The Pacific has the greatest density of languages on the planet. As we head into Samoan Language Week this weekend and International Languages Week in June, the University of Auckland’s John Middleton explains why these endangered spoken words must be documented.
In 1616, Dutch explorer Jacob Le Maire sailed into the Pacific to find Terra Australis, the legendary continent at the bottom of the globe. He didn’t find it, but along the way the ship came across the Futuna and Alofi Islands (roughly between Samoa and Fiji), which he named the Hoorn Islands, after the captain’s hometown in Holland.
The ship’s interaction with the locals was relatively peaceful, with food, goods and respect exchanged between the two groups. Le Maire and his crew stayed for 14 days, during which they recorded a word list of the local language. This was mainly for bartering – they had to find some way of exchanging nails and iron for a load of oufi (yams) and fouti (bananas).
If they got lucky, they might be gifted a couple of pouacca (pigs), although Le Maire’s trumpeters had to put on a little display to get the local ‘king’ in a good mood; he apparently liked to hear them toot. Le Maire also collected words for body parts, counting and some simple activities. The final product was a word list with 118 entries, which provides a tiny window into the Futunan language spoken 400 years ago.
Trying to write down a language for the first time is a daunting task. How can you ask someone what’s their word for ‘pig’ when they don’t understand what you’re saying? Often linguists use some intermediate language, which both people can speak and understand. But what if neither of you know another language, like Le Maire and the Futunan islanders? Well, you point to things. You gesture. You act things out. And that sometimes leads to mistakes.
Le Maire’s list is full of little blunders, which we can identify when we compare the words to the modern language. For example, the islanders gave the same word for ‘ivory’ and for ‘copper’. When translated into modern Futunan, that word means ‘strong’ – the locals were describing the object, rather than naming it.
Sometimes, when you try to learn the name of an object, your speaking consultants give a verb - the activity someone does with that object. For example, Le Maire’s word for ‘knife’ is fassi, which is the modern Futunan word for ‘to split’. Clearly, the islanders gave the word for what a knife does, rather than ‘knife’ itself.
Considering Le Maire and his crew weren’t trained in language documentation, it’s impressive how accurately they recorded some of these words, so that even 400 years later we can figure out what they mean.
And that’s despite the language change which naturally occurs over many generations. If you compare modern English to the English in a Shakespeare play, which was also written around 400 years ago, it is easy to imagine how different the Futunan language documented by Le Maire may be compared to the modern edition.
My favourite entries in the word list are the ones which don’t look anything like the modern equivalent. For example, the word Le Maire wrote down for ‘small burning mirror’ (magnifying glass) is lessi iloa. This seems strange, as magnifying glasses didn’t exist in the Pacific during this time. Curiously, if you translate lessi iloa into modern Futunan, you get ‘don’t know’!
Another amusing example in the list is the word for violin. Le Maire must have brought out a violin at some point and played the instrument to the locals. The Hoorn Islanders clearly kept repeating the phrase waijfogi, which Le Maire thought must be the local word for the violin. Maybe it’s a just a coincidence, but fai foki, which sounds very similar to waijfogi, means ‘do it again’. It seems like the locals just liked the music.
The word list from 1616 shows us the real issues linguists face when documenting languages for the first time, and these are problems they still have today. There are hundreds of undocumented languages right on our doorstep. The Pacific has the greatest density of languages on the planet, with around 900 different languages spoken in Papua New Guinea alone (population nine million). Contrast that with the entire continent of Europe (population 750 million), which has only around 50 languages.
Documenting endangered languages is exactly what we are trying to do in the School of Cultures, Languages & Linguistics at the University of Auckland.
Recently, I sat in on a recording session with Lisa, a speaker of the Mgira language from the Island of Epi in Vanuatu. Lisa and her family are among the last speakers of this incredible language, which on last count in 2006 had a grand total of 70 speakers.
What I find so exciting about this work is that there’s pretty much nothing written on the language. This means, like Le Maire 400 years ago, we’re starting from scratch, having to figure out what the basics mean before we can get into the nitty gritty. It does make you think though, I wonder how many mistakes we’re making, and who’s going to be laughing at them in the future.
John Middleton is a professional teaching fellow in linguistics in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland. His PhD research is on Tokelauan, an endangered Polynesian language.
