anything) to threaten (your) your own man/friend’.
wada yundru budu Dula milgirana ya, nuwa Dula wada yundru milgirana bagu wama nunDu
9th. [commandment]
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
no you property stranger eye-xxx (covet) and, spouse stranger no you eye-xxx nothing breast milk
The same ‘no thou’ formula begins the 9th Commandment.
The next two words ‘buDu Dula’ each have three possible meanings. However, in the context of this Commandment about coveting things, ‘property’ and ‘stranger’ seem the most likely’ interpretations.
Table 26
The next word, milkirrana, occurs twice. It is based on the word milki, ‘eye’, and is given as meaning ‘coveting, desiring’. So far the Commandment can be taken to mean ‘do not covet stranger(’s) property.
‘nuwa’ is next, meaning wife or husband, and in the case of this Commandment, ‘wife’.
Other words from the Commandment recur, as well as others met earlier, and the whole might now be summarised as follows:
Table 27
The phrase ‘breast milk’ was met first in the 4th Commandment where it might have represented ‘upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.’
In the 9th Commandment it might have represented ‘any thing that is thy neighbour’s’. Perhaps it was used as a metaphor for ‘bounty’.
Dieri language
Samuel Gason might have been to first to record the Dieri language but others were to follow.
The first of these might have been a 41-page ‘reading book’ entitled Wonini-pepa Dieri-jaurani Worapala, by J, Fliert, who had joined the Lutheran Hermannsburg missionary group in 1878. (FLIERT, J. (1883) Wonini-pepa, Dieri-jaurani. First Reading Book in the Dieri Language, Adelaide, E, Spiller.)
The next was a major undertaking that came about in the following manner. A Lutheran Mission backed by the Hermannsburg Mission Society in Germany was set up in 1867 on Cooper Creek, first at Lake Hope in Dieri Aboriginal country, only to move repeatedly during that year and the next first to Lake Koperamanna where they joined a group of Moravian missionaries, then to Lake Killalpaninna a little to the west, and then in 1871 to Mundowna Station 100 km further south. Two years later in 1873 they were back near where they started, at Bucaltaninna. Some of the missionaries stayed there for five years.
In 1874 the Hermannsburg group moved about 800 km to the north west, to New Hermannsburg to the west of Alice Springs. Four years later they returned to Killalpaninna where they stayed until the mission closed in 1915. It was in this final period in Killalpaninna that the main work on the Dieri language took place, by missionary J.G. Reuther who was there from 1888 to 1906, and then with Carl Strelhow from 1892 to 1894, yielding the translation of the New Testament into Dieri. According to Wikipedia, this 350-page complete translation of the New Testament into Dieri in 1897 was the first for an Aboriginal language. The Biblical translating done for the Hunter River-Lake Macquarie language (Awabakal) in the 1830s by L.E, Threlkeld was confined to the gospels of Sts Luke, Mark and part of Matthew, together with a number of other isolated verses, and prayers.
A fourth significant source is a handwritten anonymous 65-page vocabulary in a notebook entitled German ‘Vocabulary of native tribes North East South Australia’. This is held in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, viewable on filmstrip CY4264 and also online at <https://digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=FL807761&embedded=true&toolbar=false>. The original forms part of a ‘parcel of MSS originally inscribed [Herbert] Basedow material MSS and Typescript Aborigines. Originally received (by Mitchell Library) 15 March 1934’ [library record for CY Reel 4264]. The folder amongst these papers in which the notebook occurs, Folder 2, is dated ca 1989-1932, and it notes the vocabulary is not in Basedow’s hand. In fact, partly because the vocabulary translations are in German it was most likely the work of one of the Lutheran Hermannsburg missionaries, either J.G. Reuther or C. Strelhow, probably in the period 1888-94.
Finally, of the historical undertakings to record the language, in 1908 an 11-page grammar of Dieri, in German, by W. Planert, was published. (PLANERT, W. (1908) Dieri Grammatik, Dietrich Reimer Verlag GmbH.)
Considerably later, reflecting modern scholarship, the following book appeared:
AUSTIN, P. (1981) A grammar of Diyari, South Australia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Here is a version of the Australian National Anthem devised today:
————————
Australians all let us rejoice,
baraya-ba-nyi Australia-gal
sing will we-all AUSTRALIA-people
For we are young and free;
ngyila gurung garigarang
we-all child glad-because
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil;
bimal yaragal; ganu burug
earth yellow; replete replete
Our home is girt by sea;
ngura gari-garang-arayi
camp sea-having
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
ngura badu dali mari-dulu
camp water food plenty
Of beauty rich and rare;
dyara marama guwing
red shine sun
In history’s page, let every stage
barani yagu barabugu
yesterday today tomorrow
Advance Australia Fair.
yan-ma-nyi Australia-gal
go will we-all Australia-people
In joyful strains then let us sing,
budyari baraya-ba-nyi
good sing will we-all
Advance Australia Fair.
yan-ma-nyi Australia-gal
go will we-all Australia-people
Copyright ⓒ Jeremy Macdonald Steele 2016
Tuesday 19 January 2016
This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of Jeremy Macdonald Steele, 107 Rosemead Road, Hornsby NSW 2077: as of 2016.
This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of Jeremy Macdonald Steele, 107 Rosemead Road, Hornsby NSW 2077: as of 2016.
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 rather 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 translation follows, including the sources used for the Sydney language words in it.
Line 1 baraya-ba-nyi Australia-gal
Australians all let us rejoice
baraya-ba-nyi
baraya is ‘to sing’ as can be seen from Fig. 3.
The third row in the table shows it suffixed with a past tense marker, and a bound pronoun: ‘thee’ (normally -nya).
Fig. 3 baraya: sing
In the anthem the future tense marker -ba is used, together with the bound pronoun for ‘we-all’.
Australia-gal
There was no known word for Australia so the English word is used. Suffixed to it is -gal, denoting a group of people, as in:
Fig. 4 The -gal: the ‘people’ suffix
Line 2 ngyila gurung gurigarang
For we are young and free
ngyila
The nominative or subject pronouns ‘I’ and ‘thou’, and their accusative counterparts ‘me’ and ‘thee’ are well known in both free and bound forms:
Fig. 5 Table of some singular pronouns
The archaic ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ usage is adopted to avoid of the ambiguity in modern English between singular and plural ‘you’.
As most of the recorded conversational situations in the early days of the European upheaval were of the you-me type, where one person was talking to another, it seems that most of the other pronouns did not get to be recorded. In particular you plural in both its forms of ‘you-two’ and ‘you-all’ seem totally missing, or are possibly there but never identified as such. Some of the other pronouns in the Sydney Language are uncertain, with lingering doubt between the we/us and the they/them forms. This leads to the matter of ngyila.
Fig. 6 The principal ngyila records
Despite Your Amateur Researcher’s own earlier interpretations in the yellow column, it seems that ngyila might have been ‘we’ rather than ‘they’. But let you dear reader, be the arbiter in resolving this dilemma. In Fig. 6 the top and bottom entries are the most clearly stated. Today, YAR favours the first of these, and is taking ngyila to mean ‘we-all’, with the ngyilu form meaning ‘we-all alone’, or ‘just us three’.
Next, in Aboriginal languages, there is the question of duality or plurality, a sophistication lacking in English. All except the first of the translations in the yellow column in the table opt for the dual ‘they-two’. This is largely because of the third entry there, about a man and his wife—hence the idea of just two people rather than more.
The last two examples given, manila and yanila, are related and can be considered together. But whether or not we are dealing with two or more here, is the meaning we or they?
Each of the lines in Fig. 6 represents a situation where something was happening. After the first example, all four situations can be read differently from the English translations provided. So, example by example, instead of the ‘they’ forms we might view the circumstances in terms of ‘we’, thus:
—come on, let’s play, let’s all of us (i.e. we-all) play;
—he says, my wife and I, this is what we do, we-two;
—‘Manila!’, shouts Anganángan (actually ngana-ngana, but that is another matter), we’ve caught one! That is, we-two, or we-all, have caught a fish;
—‘Yanila’, ‘we’re going’, might well have been what was said that Dawes heard. Dawes on seeing the people departing might have confirmed the moment to himself as ‘They’re going’, and hence his translation for the word.
But back to the Anthem. Line 2 begins ngyila: it means ‘we-all’, if you accept this reasoning.
The next two words in the line are not ‘young’ and ‘free’, for which there are no Sydney Languages records (and especially not for the abstract concept ‘free’):
Fig. 7 gurung child, guri-garang glad
‘Child’ can reasonably stand for ‘young’; and if you are free, you might well be ‘happy’, ‘glad’ or ‘not angry’. It is a pity there is nothing to back up Dawes on gurigarang meaning ‘glad’. There are words for ‘anger’ that are faintly similar: gulara, wuru and yura, but that is all. But who is to question Dawes at this stage: he was there; he heard it; he wrote it down.
Line 3: bimal yaragal; ganu burug
We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil
The sources for Line 3 are:
Fig. 8 earth yellow; full belly
The words in Fig. 8 have been chosen to represent the concepts ‘We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil’. As ‘wealth’ and ‘toil’ are abstract nouns for which no equivalents were recorded, perhaps it is reasonable to evoke a ‘full belly’ to convey the idea of being satisfied with one’s circumstances. If you should think it odd that quite dissimilar words should be used for ‘replete’, the answer might be that ganu perhaps implied ‘satisfied’ or even ‘vegetable food’; and that burug might be a mis-recording of barang meaning ‘belly’.
Line 4: ngura gari-garang-arayi
Our home is girt by sea
Home: A very useful word is ngura, for ‘place’, ‘country’, ‘camp’, and consequently ‘home’.
Having: The lampooned phrase ‘girt by sea’ can be considered as ‘having sea’, or ‘having sea around’. Concepts of ‘having’, and its contrasting ‘lacking’, are ubiquitous in Australian Aboriginal languages. However, although the First Fleeters and those afterwards must have heard it all the time, the word for ‘having’ was never identified for the Sydney Language. They heard the ‘lacking’ form often enough, -buni, and even realised it was sometimes rendered as -muni. However, in Wiradhuri, across the mountains and in other inland NSW languages, the word for ‘having’ is widely attested, as -arayi. YAR, without authority, is suggesting using this suffix for the ‘having’ function. The following table presents some support for this leap:
sea-having: Thus sea-having is proposed as ……-arayi. But what is the word for ‘……’: sea? This is another Sydney Language dilemma. The word for ‘sea’ was not badu, which was used for ‘drinking water’. For ‘ocean’, some Aboriginal informants offered a word, biriwal, which might have meant ‘distant’, or even ‘huge’, both of which ideas may reasonably be associated with oceans. But in Sydney the word that repeatedly cropped up for ‘sea’ was garigarang:
Fig. 10 gara…: sea, deep / long / tall
The examples in Fig. 10 are persuasive that garigarang did mean ‘sea’. The fact that the word is uncannily similar to gurigarang ‘glad’ (or ‘not angry’) featured in Line 2 above we will have to accept as a coincidence.
The last two examples in Fig. 10 seem to indicate that the sea was perceived as being ‘deep’, and was linked to drowning:
Fig. 11 gura: drown, in deep water
Line 5 ngura badu dali mari-dulu
Our land abounds in nature’s gifts
In the Line 5 translation, ngura ‘camp’ (met in the previous line) is used for ‘our land’; and badu ‘drinking water’ and duli/dali ‘food’ are offered as equivalent to ‘nature’s gifts’. Likewise mari-dulu ‘plenty’ is suggested as a reasonable translation of ‘abounds’. These are featured in the following table of sources:
Fig. 12 Sources for words occurring in Line 5
Line 6 dyara marama guwing
Of beauty rich and rare
Words recorded by Dawes for a sunset are proposed for the Anthem line about ‘beauty rich and rare’:
Fig. 13
Line 7 barani yagu baribugu
In history’s page, let every stage
Needless to say, they are no records for either ‘history’s page’ of ‘letting every stage’. So what is suggested are the following to indicate a time sequence:
Fig. 14 Words for yesterday, today and tomorrow
‘Now’ or ‘today’ were recorded as both yagu and yaguna, with yagu being perhaps the commoner. -na was probably a suffix of unresolved significance.
Line 8 yan-ma-nyi Australia-gal
Advance Australia Fair.
No words are to be found in the records for such a concept as ‘advance Australia fair’, so for the Anthem translation it is proposed to use instead something like: ‘Australians, let’s get going!’ The Australians part, Australia-gal for ‘people of Australia’, was dealt with under Line 1 above.
In Line 2 Fig. 6 above, yan was seen as the verb ‘to go’. When conjugated in the future tense we have:
Fig. 15 We will go
First Fleeter David Collins, in this Fig. 15 example, records the ‘we-all’ bound pronoun as -nya. However, the more reliable Dawes obtained it precisely as -nyi.
Line 9 budyari baraya-ba-nyi
In joyful strains then let us sing
Once again, there nothing in the records for ‘joyful strains’, so an alternative idea must be proposed for this line. YAR has offered ‘good/well we-all will sing’, or idiomatically ‘let’s all sing well’. The verb ‘to sing’ was met in the explanation for Line 1, so the only new word here is ‘good’. There are about 40 recordings of this word, from which collection the following is offered:
Fig. 16 budyari: ‘good’
Line 10 yan-ma-nyi Australia-gal
Advance Australia Fair
This last line is a repeat of Line 8.
Now the challenge is to sing the words, to match the rhythm of the English.
Fig. 3 baraya: sing
Fig. 4 The -gal: the ‘people’ suffix
Fig. 5 Table of some singular pronouns
Fig. 6 The principal ngyila records
Fig. 7 gurung child, guri-garang glad
Fig. 8 earth yellow; full belly
Fig. 9 -arayi / -iriyi: possibly indicating the proprietive suffix ‘having’
Fig. 10 gara…: sea, deep / long / tall
Fig. 11 gura: drown, in deep water
Fig. 12 Sources for words occurring in Line 5
Fig. 13
Fig. 14 Words for yesterday, today and tomorrow
Fig. 15 We will go
Fig. 16 budyari: ‘good’