Simpson - 1996 - Early Language Contact Varieties in South Australia

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Early language contact

varieties in South Australia
a
Jane Simpson
a
Linguistics Sydney University , NSW, 2006,
AUSTRALIA E-mail:
Published online: 14 Aug 2008.
To cite this article: Jane Simpson (1996) Early language contact varieties in
South Australia , Australian Journal of Linguistics, 16:2, 169-207
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© Australian Journal of Linguistics 16 (1996), 169-207. Printed in Australia
EARLY LANGUAGE CONTACT VARIETIES IN SOUTH

AUSTRALIA*
Jane Simpson
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses contact languages used in the colony of South Australia
up until about 1850. The jargon English probably derived in the first place
from South Seas Jargon and the pidgin English developing in Tasmania and
New South Wales (NSW). In the second place it would have been influenced
by the colonists' ideas of how to talk to foreigners (which were in turn
influenced by pidgin Englishes and South Seas Jargon). The jargon Kaurna
is mostly broken Kaurna, perhaps influenced by English foreigner talk, but
there is some suggestion of conventions of Kaurna 'foreigner-talk'. Neither
the jargon Kaurna nor the Kaurna language itself lasted very long after the
invasion, due to the death of many of the speakers, the movement of other
groups into the country, and the impact of English and the culture of
monolingualism.
1. INTRODUCTION
The official invasion of the Kaurna country in southern South Australia (S A)
began with the arrival of the colonists in 1836. However, unofficially,
whaling boats and sealing boats had been visiting Kaurna country since at
least 1806, and had established a base on Kangaroo Island from which they
sometimes went to the mainland. The owners of the land and the invaders
(the seafarers and, later, the colonists) needed to talk with each other. Early
records mostly show a jargon English with features of foreigner talk, NSW
Pidgin and South Seas Jargon. However, there are some records which
suggest the existence of a jargon Kaurna.
* I thank Rob Amery, Philip Clarke, Tom Gara and Peter Mühlhäusler for providing
material used here; Barbara Rennie for permission to quote from Andrews' letter;
David Nash, Luise Hercus and Harold Koch for discussion of the ideas; and Rob
Amery, Tom Gara and Jeff Siegel for very helpful comments. Earlier versions of
this paper were presented at the Australian Frontiers Conference, Longreach 1995,
and the University of Sydney Department of Linguistics seminar.
169
JANE SIMPSON
2. THE LANGUAGE SITUATION BEFORE THE INVASION

At the start of the colonists' invasion in 1836 it appears that the people
inhabiting the Adelaide Plains and Fleurieu Peninsula, probably as far south
as Cape Jervis, spoke a language now called Kaurna.1 This language was the
southernmost member of the ThuRa-YuRa family which included its northern
neighbours, Ngadjuri, Nukunu and Narrunga. Linguistically this family is
quite distinct from the other neighbours of Kaurna, and socially the groups
were divided by initiation practices. To the south-east were Ngarrindjeri2
languages, starting with Raminjeri at Encounter Bay (Ramong). To the east

were Peramangk (about which too little is known to classify it) and
Ngaiawang (spoken along the Murray, and more closely related to
Ngarrindjeri languages than to Kaurna).3
Some, perhaps many, of the Kaurna spoke several languages, as
references to Aborigines who knew several languages indicate.4 Geography
also played a part in facilitating multilingualism:
Those from the southern coast and Rapid Bay serve as a
connecting link between the natives of Adelaide and those of
the Murray River, as they speak both languages (Moorhouse
1839:321).
1
As McDonald (1977) and Clarke (1991) note, the name Kaurna and its variants
Coorna, Koornawarra (Tindale 1974), and Kona, Korna (Berndt and Berndt 1993),
look like the Raminjeri word korne 'man' and its plural kornar 'men' (Meyer 1843).
However, Tindale (1974:133) wrote that in 1931 Ivaritji, Mrs Amelia Taylor, (who
he said was the last speaker), 'checked and approved' the name 'Kaurna' for her
people. Hemming 1990 discusses the use of this name by descendants of the people,
(often pronounced by them as [ga:n ]), and so I use the name 'Kaurna' here, while
recognising the uncertainty as to its original referents.
2
I use 'Ngarrindjeri', rather than 'Narrinyeri', following current community use.
3
We do not know how the distribution of language groups was affected by the deaths
of many people from the smallpox plague that came from the east ahead of the
invasion and from other diseases introduced by sailors. The location of the Kaurna
described in early records, and in Tindale (1974) (which was based on those records
and on discussions with Ivaritji, probably the last fluent speaker of Kaurna) is much
further south than the location given in Berndt and Berndt (1993) (which was based
on the opinions of Ngarrindjeri and Ngadjuri people in the 1940s). This difference
probably reflects the fact that more Ngarrindjeri people survived the invasion.
4 Schürmann (n.d.) mentions a woman staying with the Encounter Bay people who
spoke the Adelaide language (26/7/1839), a man staying among the Marimeyunna
who spoke a different language, Pitta (19/12/39), and he mentions learning a
language (probably Raminjeri) from Tammuruwe Nankanere, who was living in the
Adelaide Plains, and who was then taken by the police to act as an interpreter with
the Murray River people (who spoke a different language) (9/11/39). Tammuruwe
was probably Encounter Bay Bob, a man who had dealings with the Kangaroo
Islanders (Cumpston 1970:179), and who acted as an important cultural broker in the
early days of the colony.
170
EARLY LANGUAGE CONTACT VARIETIES IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
While we have no direct evidence bearing on Aborigines' attitudes towards

multilingualism in the Adelaide Plains, there is some circumstantial evidence.
Clamor Schiirmann, a German missionary who arrived in Adelaide in 1838
and worked first with Kaurna people and then with Barngarla5 people at Port
Lincoln, makes some general remarks, which probably apply to both Kaurna
and Barngarla people. He writes:
The principal mark of distinction between the tribes, is difference
of language or dialect; where the tribes intermix greatly, no
inconvenience is experienced on this account, as every person

understands, in addition to his own dialect, that of the
neighbouring tribe: the consequence is that two persons
commonly converse in two languages, just as an Englishman and
a German would hold a conversation, each person speaking his
own language, but understanding that of the other as well as his
own. This peculiarity will often occur in one family through
intermarriage, neither party ever thinking of changing his or her
dialect for that of the other. Children do not always adopt the
language of the mother, but that of the tribe among whom they
live. (Schumann 1846:27)
It is probable that, as in other parts of Australia, land was associated with
language. Of his experience in Adelaide Schiirmann writes:
When these strangers [people from Murray River and Encounter
Bay] come here they immediately take on the local dialect... (S55
Lutheran Archives, after letter dated 8/2/1839)
This suggests something common elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia, the
practice of speaking in the country the language belonging to the country.
This multilingualism contrasts sharply with the concept of a borderless
language of government brought with them by the Europeans.
3. THE INVASION
For the inhabitants of southern South Australia, the invasion had two stages.
The first stage was the arrival of ships, following the discovery of the
Fleurieu Peninsula and Gulf St. Vincent by Nicolas Baudin and Matthew
Flinders in 1802. The second stage was the official invasion by the colonists
in 1836.
In the first stage, the contact was limited. Ships sailed along the southern
coast from Sydney or New Zealand, or from Hobart Town or Launceston,
through Bass Strait, and on to Perth. They were trading ships, and part of the
trade was seal skins. Fur seals and sea-lions were found in the islands off the
southern coast, from Bass Strait to Kangaroo Island to the Recherche
5
I use 'Barngarla', rather than 'Parnkalla', following current community use.
171
JANE SIMPSON
Archipelago, and seal leather and oil were in high demand in Sydney.
Catching seals, skinning them and curing their skins was time-consuming,
and resulted in gangs of sealers being left on islands with provisions, to be
picked up by the boat on a return trip as much as a year later. Kangaroo
Island, south of the Fleurieu Peninsula, became an important base for sealers
as early as 1806. It was well placed, not inhabited by Aborigines, and had a
good supply of salt, an essential ingredient in curing skins. Over the next 30
years more than 500 people visited Kangaroo Island (Cumpston 1970).
Kangaroo Island is neither well-watered nor very fertile. The sealers seem
to have killed out much of the game. To make themselves more comfortable
(Plomley 1966, Clarke 1994c, 1995), some of the sealers persuaded or
abducted Aboriginal women and occasionally men to live and travel with
them, help them find food, and to catch wallabies for them, whose skins they
sold. These Aboriginal people came from various places, including
Tasmania,6 Rivoli Bay (Mattingley and Hampton 1988:145) and the Fleurieu
Peninsula (Amery 1994, 1996; Clarke 1995).
From about 1807 onwards sealers appear to have stayed on Kangaroo
Island, making forays to the mainland. They made trips, sometimes taking
Aboriginal women and men (Gaimard 1833, Clarke 1994a,c, 1995, Amery
1994, to appear) on voyages as far as Perth, Tasmania and New Zealand.7
By 1817 there were at least thirteen non-Aborigines living there (Hammond,
cited in Nunn 1989). By 1836 there was a small permanent population
consisting of at least 16 Aborigines and six non-Aborigines. In 1844,
Inspector Tolmer said that there were 12 Aborigines on Kangaroo Island, and
some of them had lived there more than 17 years. One sealer was said to have
been there 27 years, and another 20 years. There were three children.
(Tolmer, Register* 25/9/1844, cited in Cumpston 1970:176).
Clarke (1994c, 1995) describes the small community of Islanders,
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, working together and raising children, on
Kangaroo Island over many years. They clearly communicated with each
other, 9 but unfortunately there do not seem to be any contemporary
6 George Robinson (Plomley 1966:335-6), listed in 1831 fourteen Aboriginal women

living on Kangaroo Island, from Tasmania, Cape Portland, Bruny Island, George
River, and Launceston.
7 An Aboriginal woman and her child, who had been on Kangaroo Island, were rescued
from New Zealand by the Samuel in 1824.(Cumpston 1970:66).
8 I shall use Register as a shorthand for the name of the newspaper, South Australian
Gazette and Colonial Register, later, The South Australian Register.
9 There is a reference to an Islander having difficulty speaking English. (Cumpston
(1970:140) quoting Captain Morgan, of the Duke of York, log 2 August 1836 about
a non-Aboriginal Islander). But whether this is because he was speaking another
language, or not speaking at all, we do not know.
172
transcriptions of the language(s).10 Later records suggest that one family

used a Tasmanian language:
The children of the Englishman, Nat Thomas [a sealer JHS], and
his Tasmanian wife Betty, only talked to their mother in the
Tasmanian language. Even in later life, the two daughters
preferred to talk to each other in this way. (Clarke 1995:15)
An early record, Robert M. Davis's 1831 report on the death of Captain
Collet Barker, shows that at least one woman knew some English and that
one sealer knew something of an Aboriginal language.

A female of the tribe (named Sally) spoke English tolerably well,
and was recognised as having been at King George's Sound in a
sealing vessel, about three years ago. (cited in Cumpston
1970:128)
He also writes about the sealer George Bates. 1 '
[...] I have much satisfaction in stating that G. Bates, from the
knowledge he possessed of the language and manners of the
natives, proved of essential service in obtaining the above
information, (cited in Cumpston 1970:128)
Very soon after the official colonisation, there are references to women
knowing English from having lived with sealers (Stephens 1839:78, Adams
1902:7). Mary Thomas, an early colonist, met an Aboriginal woman12 (who
may have been that same 'Sally') on Kangaroo Island in 1836.
what most surprised us was her musical voice, and the pleasing
intonation with which she spoke the English language, for what
she said she uttered with a proper accent and almost with fluency.
(3/11/1836, quoted in Kwan 1987:21)
On the arrival of the colonists, both the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal
Islanders acted as interpreters and guides (Light 1984, Adams 1902:7);
sealers were said to be responsible for transmitting some indigenous place-
10 Cawthorne (1986) has a highly coloured fictional account of life on Kangaroo Island
in which Aborigines speak a jargon English. But it was written more than ten years
after the official settlement, and cannot be relied on.
11 This same man claimed to have taken part in an Aboriginal ceremony on Fleurieu
Peninsula, and to have lived with Aboriginal people there (Adelaide Advertiser
27/12/1886, quoted in Cumpston 1970:129). The account is a little confused and
suggests a rationalisation of his behaviour in abducting Aborigines from Fleurieu
Peninsula to Kangaroo Island.
12 Thomas describes her as the 'Princess Con', daughter of 'King Con'. 'Condoy' from
Encounter Bay was said to be the father of 'Sally' who had been at King George's
Sound (Davis 1831, cited in Cumpston 1970:128), and an old man 'Condoy'
friendly with the sealers was travelling with a young girl 'Sal' (Bates 1886 cited in
Cumpston 1970:129). This suggests that 'Princess Con' may have been 'Sally'. See
Amery (to appear). However, as Clarke (1995) notes, 'Sally' or 'Sail' was a name
given to several women who lived with sealers on Kangaroo Island.
173
JANE SIMPSON
names on Fleurieu Peninsula (Stephens 1839, Morphett 1836, cited in Clarke

1994a:20). In 1837 one of the non-Aboriginal Islanders, William Cooper,
acted as an interpreter for Aborigines bearing witness against two Europeans,
and was described as 'an Englishman, who has lived amongst them many
years, and possesses great influence over them' (Stephens 1839:73).
In a comparable situation on Pitcairn Island, the Tahitians and Bounty
mutineers seem to have used a jargon English, rather than a jargon Tahitian,
even though there were more Tahitians than mutineers (Ross et al. 1964). In
the somewhat similar situation on Kangaroo Island, the Aborigines were also
more likely to have learned the sealers' language, and not the reverse, first,
because the Aborigines came from different parts of Australia with mutually
unintelligible languages, and second, because Kangaroo Island was not
inhabited by Aborigines when the sealers first arrived, and thus the non-
Aboriginal Islanders held the dominant position. However, the fact that the
sealers made visits to the mainland may have encouraged some of the sealers
to learn something of an Aboriginal language.13
Assuming that the Aborigines and the sealers spoke versions of each
other's languages, with English most likely being the commoner, the contact
languages were likely to be jargons, 14 rather than fluently mastered
languages. Presumably the Aborigines spoke broken English and 'foreigner
talk' versions of their own languages, while the sealers spoke 'foreigner talk'
English, and perhaps broken Kaurna or Tasmanian languages.
However, after 30 years, we can speculate that at least one of the contact
languages may have become a pidgin, and may even have been the first
language for the children of the Aboriginal women on Kangaroo Island.
While we lack evidence about the jargon Aboriginal languages, we do
have some information on the likely sources for the developing conventions
of the jargon English. The first source is the conventions of 'foreigner talk
English' 15 (Ferguson 1975) held first by the sealers and whalers, and later by
the colonists (who may also have been influenced by South Seas Jargon and
varieties of pidgin English, since they had spent months on ships emigrating
to Australia, and since some of the observers, such as William Cawthorne,
had grown up in other colonies, like South Africa). The other sources are the
people with whom the Kangaroo Islanders had contact, namely people from
New South Wales, sailors who had travelled in the Pacific, people from
13 See Dench (to appear) for the contact language of castaways on the northwest coast
of Australia in 1875.
14
I use Clark's (1983) definition of a jargon:
'let us say that a language is broken if it is spoken with systematic and serious gaps
or errors in grammar and lexicon. A jargon is an asymmetric system consisting of
broken language on the one hand and foreigner talk on the other (...)'.
15 This is only true if, like Ferguson, we suppose that these conventions are fairly
stable, and have not changed much in the last two centuries.
174
Tasmania and people from the Swan River and King George's Sound
colonies in Western Australia.
The sealing boats came from both New South Wales and America
(Cumpston 1970, Nunn 1989). A sample crew was that of the Endeavour,
which visited Kangaroo Island in 1817, which included '6 Otaheitians,
2 Sydney blacks' (Cumpston 1970).16 The sealers themselves had long stays
in the Bass Strait islands, where a jargon had developed,17 as well as visits to
the Western Australian colonies from which they sometimes took Aboriginal
women (Amery to appear).

If we assume, following Muhlhausler (1979, 1986), Clark (1983),
Keesing (1988) and Crowley (1990, 1993b) the existence of a South Seas
Jargon (or Pacific Jargon English), spoken on the early sealing and whaling
crews, we must assume from the composition of the crews and the visits they
would have made to Sydney that it was influenced by NSW Pidgin (see
Baker 1987, 1993).
By the time Adelaide was officially established, NSW had been colonised
for nearly fifty years, time enough for Aborigines to grow up speaking pidgin
English or even a Creole based on the initial jargon. The presence of Sydney
Aborigines in the crews and sealing gangs and intermarriage may have
increased the spread of the pidgin which Troy (1990, 1994) has shown was
developing in New South Wales. Terms such as jump up 'become' tumble
down 'die', black money 'copper coins', white money 'silver coins', white
fellow, black fellow are found in both NSW pidgin and early English jargon
in SA. More conclusive evidence of influence from NSW pidgin would be
16 From Cumpston (1970) we can see the variety of language backgrounds of crews of
ships visiting Kangaroo Island:
1812 the Campbell Macquarie : 12 Europeans and '30 lascars' (a term for
sailors from the East Indies)
1812 the Fly included '2 Otaheitians'
1823 the Alligator (Dutch schooner), from Batavia, with David Burnham, an
American master of a sealing gang, who had been in New Zealand, and a crew
which included a Dutchman, a Norwegian and a Swede.
1824 the Perseverance, headed for Kangaroo Island with 21 men (15 English
surnames, Toughodee, Jackable (lac Kable), Jackyan (Jac Ryan), Tomcaddee,
New Zealanders, Ranoe, Fiati, Otaheitans')
17 See Crowley 1993a. The influence of different groups is shown in the following
quotation supplied by Rob Amery.
'The lingua franca before alluded to as spoken on Flinders Island, is a mixture of
English, words from the different tribes, and a number of words from the New
Holland tribes, and even from other countries; these last have been introduced by the
women, aborigines of Van Diemen's Land, who have lived for many years with
sealers, and been with them to the continent; even negro words have been introduced.
From these circumstances it may be perceived how difficult it would be to separate
their absolutely primitive language from that now in use.' (Davies 1846).
175
JANE SIMPSON
the use of words from NSW Aboriginal languages. In early South Australian
records I have found only a few words from Aboriginal languages that Troy
records, 18 (although my survey is small). They are all words that have
become part of common Australian usage, corroboree,^ wombat, waddie.
The extensive contacts the Kangaroo Islanders had with Tasmania make
the contact languages (for a description of which, see Crowley 1993a) used
by Aborigines and colonists in Tasmania another likely source. A small piece
of evidence for this is the strong tendency for the colonists to use the word
lubra to refer to an Aboriginal woman. Lubra is a word that became

established in Tasmanian20 and then in common Australian usage.21 In New
'" Troy (1990) lists a number of words used in NSW contact languages which are
derived from local Aboriginal languages bail 'no, not'; boorak 'no'; budgeree 'good,
lucky'; cabou 'a great deal'; coolar 'anger'; gunya 'Aboriginal house'; marnameek
'very good'; megalet 'see'; mundoey 'feet'; murray 'very'; nyook 'knife'; owrangey
'bit, small quantity'. I have not found these words in records of early South
Australian contacts. We cannot read too much into the absence, since the materials
are not large. However, we can speculate that these words were recognised as local
Aboriginal words and thus as dispensable words, not salient parts of NSW jargon or
NSW pidgin. Had the record shown words specific to NSW jargon or pidgin which
had not been taken into common Australian usage, this would have been good
evidence for the direct influence of NSW jargon or pidgin.
19 Woodforde (1836-7), however, attributes this word to the Aborigines themselves:
'have just returned from our natives' fire where they entertained us with their native
dance called by them 'corroborey"...' Thanks to Tom Gara for finding this. The
Kaurna had other words for 'corroboree'.
20 The jargon English used here was certainly influenced by NSW pidgin, as not only
colonists but also Aborigines from New South Wales went to Tasmania. Crowley
(1993a:63) quotes a speech by Mosquito, a New South Wales Aboriginal living in
Tasmania, to illustrate features of Pidgin English. Interestingly, Mosquito uses gin
to refer to his wife (as was common in NSW Pidgin), not lubra.
21
While the origin of the word lubra is not entirely certain, Dixon, Ramson and
Thomas (1990) suggest that it is most likely Tasmanian in origin, and give as the
earliest citation G.A. Robinson quoting a Tasmanian Aboriginal man using the term
in 1829. A Tasmanian origin is supported by the fact that the earliest citations of
lubra in the Australian National Dictionary come from Tasmania, South Australia,
and Victoria (the latter two places both getting underway by 1836). Troy (1994)
shows that it was common in nineteenth century Victorian Aboriginal English,
while the word is apparently not recorded in NSW before the 1840s (Troy 1990,
1994). Whether the word itself comes from a Tasmanian language is not known - it
is not given in Plomley 1976, although a possibly related word lo.bud.den.day does
appear, for 'daughter'. Jorgensen (1991:66), writing of the period before 1842, says
'Lubra, meaning woman, is adopted by all tribes of Van Diemen's Land, and is
probably a foreign importation, as is corrobory (merry making) which is of Sydney
origin.'
Lubra is given by Robinson (29/12/1836) for 'woman' in the language of the 'Port
Phillip Aborigines' (Plomley 1987:671), but apparently not confirmed in other
sources. It is recorded in word-lists from Victoria (Brough Smyth 1876, Troy 1994).
However, the lateness of these citations precludes them from being definitive
evidence for a Victorian language being the source of the word lubra. Of Troy
(1994)'s seven distinctive features of Port Phillip Aboriginal English I have only
176
South Wales, the most common word used was gin (from a local Aboriginal
language) but I have only rarely found this used in early records of South
Australia. 2 2 Another possible example (pointed out to me by Peter
Miihlhausler) is the word crack-a-back for 'dead' which also occurs in
reports of speech in Tasmania.23
More work needs to be done on early contact languages in Western
Australia and Victoria to determine possible influences. The only pointer I
have found so far is Dixon et al. (1990:201)'s suggestion that mia-mia comes
from Nyungar may a. I have not found it in early SA records (the Kaurna
word wurlie being used instead), but it does occur in early Victorian usage
(Troy 1994).24
The conclusion to this section then is that there is no single source for the
conventions of the jargon English in existence before the official
establishment of the colony.
4. THE INVASION (2): OFFICIAL SETTLEMENT

The official settlement of the colony began in 1836. Many Aborigines did not
know any English, as is clear from settlers' descriptions of communicating
by signs (Stephens 1939:79, 81), although some had learned some
English. 2 5 In the first few years of settlement, both Aborigines and
Europeans learned a little of each other's languages.
found lubra in early South Australian contact English. (Big one, while attested, is
not used as a general intensifier).
22
While in early records of South Australia lubra is most often encountered, there are a
few uses of gin. Molineux's eyewitness account of the burial of Mullawirraburka in
the 1840s contains the phrase: 'the 'gins' especially making a fearful noise and
evincing great distress'. But this was published in 1879 (Molineux 1879). Leigh
(1839) uses the word gin at least once, but uses lubra several times, and,
significantly, when quoting an Aboriginal man from the Adelaide Plains. In a word-
list of Kaurna, Stephens (1889) comments that lubra is more common for 'wife'
than omi-cha (a version of the Kaurna word ngammaitya 'woman' in Teichelmann
and Schürmann 1840). This suggests that the Aborigines were using the word lubra
when talking with Europeans. Michael Walsh suggests (p.c.) that the colonists
found lubra easier to pronounce than ngammaitya.
23
Plomley (1976:39-40) gives an example recorded on Flinders Island in 1837 of a
European talking to a Tasmanian: 'You very sick you krakabuka by and bye'.
(Thanks to Rob Amery for finding this reference.) Crowley (1993a:65) also cites
Rae-Ellis 1988:128's quotation of Robinson's report of an Aboriginal, 'Blackman
frightened like to crackenny [die] bust'. This may derive from the southern
Tasmanian crackena 'stand, sit, stop or stay' noted by Jorgensen (1991:62). In
modern south-eastern SA Aboriginal speech the rare use of bu:biela, bu:ela for a
coastal wattle (Clarke 1994b) may reflect Tasmanian influence.
24
miam.miam is given by Robinson (29/12/1836) for 'house' in the language of the
'Port Phillip Aborigines' (Plomley 1987:671).
25
For example, Stephens (1839:78) refers to a boy who by 1837 'had acquired a
smattering of English'.
177
JANE SIMPSON
...I asked some of them their words for the sun, and different
parts of their bodies etc and they were very willing to answer.
While Mr Holland's natives are co-operative we found some of
the others rather terrifying... Their first question always, is 'what
is your name?' They then remark about this among themselves,
often making a joke out of it. (Schumann 14/10/1838)
The women ask your name, which they insist upon your
repeating till they can pronounce it correctly. This done they ask
for money, 'white money', if you give them copper they say 'No
good'.- (Andrews 1839)26
(...) another, writing a few days after the proclamation of the

province,... to Glenelg, where I fell in with a native, a fine-
looking manly fellow, about twenty-five years of age...After an
interchange of signs, I succeeded in making him understand that I
wished to know the names of certain things in his own language;
and at last obtained a few dozen words. The greatest difficulty
arose from his propensity to mimicking, which led him to repeat
every word that I uttered, and the correctness with which he did
this was very surprising. He observed, very curiously, the
cabalistic characters I was making in my notebook...I pointed to •
the ship, and, by signs, proposed that he should go with me on
board. He understood me at once, but drew his hand back as a
sign that he wished to return... (Stephens 1839:79-80)
The blacks soon picked up a little pidgin English, and made
themselves understood by signs and gesticulations. A number of
us youngsters learned some of the native speech, and became
fairly proficient in its use, conversing freely with the natives in
their own tongue. The five children of our family commonly used
it between ourselves for years after. The vocabulary was not very
extensive. For instance in counting there were only words to
indicate one, two, and three, and after that it was all done by
showing their fingers in fives and tens. A little over a hundred of
their words or names would enable one to carry on a fair
conversation... The young natives got on well with the white
children, and picked up English quickly. (Chittleborough 1906)27
In the early days of the colony, well over a dozen people are known to
have learned something of Kaurna. 28 These included two German
missionaries whose charge was to learn the languages: Clamor Schiirmann
26
This letter is quoted with permission from Barbara Rennie.
27
Chittleborough is describing his recollections after arriving in the colony in 1836.
Thanks to Tom Gara for providing this passage.
28
Apart from the captain mentioned above and the Chittleborough children, these
include: the sealers Bates and Cooper, 'James Cronk, the interpreter, and William
Williams, the deputy storekeeper, both great favourites of the natives,' (Register 3
November 1838); the latter published a vocabulary of Kaurna (Williams 1839);
Louis Piesse, who published an addendum to Williams' word-list; three early
Protectors of Aborigines: Captain Bromley, Dr William Wyatt, and Dr Matthew
Moorhouse; William Cawthorne, George French Angas, and the German
missionary, Samuel Klose.
178
and Christian Teichelmann. In 1840 Teichelmann and Schurmann published a

vocabulary and grammar of Kaurna, saying in the preface that they hoped this
would help other Europeans learn the language, so as to be able to talk with
Aborigines. 29 The grammar is clearly written, and the description of the
morphology and syntax of the language accords well with that of other
Australian Aboriginal languages. The word-list is arranged alphabetically
according to the Kaurna words, which would have helped the colonists
understand what they heard. But there is no English to Kaurna word-list,
which would have helped the colonists to try out words themselves.
Many colonists appear to have wanted the Aborigines to learn English,
partly because they were short of labour, and wanted help in tasks like getting
firewood. Hence, Teichelmann and Schurmann's school for Aborigines
attracted much criticism for not starting teaching in English, as Schurmann
wrote to George Fife Angas:
Some persons have blamed us that we did not proceed
immediately to instruct the natives by means of the english
language, but dayly experience corroborates what judgement at
first led us to think, namely that it is altogether impracticable, at
least as yet, to instruct the natives by means of the english
language, especially on religious and moral subjects. (Letter
- 12/6/1839)
There may have been continuing influence from NSW Pidgin. Schurmann
writes of meeting an Aboriginal from New South Wales in the camp of an
important Adelaide Plains man, Mullawirraburka:
In the afternoon I went with Teich. to Mullawirraburka, who also
received a visit from a New South Wales native. We went back
with both of them, asking several questions. He speaks English
but not clearly and was hard to understand. (Schurmann 17 Sept
1839)
The fact that the NSW man's English was hard to understand may indicate
that it was a pidgin or Creole.
In 1840 the Protector of Aborigines, Matthew Moorhouse, wrote:
In Adelaide there are 23 that speak the English language tolerably
well; they can connect words so as to form sentences, according
to the idiom of the language; of this number 16 are children and
seven adults. There are 150 that can utter sentences, but they
know them only as sentences; for instance, whenever they see a
stranger they at once exclaim, 'What namey you?' 'Give me
white money.' They know not whether these expressions are
formed of one or more words; they utter the sounds simply from
hearing others, and these limit the attainments of many in the
English language. (Moorhouse, Report of the Colonization
Commissioners, January 14 1840 p.324)
29
See Simpson (1992).
179
JANE SIMPSON
The low numbers of Aboriginal adults30 speaking English four years after
the settlement is noteworthy, as it suggests that, while many clearly were
communicating with the colonists, the language of communication was not
classified by Moorhouse as English. We do not know whether this was
because they were using their own language, a foreigner-talk version of their
language or broken English.
Even the best speakers did not have a particularly good understanding of
standard English. Thus Schurmann writes about Tammuruwe (who was
probably Encounter Bay Bob, one of the most important cultural brokers of
the early days of the colony, and someone who had had dealings with the
sealers):
Tammuruwe has forgotten almost everything I taught him from
the gospel. He also has difficulties with the English language and
translations into his own tongue. (Schurmann 12 November
1839)
But by 1845 when Mullawirraburka (King John), died, his obituarist wrote:
King John was one of the first natives the settlers of this Province
ever saw, and, by constantly mixing with the whites, he had
acquired a considerable knowledge of the English language and,
by many, was looked upon as a great favourite. (Register January
6 1845, quoted Gara to appear)
He was not exceptional in knowing English. By 1844 Schurmann was
writing:
In the more thickly populated districts around Adelaide, the
colonists have less occasion to learn the language of the
Aborigines, since the latter can speak the English intelligibly.
(Schurmann 1844)
And in the same year Margaret May described an Aboriginal girl who had
been abandoned at Rapid Bay:
She could only speak English, her father was a run-away convict,
her mother I suppose a Sydney native. (5/12/1844, quoted in
Kwan 1987:27).
This short time period for learning English is comparable with Troy
(1992)'s claim that by 1796 Aborigines in the Sydney area had developed a
lingua franca which was a recognisable ancestor of NSW pidgin. Foreigner
talk still existed, of course, as the following extract shows.
In 1841, Richard Penney wrote of his crew of five Encounter Bay Aborigines, some
of whom had worked with the sealers and whalers, 'they can speak and understand the
English language' (Cited Foster 1991a:9). It is quite likely that they learned English
from the sealers. But that Penney should comment on their knowledge of English,
suggests that such knowledge was not then widespread.
180
It was said that some young man once spoke to her in that jargon
which the uncultivated natives are usually spoken to. Whereupon
Maria drew herself up and said. 'Why do you talk to me like that?
I can speak English as well as you can.' (Matthew Hale, quoted
in Mattingley and Hampton 1988:147)
Fifteen years after the settlement features of jargon or pidgin English are
present in an excerpt from some evidence about a murder given by Kudnarto,
an Aboriginal woman who learned to read and write as a child at the school
for Aborigines, and married, legally, a European colonist:

although she expressed herself in the idiom of her tribe, her ideas
were wonderfully clear and distinct. (...) 'he looked plenty cross;
me sure him kill the sergeant. He ask to lie down, but him have
but picaninny sleep, and swear in the night.' (Register, 5/8/1850
p.3, quoted in Kwan 1987:36)
Kudnarto is exactly the kind of person one might have expected to use
standard English, particularly in a formal context such as giving evidence of
murder. But the excerpt is not standard English, and the author comments on
'the idiom of her tribe' - that is, this was taken to be how Aborigines talked.
The Adelaide area jargon English probably had a short lifetime, since
Stow, writing in 1883, asserted that the Aboriginal people who had inhabited
the country from Adelaide to Mount Barker to Burra were all extinct, and that
pidgin English was on the way out.
(...) it is certain that the natives, especially the young ones, do
pick up the language of their conquerors very readily. The habit
of speaking pigeon [sic] English is not so common in the settled
districts now, as in former times, and was always owing to the
whites being possessed with the notion that such a style of lingo
was most suited to aboriginal tastes and comprehension. (Stow
1883:131)
By contrast, however, ignorance of the Aboriginal languages abounded
among Europeans. They lacked knowledge of both the vocabulary and
syntax of Kaurna:
The public do not know instinctively that the verbs are spoken
only in the present tense; that almost all nouns are the same in the
plural and singular numbers, and that there is no pronoun
expressing the third person. (Louis Piesse, letter to the editor of
the Adelaide Guardian, October 18, 1839)31
31
The same idea is repeated in Cawthorne (ca 1845) (Foster 1991b:81):
'Their Verbs are spoken in the present tense only and nearly all nouns are the
same in the singular and plural, with no pronoun to express the third
person'.
While Cawthorne often includes material from other sources without attribution, he
did make a start on learning the language, and so the fact that he includes this
suggests he agrees with the opinion.
181
JANE SIMPSON
...they have some unconnected notion of spirits, but have no

words in their language expressive of the qualities - good and
evil. (Leigh 1839:165)
While the statement about the nouns is true, Kaurna has several tenses,
and there is a pronoun representing third person singular, but it is often
cliticised. The claim that verbs have only a present tense is most interesting
because it suggests a similarity between 'foreigner-talk' or jargon Kaurna,
and the jargon English. In what follows I will first discuss the jargon English
and then compare it with the jargon Kaurna.
5. JARGON ENGLISH
A start has been made on the study of the English spoken by Aborigines and
Europeans to each other in the early days of the South Australian colony
(Dineen and Miihlhausler 1996, Foster and Miihlhausler 1996). The sources
are fragmentary. They consist of documentary material produced at the time
(letters, newspaper accounts, travel books, descriptions), as well as fiction
recorded at the time. There are also memoirs written much later describing
early life in the colony. The best sources for the jargon and pidgin of the
Adelaide area are records made at the time of speech attributed to Aboriginal
people, in particular diaries, letters, news reports and transcripts of court
trials. By contrast, data about speech in the Adelaide area culled from
memoirs written later, histories of the colonies, and fiction have a greater risk
of inaccuracy - the writers may be using forms that had become accepted
markers of Aboriginal speech for Europeans, rather than necessarily being
forms which were actually used in the pidgin of the Adelaide area.
That the colonists did have preconceptions about how to speak with the
Adelaide Plains people is borne out by the following quotation from a newly
arrived colonist's letter home:32
(1) I enquired how many wives he had, and he counted, one-

two - three - four - placing his hands as he spoke, on four
women all asleep around him. In a moment one of them sat
up, and I saw she was the same, who had been so ill in the
morning. I asked her how she was. She replied 'better, but
weak' and added 'You see my baby?' (I have not yet heard
them use the word 'pickaninny') showing me at the same
time a little naked creature wrapped in a blanket, and about
the size of a kitten, which I found had been born about two
hours. I asked her to let me take it in my arms, but she
covered it up again saying 'Too much cold'. All the while
32 For ease of reference in the following discussion, I have numbered the quotations
which contain examples of jargon English.
182
the man was looking on with a contented smile, and then he

said to me 'Mine baby too!' (Andrews 1839)
'Piccaninny' is a word found in many pidgins and Creoles, NSW pidgin, and
was a feature of South Seas Jargon (Clark 1983). But, reinforcing Andrews'
observation, in a South Australian newspaper article the word 'piccaninny' is
not used.
In a short time, a band of about 200 of our friendly natives were
seen approaching, accompanied by their lubras and wak-waks
(wives and children) [original italicization] {Register, 3 November

1838)
The contact language word lubra (discussed above) and the Kaurna word
for child wak-wak, a version of wakwakko, are used on a par, suggesting
that they were part of the contact languages used by Aborigines and colonists.
However wak-wak's currency did not last long. 'Piccaninny' is used in many
early sources (Jacob 1837-1838),33 Angas (1847:48, 131), Conigrave, 34
Hawker (1975:12)," Cawthorne (1986). Finally in 1903 John Blacket
published in a newspaper an account of the early history of Adelaide, based
largely on the 1838 article just quoted. But Blacket substitutes 'piccaninny'
for wakwak, presumably because the common Australian pidgin word had
taken over from the Kaurna word, and only a few people would have
remembered wakwak.
(...) About 200 [?] men with their lubras and piccaninnies
attended. (Register, 19 September 1903)
Surprisingly, with the exception of wurley (now also part of common
Australian usage), muntry, yacca, very few words of coastal SA languages
are found in early records of the English variety spoken by Aborigines.
How reliable is the information on jargon English? When the source
records of what the colonists themselves used, they are probably reliable.
But, with the exception of Cawthorne's diaries, most records that I have
found purport to be of what the Aborigines said to the colonists, rather than
the other way around. Ross Clark (1983:10) assumes that similar accounts
'present a truthful, if fragmentary, picture of language use'. He bases this
assumption on the 'coherence of the picture that emerges from a number of
independent accounts'.
This coherence has two possible sources. One is that Clark is right, and
the coherence stems from all these observers accurately recording how people
33
Thanks to Tom Gara for this example.
34
The consequence was, we often had a whole tribe of blacks, with their lubras and
picanninies [sic], camped a few hundred yards below our home in the paddock'. [This
refers to a time in the 1850s on Hindmarsh Island] Reminiscences of Mrs John
Fairfax Conigrave, cited in Jenkin (1979).
3
5 These memoirs described life in the 1840s in South Australia, although written
many years later.
183
JANE SIMPSON
spoke, 36 or, perhaps, if they did not write it down at the time, reconstructing
what they heard. How good the reconstruction is depends on how well the
recorder internalised the grammar of the speaker. The other possibility,
however, is that the coherence in the sources derives from there being already
established conventions of foreigner-talk English. Such conventions would
influence how English speakers talked to Aborigines, and thus in turn how
Aborigines spoke back to the Europeans. Hence it would also influence how
English speakers wrote down speech reportedly by Aborigines, and it would
certainly determine how they reconstructed what they heard.

I shall now illustrate a number of conventional features described by
Ferguson (1975) of American English foreigner talk (the way in which
American university students in the early 1970s said that English speakers
spoke to foreigners with little English). In all cases the illustrations are from
speech by Aborigines reported by English speakers.37
a. Omission of the definite article

(2) [people at Murray crossing, referring to a horse stuck in the river]
no care if big sheepy die (Angas 1847:129)
b. Omission of all forms of the verb BE.

(3) As she was passing I made the observation that she was the
prettiest black woman I had seen. She looked pleased, and turning
her face towards us, said 'Ah, you plenty of gammon, sir'.
(Adams 1902:7)
c. Omission of inflectional affixes on nominals and verbs.

(4) [Aboriginal returns from England] in England horse no good,
bullocky no good, plenty whiff (Wilkinson 1848:348)
(5) Berry well, me sleep, Jackey kill me if he can, but me no let him.
Me lay down here sleep. Me put 'urn waddy so. (Wilkinson
1848:331)
d. Omission of coordinate and subordinate conjunctions.

(6) They have at Adelaide and its vicinity killed many sheep, alleging
in excuse — 'White man kill black man's kangaroo. ~ Black man
kill white man's kangaroo' (Leigh 1840:166)
36
Memory limitations suggest that the longer the text the less likely it is to have been
memorised.
37 Other examples can be found in Dineen and Mühlhäusler (1996) and Foster and
Mühlhäusler (1996). This discussion owes a lot to Jeff Siegel's suggestions. More
examples of early South Australian jargon English can be found in Dineen and
Mühlhäusler (1966).
184
e. Omission of redundant pronouns, especially subject pronouns. (This

actually relates to the variation in use of pronouns discussed below).
(7) 'Want urn tucker' was their continual cry. (Hawker 1975:9)
f. Adding YOU to imperatives

(8) 'You come see lubra' - that is to say, 'You come and see my
wives.' (Leigh 1840: 144-145)
g. Adding tags yes?, OK?, see? no?

Not yet found.
h. Replacing all negative constructions by 'no' preceding item

(9) [on old shelter] No good that one too much plenty fleas; no sleep,
too much bit'um blackfellow (Wilkinson 1848:324)
i. Possessives omitted or replaced by periphrastic constructions.

Possessives seem to appear commonly, with occasional variation. 'What
namey you?' has already been quoted, but compare the following:
(10) If we asked a native his or her name, the usual reply was: 'What
your name?' And on answering they would say: 'That one my
name all the same. Very good your name.' (Sanders n.d.:8-9)
j. Pronouns constitute a problem, and the accusative is somehow to be

expected in this kind of English.
There is in fact much variation in pronouns.38 Him good doctor, — him love
picanini (Leigh 1840:144-145). I get him out (Angas 1847:129), me very
good -• me old man (Angas 1847:135). This variation may stem in part from
the fact that the languages in the Adelaide area have an Ergative-Absolutive
case-marking system in contrast with English's Nominative-Accusative
system. However, it probably also stems from the colonists' belief that
broken English should use me rather than /. An example of this comes from
Clamor Schumann's eyewitness account of a murder (which reports an
Aboriginal using /) and Edward Eyre's retelling of the same murder, after
hearing about it from Schumann (where the same person is said to use me).
(11) [account of murder by soldier] Nummalta came to me with dreadful
wounds and a terrified expression, and saying he was a friend and
not a killer. 'I Kappler [European name he had adopted], I very
38
See also Dineen and Mühlhäusler (1996). Some examples from fiction include: Me
no stop here, (Cawthorne 1986:75), Dat him — dat is Ribber Torren (Leigh
1847:176).
185
JANE SIMPSON
good'. When he heard that they wanted to take him to Port Lincoln,
he said: 'I bamba 39 bye-bye' (I will stay). (Schiirmann 1842, cited
in Schumann 1987:151)
(12) A shot was fired, one of the natives sprung up convulsively in the
water, walked on shore and fell down, exclaiming while dying,
'me Kopler, me good man', and such indeed it proved. He was
one of a friendly tribe, and a particular protege of the missionary's,
having taken the name Kopler from his German servant who was
so called. (Eyre 1845:195)

Schumann, a missionary linguist and eye-witness, is probably more reliable
than Eyre, who heard the story second-hand.
k. Replacement of inversion with intonation as a question-marker.

(13) [Aboriginal man to woman] 'Him good doctor, ~ him love
picanini'. ... I felt the force of his appeal, and waved my cap, and
bowed to them, saying 'Good lubra! white man love good lubra!'
At this they all laughed. The chief then said 'You how (holding up
fingers) lubra?' I then said, shaking my head, that I had 'no good
lubra!' He stared at this, and pulled my whiskers, and continued,
'You bad lubra?' I answered, 'No good! no bad! no lubra!' At
which the ladies renewed their laughter.... He then asked me how
many children I had. (Leigh 1840:144-145)
1. Tendency to use non-English words.

Not yet found apart from lubra and piccaninny.
m. Use of basic synonym of simple semantic content and greater frequency

of use.
This is evident from the examples.
n. Decomposition of word into phrase.

(14) As they say, 'Black fellow tumble down crack-a-back, debil take
him, jump up white fellow'
Their meaning by 'tumble down crack-a-back' is that they die...
When a child is born, it is always said to jump up. (Wilkinson
1848:338)
39
I tentatively gloss this as: 'I'll stand/be stationary for a while'. The word 'bamba'
probably derives from Barngarla bamburriti 'to stand still, be stationary'.
186
Relevant to the foreigner talk is the fact that the word order in some fifty
samples is almost entirely (S)V(O). A rare counterexample is the predicate-
subject order (10) and the following from the same author.
(15) When mother gave her some, she looked around to see if there
were any other blacks in sight, saying; 'No lettum see. Plenty
blackfellow come. No good that.' (Sanders n.d.:8-9)
As well as containing resemblances to English foreigner talk, the early contact
English contains many features mentioned by Baker (1993) as part of

Melanesian Pidgin English, probably influenced by NSW pidgin. These
include:
• too much meaning not only 'a lot of but also used as an adverb modifying
adjectives, and often meaning 'because of, as in (1) and (9).
• what for meaning 'why', as in (16).
(16) [police questioning on sheep stealing. Aboriginal responds:] what
for? why long time no white fellow, plenty kangaroo; now white
fellow, no kangaroo. (Wilkinson 1848:348)
• all same meaning 'like', as in (10).
• clause-initial or final by and by.
(17) come along, boat bime-by (Cawthorne 1986:27) (fiction)
• bullock as 'cattle' or 'beef.
(18) Cockatoo man (former Governor [Gawler]) very good — long time
ago came here — give lanty40 tuckout (feast) - lanty blanket —
Lanty Bullocky (beef) — lanty sheepy (mutton) — lanty very
good. This man (the present Governor [Grey]) no good, give
piccanniny meat (...) piccaninny bullocky, piccaninny bread,
piccaninny blanket, Gubnor Gay no good. Gubnor Gay bloody
roguell (Cawthorne: diary 21/10/1843, cited in Foster 1991b:25)
• devil devil, as in
(19) too much dark, plenty debil, debil [sic] (Cawthorne 1986:22)
(fiction)
• sit down, reside, meaning 'be at', as in
40
'Ianty' probably reflects the effect of the phonotactic constraint in Kaurna against
initial consonant clusters (compare 'Gay' for 'Grey' in the same passage). The
phonological explanation is not completely clear, as 'blanket' and 'bread' occur in
the same text. Moreover, while Kaurna does not have initial 'pl' it also does not
have initial 'l'.
187
JANE SIMPSON
(20) Me want them to go away. Let them sit down at the Murray, not
here. (Register 24/4/1844, cited in Hemming 1990:131, Foster and
Muhlhausler 1996)
• tomahawk as 'axe', as in tammeaku 'hatchet' (Teichelmann and Schurmann
1840:70).
• black fellow and white fellow, as in (9), (14) and (16).
•plenty used prenominally (9) (16) (19), and before the predicate (3) (4) as a
quantifier. This is widely used as a marker for representing Aboriginal

speech. It is found modifying count nouns, mass nouns and nouns used
predicatively.
• along as a multi-purpose preposition.
(21) John no more stop along of me; he say he kill me. (Bull 1884,
cited in Dineen and Muhlhausler 1996).
• stop meaning 'stay', as in (21).
• no more meaning 'no longer', as in (21).
• um or im as a transitive verb marker, as in (5), (7) and (9). (There is
considerable variation as to whether such a marker is used).
• no good meaning 'bad' as in (13).
• come as an auxiliary, as in (8).
• gammon as in (3).
• piccanniny meaning 'small' as in (18).
• directly meaning 'soon' as in
(22) Yesterday morning just when we were starting, the blacks came to
the opposite bank of the river with their fishing nets and cried,
'White-fellow man, there directly,' waving their nets. The meaning
of this was they would catch fish for us. (Alexander Buchanan
20/10/1839, cited in Jenkin 1979:284.)
• one as a marker on adjectives
This occurs sporadically.
(23) [of a lake] signify that it was formerly all 'big one water' (Angas
1847:61)
•dat for 'that'.
(24) De Ribber Torren ~ dat him (Leigh 1847:176)
Dat him — dat is Ribber Torren (Leigh 1847:176)
Dat Abbeled (Leigh 1847:176)
188
Features resembling some of those described can still be found in modern
Nunga 41 speech. Clarke (1994b) lists several hundred words still used by
southern South Australian Nunga people. Most of these are words from the
Aboriginal languages of the area. A few are words, whose phonological
shape or meaning has been so changed that few recognise their English origin
(buldang 'fall down', tjubadi 'stupid', tjittin 'sitting', thitha 'sister', gi:in
'going', directly 'soon', flash, ge:min 'gammon'). As Clarke describes it, the
function of this speech is different from that of the earlier jargon. It is a
marker of identity and exclusion, used by Nungas to set themselves apart

from non-Aboriginal people. Clarke (1994a) writes:
They consider that with the distinctive Aboriginal vocabulary and
grammatical structure they have retained, to converse in broken
English without local lingo is somehow insulting. (Clarke
1994a:51)
Clarke's example sentences show a range of syntax, from sentences very
close to standard English (Baby had a kantji in his shorts), to sentences that
share much with modern Australian Creoles:
that boy him like pethen mutaka. That boy likes stealing cars
He plukkin one that fellow. He's afraid.
I was mugada from him I was angry because of him
Where your mutaka is? Where's your car?
In conclusion, the sparse records of early contact English show features of
English foreigner talk (which may be features of pidgins as well) and also of
NSW and Melanesian Pacific pidgin.
6. JARGON KAURNA
The main records of the jargon Kaurna are a translation read by William
Wyatt 42 of a speech by Governor Gawler (Text 1), sentences published by
William Williams (Text 2), and a small text and a couple of sentences
published by William Wyatt (Text 3). Texts 1 and 2 are given in the
Appendix, while Text 3 because of its brevity is given in the body of the
article. Text 1 is especially interesting because it comes with a partial word-by
word gloss. This glossing reveals similarities with the jargon English.
The three texts show that the standard of Kaurna attained by 1839 was not
very high. This is demonstrable from Williams' word-list which contains
glosses such as yel-lah-rah 'have' for Teichelmann and Schumann's yellara
41
'Nunga' is a term that many South Australian Aboriginal people use instead of
'Aboriginal'. See also Wilson (1996).
42
We do not know whether Wyatt or the interpreter James Cronk or both prepared this
translation. Note that Gawler's own speech is written in simple English, and not in
jargon or pidgin English.
189
JANE SIMPSON
'already'. The language in the texts looks like broken Kaurna used by the
colonists in an effort to communicate with the Kaurna, and influenced by the
conventions of English foreigner talk. That some of the Kaurna used Kaurna
foreigner talk is suggested indirectly by Piesse's belief (mentioned above)
that verbs have only one tense, and directly by Schumann:
(...) the Aborigines, (...) habits of walking every day and all day
about begging and idling in the town, and of speaking their own
language very incorrectly and defectively when in conversation
with Europeans, to which latter habit they had been accustomed

by the late interpreter43 and Mr Williams, whose vocabulary you
will no doubt have seen. (Schumann 1987:90-91).
The three texts have some differences and some common features, as well
as common features with the jargon English. I discuss the first two texts,
which are presumed to be broken Kaurna, before looking at the third text,
which is said to be a record of how a Kaurna person spoke.
The syntax in the first two texts differs substantially from what I can
reconstruct of Kaurna syntax.44 However, since Kaurna is no longer spoken,
I have not attempted to translate the examples into my reconstructions of
Kaurna syntax. Instead, I have made comments on likely differences. Forms
from the texts are given in italics, while reconstructed Kaurna forms are given
with asterisks.
(i) word order. Williams' sentences (Text 2) consist of Kaurna words
inserted into English structures: SVO word order.45 Wyatt's translation (Text
1) has more complex structures, and contains both (S)OV (Wyatt 2,4, 5, 13,
14, 15, 17, 18, 19) and (S)VO (Wyatt 9, 16, 17, 21). Wyatt's SOV order
reflects in part a Kaurna discourse preference noted by Teichelmann and
Schumann.
A general rule is, that that part of a sentence which is of more
importance in the idea of the speaker, and upon which he will
draw the attention of the hearer, is put first; therefore, also, the
accusative is put before the verb; (Teichelmann and Schtirmann
1840:24)
This preference may account for the order in Sanders' quoted jargon English
(10) and (15).
(ii) variation of pronouns. Neither text uses the Ergative-Absolutive
case-marking system of Kaurna. They do not mark nouns for case, although
both occasionally introduce Locative marking where there seems no cause for
4
3 The interpreter was probably James Cronk.
44
A sketch grammar is available from the author, and is being reworked for Simpson
and Amery (forthcoming).
45
Rob Amery points out that George Robinson used a similar syntax to string
together Tasmanian words. See Plomley (1976).
190
it (on Absolutive subject, Wyatt 2; on Absolutive object Williams 1). Wyatt

tends to omit what he doesn't know; thus he omits any Dative pronoun in 6.
They both use the same inflected pronouns. Williams uses the second
person singular Genitive pronoun ninco for all cases and numbers of the
second person, and Wyatt does to a lesser extent (Ergative subject: Wyatt 16,
18, 20; Williams 4-5, 8-13, 15-16, 26; Absolutive subject: Williams 6-7, 14,
17-19,21-25; Absolutive/Dative object: Wyatt 2; Dative object: Williams 1-3;
Genitive possessor: Williams 13, 20, 27). Wyatt also has a form nin which
may be a 2nd person Absolutive object (Wyatt 9).

Williams uses the first person singular pronoun oichou for all cases and
numbers of the first person. This may be a blend of the Ergative *ngathu and
the Genitive *ngaju. (Ergative subject: Williams 1-3; Dative benefactive:
Williams 15-16, 26; comitative: Williams 19). Wyatt uses the form ichoo
correctly as a Genitive possessor (Wyatt 9). Both Wyatt and Williams
misanalyse the form *ngajarli (*ngaju *yarli) 'my father' as a single word
meaning 'father' (Wyatt 8) and 'friend' (Williams 27). 46 This has a parallel
English merger: *mujarta from 'my shirt' 47 is glossed as 'clothes' by both
Wyatt and Williams.
For both Williams and Wyatt to choose the Genitive of the second person
singular as the normal 2nd person pronoun is unusual. There doesn't seem to
be any obvious explanation from within Kaurna for choosing Genitive, rather
than Absolutive. It is possible that one borrowed from the other, since the
colony was small and they had similar interests in the Aborigines. However,
they use different spelling systems, and Williams' word order is more clearly
based on English than Wyatt's. It is as likely, however, that the use of the
Genitive pronoun as the default pronoun was one of the features of foreigner-
talk Kaurna, 'speaking incorrectly', which Schumann commented on.
(iii) lack of inflection on verbs. Following on Piesse's claim
mentioned earlier, all the verbs used by Williams and Wyatt have the present
continuous tense form, rather than the imperative (Wyatt 17, Williams 13,
21, 22), negative imperative (Wyatt 12, 13, 15; Williams 5, 8-12, 14), future
(Wyatt 18, 21, Williams 4) or irrealis (Wyatt 9-12) forms required in some of
their sentences. They use an adverb glossed as 'by and by' to indicate that an
event takes place in the future. This exactly parallels the lack of inflection in
the jargon English, and the use of 'by and by'. 48 Correctly, neither Williams
nor Wyatt uses a substitute for the English copula (Wyatt 7; Williams 6, 7,
17, 18, 20, 27), the absence of which is also a feature of jargon English.
46
Jeff Siegel points out a parallel fusion in Jargon (and Pidgin) Fijian (Siegel 1987).
47
This etymology is given by Teichelmann and Schürmann (1840) and seems
plausible.
4
8 Jeff Siegel points out a similar use of an adverb meaning 'later' (malua) in Pidgin
Fijian, and suggests that this may be a general strategy in contact languages.
191
JANE SIMPSON
(iv) negation. Both Williams and Wyatt use the same form of the
negative *mardlanha, which is rarely used by Teichelmann and Schumann,
who use *yaku instead for negating indicative statements, and use
*mardlanha as an interjection 'no' or as 'nothing, no-one'. Both Williams
and Wyatt use *mardlanha with present continuous verbs to make negative
imperatives, instead of the correct imperative verb suffix. Just as in the jargon
English, the negative never follows the verb (Wyatt 12, 13, 15; Williams 5,
8-12, 14, 18).
(v) quantifier 'plenty'. Both Williams and Wyatt use words which can
be glossed as 'plenty'. (*thawaRRa Wyatt 4, Williams 6; *ngaRRa(i)ja Wyatt
5, 20, Williams 1; *thawaTa Wyatt 18). Williams actually glosses them as
'plenty'.
(vi) reason and cause. Wyatt does not overtly mark the conditional (no
'if, no irrealis on the verb) in 9. He uses juxtaposition to convey the idea of
condition, as he uses juxtaposition to form loose phrasal compounds rather
than case-marking or derivational suffixes (Wyatt 11).
Text 3, recorded by Wyatt, is not a translation. He writes:
This statement is in the words of Monaicha wonweetpeena
konoocha, or 'Captain Jack'.
TEXT 3 (from Wyatt 1879:181)49

(1) Aichu ngaicherle erlita wangan
ngaju ngaju-yarli yarli-Ta wangka-n(di)
1SG-GEN lSG-GEN father father say-PRES
'My father's great-grandfather (or ancestor) said'
(2) Mondna ardche kaia pemane
MuNaNa ngaRRaija kaya pama-n(di)
?former, ancient plenty spear spear-PRES
'Monana threw many spears'
(3) ea pemane,
iya pama-n(di)
here, this-ABS spear-PRES
'here threw, here threw'
49
Line 1 is Captain Jack's Kaurna. Line 2 is my reconstruction of the corresponding
Kaurna. Line 3 is my morpheme-by morpheme glossing. Line 4 is Wyatt's free
translation. See footnote 53 for the spelling in Line 2.
192
(4) bura kaia kurra pemdne,

puRRu kaya kaRRa pama-n(di)
afterwards spear high spear-PRES
'by and by a spear upwards threw,'
(5) kaia kurra ye wane,
kaya kaRRa yuwa-n(di)
spear high stand-PRES
'the spear above stuck fast,'
(6) kotinne kaia yewdne, kotinne kaia yewdne,

kuTin(di) kaya yuwa-n(di) kuTin(di) kaya yuwa-n(di)
again spear stand-PRES again spear stand-PRESagain
'spear stuck fast, again spear stuck fast,'
(7) bura yerta yewdne,
puRRu yarta yuwa-n(di)
afterwards ground stand-PRES
'by and by in the ground stuck fast,'
(8) Monana kaia tattine kurra winnin,
M. kaya thaTi-n(di) kaRRa wini-in(di)
spear climb-PRES high go-PRES
'Monana (by the) spears climbed, above went,'
The repetition in line 6 reminds one of modern story-telling styles in Central
Australia. However, the language parallels that in the translated texts, and not
that described by Teichelmann and Schiirmann. The vocabulary includes
words translating as 'plenty' and 'by and by'. The syntax is SOV, in accord
with Wyatt's translation (but not Williams). With respect to morphology,
there is no Ergative marking on muNaNa in line 2, although the verb is
transitive.50 There is no directional case on yarta in line 7, and no instrument
marking on kaya in line 8. All the verbs have the present continuous ending,
although the story is translated as past tense.
So, if Captain Jack dictated this story to Wyatt, or if Wyatt was blessed
with an exceptional memory, then this text could be an example of Kaurna
foreigner-talk. Otherwise we must assume some degree of reconstruction,
probably following Wyatt's own understanding of Kaurna syntax.
Unfortunately we cannot determine whether the jargon properties of this text
are due to Captain Jack using foreigner-talk Kaurna himself, or to Wyatt's
reconstruction of the story in broken Kaurna.
50 On the same page Wyatt also gives sentences, which include other forms of the
pronouns: Aichoo ninnato yoonggonde 'I gave to you' includes a complex pronoun
ninnata combining 2nd Absolutive ninna and 1st Ergative bound atto, as well as the
1st Genitive aichoo. Likewise Ningko wirrilla winneento koue kutteen 'You quickly
go water fetch' contains the 2nd Genitive ningko and a 2nd Ergative -nto bound to
the intransitive verb winneen (possibly licensed by the transitive verb kutteen).
193
JANE SIMPSON
In sum, there are many similarities both between Wyatt and Williams'
jargon Kaurna, and between their jargon Kaurna and the recordings of jargon
English in South Australia. To some extent, these can be explained by the
assumption that they used the SVO syntax of English foreigner-talk as the
frame for inserting Kaurna words. But this does not explain the parallel use
of the same forms, such as the Genitive second person singular pronoun.
This may have been a feature of Kaurna foreigner talk, possibly stemming
from an original mistake made by some European, and taken up as part of the
way some Kaurna spoke to Europeans. When more is known about the
conventions of foreigner talk in Aboriginal languages we may find an
answer.
The use of jargon Kaurna was probably not widespread. At the start the
colonists had some incentive to learn it, but they found it easier to suggest
that the Kaurna should learn English instead. This is confirmed by the editors
of the South Australian Colonist (1840) when they reprinted Williams'
vocabulary and sentences.
The utility to the colonists of a knowledge of the language is
obvious; but we doubt whether it will reward any attempts to
reduce it to a grammatical form, and we could venture to
recommend that the English language be taught to the natives, as
the easiest and best means of promoting their civilization. {South
Australian Colonist 1840:297)
7. THE MOVE OF OTHER GROUPS INTO KAURNA COUNTRY

The invasion of the colonists changed the language ecology of the Adelaide
Plains by imposing English as the language of government. Another blow,
highlighted in Gara (to appear), was the difference that the invasion made to
the movement patterns of the Aborigines. As colonists pushed outwards, life
became dangerous for Aborigines in outlying areas (the overland drovers
were notorious for murdering Aborigines they met along the way, and
Adelaide was a relatively safe haven). They were dispossessed of land and
thus of the means of living. Unsurprisingly, the handing out of money,
clothes and food by both the Government and some colonists attracted many
Aboriginal people from outlying areas who spoke different languages into
Adelaide for visits. They appear to have stayed far longer than they would
normally have, and fights broke out, which the invading Government tried to
stop (Wyatt, Text 1, 11, 12).
This in itself would have changed the language ecology of the Adelaide
Plains, since the local people were thus prevented from resisting the
occupation of their country by other Aborigines, and bitterly resented this
(Gara to appear). The movement of peoples with different languages into
Kaurna country, in particular the Murray River people, would have provided
194
more incentive for using jargon English as the meansof communication, and
thus helped its growth. The incentives for using jargon Kaurna would thus
have lessened.
But the greatest effect on the languages was the untimely deaths of the
speakers of Kaurna. In 1840 there were between 190 and 310 speakers.51
(Moorhouse 1840:323). In 1857 Teichelmann wrote to George Grey that 'the
Tribe has ceased to be.' (Teichelmann 1857), and in 1865 Cawthorne
concluded that 'Of this tribe at the present moment I believe not 5 individuals
exist' (Cawthorne 1865, cited in Hemming 1990:132).
8. CONCLUSION
This paper has provided a case study of the languages used by Aborigines
and colonists to converse with each other at the start of the settlement of
South Australia. I have suggested that the Aboriginal languages were linked
with particular stable territories, and acted as identity markers, and the
speakers were multilingual, switching languages when in different territories
or when talking with speakers of other languages.
The stable multilingualism of the Aborigines contrasts with the attitudes of
the first Europeans they encountered, sailors and sealing gangs, and with the
official colonists. The former came from a variety of language backgrounds,
but probably used a form of South Seas Jargon (or Pacific Jargon English)
for shipboard communication. Such shipboard languages could truly be said
to lack geographical frontiers. The latter were mostly monolingual speakers
of English, and they were used to the idea of a language of government, one
with rapidly expanding frontiers, which could be used to bind people
together. When a culture of multilingualism comes rapidly into contact with a
culture of monolingualism, the rise of languages of contact (jargon Kaurna
and jargon English in this case) is almost inevitable.
APPENDIX
TEXT 1: William Wyatt' s translation of Gawler' s speech

On 3 November 1838 the Register published a speech by Governor Gawler
and a translation of it by William Wyatt. 52 (To this I have added a
51
The variation stems from whether the 120 strong 'Wirra-meyu' are counted as
Kaurna or as Ngadjuri.
52
This is reprinted in part in Kwan (1987) and more fully in Foster and Mühlhäusler
(1996).
195
JANE SIMPSON
transliteration in the spelling system53 that Luise Hercus, John McEntee and I
are using for ThuRa-YuRa languages, and notes on meaning where I differ
from Wyatt).
Black men—
We wish to make you happy. But you cannot be happy unless
you imitate good white men. Build huts, wear clothes, work and
be useful.
Above all things you cannot be happy unless you love GOD who
made heaven and earth and men and all things.
Love white men. Love other tribes of black men. Do not quarrel
together. Tell other tribes to love white men, and to build good
huts and wear clothes. Learn to speak English.
Mr. Wyatt then stepped forward and repeated his Excellency's
address to the natives, which they listened to with great
earnestness and attention. 54 We have been favoured with a
translation of the address, and we print it with the literal English
subfixed, according to the Hamiltonian55 system:56
(1) Boollyona mayoo-

Black men
pulyu.nha miyu
(2) Touara peendingga mayoo Governor ninko
Great English man Governor you
thawaRRa pindi-ngka miyu nhinku
large, very European-LOC 2SG-GEN
(3) nutta wangan.

now speak.
nhaTa wangka-n(di)
speak-PRES
53
Upper case letters indicates sounds whose place of articulation I am not sure of. A
problem is the identification of rhotics (since Thura Yura languages may have a trill,
a flap, and a glide) in old materials. Here I shall use <rr> for a trill, <R> for a glide,
<r> for a flap, and <RR> for unknown rhotics.
54
A contemporary observer was more doubtful than the Register about how well the
Aborigines understood the speech's translation.
'The interpreter kept on gabble, gabble, doing his best to interpret; it was like
parson and clerk racing: but not a word do I believe our black brethren
understood of the address'. (Bull 1884:42)
55
James Hamilton was a language teacher who popularised interlinear glossing.
56
Line 1 is Wyatt's Kaurna. Line 2 is Wyatt's 'Hamiltonian' glossing. Line 3 is my
reconstruction of the corresponding Kaurna. Line 4 is my morpheme-by morpheme
glossing.
196
(4) Peende mayoo boollyona mayoo touara

English men black men very.much
pindi miyu pulyu.nha miyu thawaRRa
(5) winggo, turkere mocherta, arache tonke,
love, constantly shirts, plenty clothing,
wingku thaRRkaRRi mujarta ngaRRaija thurnki
lung, emotion in future plenty, abundance
(6) perro mai-imbe yungon.

flesh food give
paru mayi-imbi yungku-n(di)
meat food-in want of give-PRES
(7) Boollyona mayoo burkonna mayoo pannyape
Black men white men brothers
pulyu.nha miyu paRRka.nha miyu panyapi
younger sibling
(8) komante icherle
one father
kuma-NDi ngaju-yarli
one-only 1SG-GEN father
(9) Peende mayoo, touan nin ponggareen
English men quarrel. with.you fight,
pindi miyu thawa-n(d)i) ?nhi(i)nha pungku-ri-in(di)
chide-PRES 2SG-ABS fight-RECIP-PRES
(10) condan wirilla koni <sic> ichoo werlingga
strike, quickly come my house.
kunda-n(di) wiRRiLa kawayi ngaju wardli-ngka
strike-PRES come here! 1SG-GEN house-LOC
(11) Koma yerta boollyona mayoo koui boonan
other country black men come here
kuma yarta pulyu.nha miyu kawayi ?pudna-n(di)
another, one come here! come-PRES
(12) mullana ponggareen mullana touan
not kill not fight
mardla.nha pungku-ri-in(di) mardla.nha thawa-n(di)
no, none, not fight-RECIP-PRES no, none, not chide-PRES
(13) Mullana mitteen, mullana nanto bullocke,
not steal, not great bullocks,
mardla.nha mi(i)Ti-n(di) mardla.nha nhanthu
no, none, not steal-PRES no, none, not kangaroo,
horse
197
JANE SIMPSON
(14) sheepe, pigge pemane; peendigga mayoo

<sic>
sheep, pigs spear; English men
pama-n(di) pindi-ngka miyu
spear-PRES European-LOC
(15) mullana burkappeen mullana toola
not shoot not fight
mardla.nha vaRRkiani-in(d i) tnardla.nha turla
no, none, not shoot-PRES no, none, not fight (noun)

(16) Turkere ningka nokkon burkonna mayoo
Constantly you see white men
thaRRkaRRi ?nhinku nhaku-n(di) paRRka.nha miyu
in future 2SG-GEN see-PRES
(17) wadpeen tongke, werlingga tieen, yerta kokan,
make clothes, houses build, earth dig,
wapi-in(di) turnki wardli-ngka thayi-in(di) yarta kuka-n(di)
make-PRES house-LOC build-PRES dig-PRES
(18) boora boora ningko touata woppeen, weelta wirpo
by (and) by you plenty work, houses
puRRu-puRRu nhinku thawaTa wapi-in(di) wiLTa waRRpu
2GEN many, make-PRES strong ?bone 57
much
(19) tieen yerta kokan,
build, earth dig;
thayi-in(di) yarta kuka-n(di)
build-PRES dig-PRES
(20) Arache ningko boollyona mayoo boora
plenty you black men by (and) by
ngaRRa(i)ja nhinku pulyu.nha miyu puRRu
plenty 2SG-GEN afterwards
(21) wangan English.
speak English.
wangka-n(di)
speak-PRES
57
waRRpu wilta 'bone strong' is given as 'strong' (Teichelmann and Schurmann
1840). It is just possible, however, that weelta is a hitherto unrecorded word for
'shade'. Cf. Western Desert wiltya.
198
TEXT 2: William Williams [South Australian Colonist 1840:297]58

(1) oichou youngoon ninco orichinga money
ngathu/ngaju yungku-n(di) nhinku ngaRRa(i)ja-ngka money
1SG-ERG/GEN give-PRES 2SG-GEN plenty-LOC
'me give you plenty money'
(2) oichou youngoon ninco orichingamoochatta
ngathu/ngaju yungku-n(di) nhinku ngaRRa(i)ja-ngka mujarta
1SG-ERG/GEN give-PRES 2SG-GEN plenty-LOC shirt

'me give you plenty clothes'
(3) oichou youngoon ninco mooramnora <sic>
ngathu/ngaju yungku-n(di) nhinku murumuru
1SG-ERG/GEN give-PRES 2SG-GEN flour, bread
'me give you bread'
(4) ninco boorahboorah nacoon pindemeaus warrah
nhinku puRRu-puRRu nhaku-n(di) pindimiyu warra
2SG-GEN by and by see-PRES European man language
'you by-and-by know white man's language'
(5) ninco mullannah arcoon coopoollo
nhinku mardla.nha ngaRRku-n(di) kuupurlu
2SG-GEN no, none, not ingest-PRES seawater, alcohol
'you no drink spirits'
(6) ninco touera marnne meau
nhinku thawaRRa mami miyu
2SG-GEN much, very good, fat man
'you very good man'
(7) ninco wackinna meau
nhinku waki.nha miyu
2SG-GEN bad man
'you bad man'
(8) ninco mullannah meeteen
nhinku mardla.nha miiTi-in(di)
2SG-GEN no, none, not steal-PRES
'you no steal'
58 Line 1 is Williams' Kaurna. Line 2 is my reconstruction of the corresponding

Kaurna. Line 3 is my morpheme-by morpheme glossing. Line 4 is Williams' free
translation.
199
JANE SIMPSON
(9) ninco mullannah candahne

nhinku mardla.nha kunda-n(di)
2SG-GEN no, none, not fight-PRES
'you no fight'
(10) ninco mullannah pultahne ciars
nhinku mardla.nha palta-n(di) kaya
2SG-GEN no, none, not throw-PRES spears
'you no throw spears'
(11) ninco mullannah pumane pindemeau's sheep

nhinku mardla.nha pama-n(di) pindi miyu
2SG-GEN no, none, not spear-PRES European man
'you no spear white man's sheep'
(12) ninco mullannah adlene toottah
nhinku mardla.nha ngaDLi-in(di) thutha
2SG-GEN no, none, not burn-PRES grass
'you no burn grass'
(13) ninco tyene ninco werlie
nhinku thayi-in(di) nhinku wardli
2SG-GEN build-PRES 2SG-GEN house
'you build your house'
(14) ninco muuannai t wmneiney
nhinku mardla.nha wini-in(di)
2SG-GEN no, none, not go-PRES
'you no go away'
(15) ninco cattenah oichou curlah
nhinku kati-na? ngathu/ngaju kartla
2SG-GEN carry-?2PL lSG-ERG/GEN firewood
'you fetch me wood'
(16) ninco cattenah oichou cowe
nhinku kati-na? ngathu/ngaju kawi
2SG-GEN carry-?2PL lSG-ERG/GEN water
'you fetch me water'
(17) ninco tichou
nhinku tha(i)ju
2SG-GEN hungry
'you hungry'
200
EARLY LANGUAGE CONTACT VARIEnES IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
(18) ninco mullannah tichou

nhinku mardla.nha tha(i)ju
2SG-GEN no, none, not hungry
'you no hungry'
(19) ninco winneiney oichou
nhinku wini-in(di) ngathu/ngaju
2SG-GEN go-PRES lSG-ERG/GEN
'you go with me'
(20) ninco munto touattah

nhinku munhthu thawaTa
2SG-GEN belly much
'your bellyful'
(21) ninco teearnne
nhinku thika-n(di) < ?>
2SG-GEN sit-PRES
'you sit down'
(22) ninco currey curreeney
nhinku karri karri-in(di)
2SG-GEN stand.up stand.up-PRES
'you stand up'
(23) ninco winneiney cerrala
nhinku wini-in(di) kaRRaDLa
2SG-GEN go-PRES far off
'you going long way'
(24) ninco coui paning gola
nhinku kawayi panyingkuLu
2SG-GEN come! tomorrow
'you come tomorrow'
(25) nadlatte ninco winneiney
naDLaTi nhinku wini-in(di)
when, quickly 2SG-GEN go-PRES
'Where you going'
(26) ninco cattenah oichou pernappe
nhinku kaTi-na? ngathu/ngaju parnapi
2SG-GEN carry-?2PL lSG-ERG/GEN mushroom
'you fetch me mushrooms'
201
JANE SIMPSON
(27) Pindemeau ninco icharlie

pindi miyu nhinku ngaju yarli
European man 2SG-GEN lSG-GEN father
'Whitemen your friend <?>'
(28) Pindemeau titapin wackkinna meau by the caundne59
pindi miyu TiTapi- waki.nha miyu yurdni
in(di)
European hang-
man PRES bad man neck

'White men hang bad men by the neck'
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Jane Simpson
Linguistics
Sydney University NSW 2006
AUSTRALIA
E-mail: jhs@mail.usyd.edu.au
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Early language contact

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EARLY LANGUAGE CONTACT VARIETIES IN SOUTH

2. THE LANGUAGE SITUATION BEFORE THE INVASION

languages, starting with Raminjeri at Encounter Bay (Ramong). To the east

While we have no direct evidence bearing on Aborigines' attitudes towards

inconvenience is experienced on this account, as every person

6 George Robinson (Plomley 1966:335-6), listed in 1831 fourteen Aboriginal women

transcriptions of the language(s).10 Later records suggest that one family

one sealer knew something of an Aboriginal language.

names on Fleurieu Peninsula (Stephens 1839, Morphett 1836, cited in Clarke

women (Amery to appear).

lubra to refer to an Aboriginal woman. Lubra is a word that became

4. THE INVASION (2): OFFICIAL SETTLEMENT

(...) another, writing a few days after the proclamation of the

and Christian Teichelmann. In 1840 Teichelmann and Schurmann published a

for Aborigines, and married, legally, a European colonist:

...they have some unconnected notion of spirits, but have no

and then compare it with the jargon Kaurna.

(1) I enquired how many wives he had, and he counted, one-

the man was looking on with a contented smile, and then he

(wives and children) [original italicization] {Register, 3 November

certainly determine how they reconstructed what they heard.

a. Omission of the definite article

b. Omission of all forms of the verb BE.

c. Omission of inflectional affixes on nominals and verbs.

d. Omission of coordinate and subordinate conjunctions.

e. Omission of redundant pronouns, especially subject pronouns. (This

f. Adding YOU to imperatives

g. Adding tags yes?, OK?, see? no?

h. Replacing all negative constructions by 'no' preceding item

i. Possessives omitted or replaced by periphrastic constructions.

j. Pronouns constitute a problem, and the accusative is somehow to be

so called. (Eyre 1845:195)

k. Replacement of inversion with intonation as a question-marker.

1. Tendency to use non-English words.

m. Use of basic synonym of simple semantic content and greater frequency

n. Decomposition of word into phrase.

English contains many features mentioned by Baker (1993) as part of

quantifier. This is widely used as a marker for representing Aboriginal

marker of identity and exclusion, used by Nungas to set themselves apart

with Europeans, to which latter habit they had been accustomed

it (on Absolutive subject, Wyatt 2; on Absolutive object Williams 1). Wyatt

may be a 2nd person Absolutive object (Wyatt 9).

TEXT 3 (from Wyatt 1879:181)49

(4) bura kaia kurra pemdne,

(6) kotinne kaia yewdne, kotinne kaia yewdne,

7. THE MOVE OF OTHER GROUPS INTO KAURNA COUNTRY

exist' (Cawthorne 1865, cited in Hemming 1990:132).

TEXT 1: William Wyatt' s translation of Gawler' s speech

(1) Boollyona mayoo-

(3) nutta wangan.

(4) Peende mayoo boollyona mayoo touara

(6) perro mai-imbe yungon.

(14) sheepe, pigge pemane; peendigga mayoo

no, none, not shoot-PRES no, none, not fight (noun)

TEXT 2: William Williams [South Australian Colonist 1840:297]58

1SG-ERG/GEN give-PRES 2SG-GEN plenty-LOC shirt

58 Line 1 is Williams' Kaurna. Line 2 is my reconstruction of the corresponding

(9) ninco mullannah candahne