Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/231

Rh pitata, 'to knock, pelt, as rain,' pitapitata, 'to knock;' wiiti, 'to laugh, rejoice' as in our own 'Turnament of Tottenham' : —

'"We te he!" quoth Tyb, and lugh, "Ye er a dughty man!"'

The so-called Chinook Jargon of British Columbia is a language crowded with imitative words, sometimes adopted from the native Indian languages, sometimes made on the spot by the combined efforts of the white man and the Indian to make one another understand. Samples of its quality are hóh-hoh, 'to cough,' kó-ko, 'to knock,' kwa-lal-kwa-lal, 'to gallop,' muck-a-muck, 'to eat,' chak-chak, 'the bald eagle' (from its scream), mamook tsish (make tsish), 'to sharpen on the grindstone.' It has been remarked by Prof. Max Müller that the peculiar sound made in blowing out a candle is not a favourite in civilized languages, but it seems to be recognized here, for no doubt it is what the compiler of the vocabulary is doing his best to write down when he gives mamook poh (make poh) as the Chinook expression for 'to blow out or extinguish as a candle.' This jargon is in great measure of new growth within the last seventy or eighty years, but its imitative words do not differ in nature from those of the more ordinary and old-established languages of the world. Thus among Brazilian tribes there appear Tupi cororóng, cururuc, 'to snore' (compare Coptic kherkher, Quichua ccorcuni (ccor)), whence it appears that an imitation of a snore may perhaps serve the Carajas Indians to express 'to sleep' as arourou-cré, as well as the related idea of 'night,' roou. Again Pimenteira ebaung, 'to bruise, beat,' compares with Yoruba gba, 'to slap,' gbã (gbang) 'to sound loudly, to bang,'  and so forth. Among African languages, the Zulu seems particularly rich in imitative words. Thus bibiza, 'to dribble like children, drivel in speaking' (compare English bib); babala, 'the larger bush-antelope' (from the baa of the female); boba, 'to babble, chatter, be noisy,' bobi, 'a babbler;' boboni, 'a throstle' (cries bo! bo!