Page:An Australian language as spoken by the Awabakal.djvu/34

 XXIV IXTKODTJCTION.

assume various forms ; thus, />, h, m may interchansje, and may easily become/, ivh, v, xc. There can be no doubt, for instance, that the Latin pater, the German vater, aud the English father are the same word ; there ^;=/=v; and in one district in Scotland the people always say fat for what and far for where ; so also the Maori whatu is the Samoau f atu ; that is f:=ivh ; h and m also are interchangeable, in Oriental languages especially, for m is only the sound of the letter b modified by the emission of a breathing through the nose ; m is therefore re- garded as a h nasalized. I note also that the words under con- sideration all begin with the cognate sound of m, b, or w, except yalla; and this example 1 think must have been at onetime walla, that is, uala, of which the u has obtained the sound of ^ (y); or wa-la may come from the same root as wa-kul, the difference lying only in the termination. The other vowels of root word are o, u, e, i, ai, all of which in Australian are modi- fications of the original sound «.

Having now discovered the root-germ from which our Sydney friend Avakul proceeded, and having noted the various guises which he has assumed in these colonies, we must next ask where he came from, and see if he has any kinsmen in other lands ; for, when by searching we find that out, we may perhaps be justified in saying that the Australians brought the root-word with them from those lands. Before setting out on this quest, I observe that when a number of men are arranged in a row, he who is number one is (1) 'before' all the others, and 'in front' of them ; he is thereby (2) 'first or foremost'; he has (3) the 'pre-eminence' in honour or authority, and (4) he may be regarded as the ' begin- ning or origin' of all the others.* We may therefore reasonably expect that words for 'one' will be akin to other words, bearing some one or other of these four meanings. I have already shown that the Kamalarai numeral pir, 'one,' is related to Aryan pre- positions meaning 'before,' and to the Maori word ariki (Samoan ali'i), 'a chief,' as one having authority and eminencet ; I shall now show that the kindred of wakul have the other meanings as well. And, first, I note that the word bokol is used for 'one' in the island of Santo, one of the New Hebrides. Bokol is so like wogul, the Port Jackson word, that I cannot doubt their identity; and yet it is impossible to suppose that the one word can be borrowed from the other. The islanders of Santo can never have had any intercourse with the blacks of Sydney ; nor, if they had in any past time, can we believe that either language was so


 * Cf. the H eh. .Ihadh, kedam, rosh, aftl or yaal, for these meanings.

t The Insular-Keltic words for 'chief,' 'principal,' are prionih, ard, araid; and roimh is 'before.' It is evident that these are only cor- ruptions of the root pri, pro, prae, pra, 'hefore.' In Ku, a Dravidian dialect, 'one' or 'first' is ra (rf. Sk. pra) and in Duke of York Island (New Britain Group), 'one' is ra, re.

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