Native Words Research Articles

Can Old French caroler Be of Celtic Orgin?

In LANGUAGE 4. 28-30, Prof. U. T. Holmes tries to show that some native Celtic word must have had some part in the etymology of caroler 'to dance a round dance'. He refers to a Welsh coroli 'to move in a circle' and to a Welsh corol (or corawl) 'circular'. But I doubt whether sufficient authority can be found for either of these words. It is true that Owen Pughe mentions a Welsh coroli 'to move in a circle; to dance; to caper', and that he derives this word from the adjective corawl. But every Welsh scholar knows that Pughe is absolutely untrustworthy, and that he often invented the words he adduces. Silvan Evans, the author of our largest Welsh Dictionary (1887), is unable to to give any other reference for the word but Pughe. And, therefore, the critical dictionary of Anwyl (1914) has dropped the word altogether. There is certainly no authority for the other Welsh word which Prof. Holmes adduces: corol 'circular'. There is a Welsh adjective corawl, but this never occurs in the meaning of 'circular'; it means only 'choral', as in Welsh gwasanaeth corawl 'choral service' and gwyl gorawl 'a choral festival'. Both form and meaning of this word make it clear that it is a borrowing from medieval Latin choralis 'belonging to a choir; sung by a choir'. It cannot possibly be derived from Welsh car 'circle',1 as Prof. Holmes seems to assume. So the assumed, but non-existent Welsh corol 'circular' and coroli will hardly give any support to a theory of a Celtic parentage of OF caroler. There are, however, some Celtic words which may be connected with OF carole, viz. Modern Welsh carol 'a song' and caroli 'to sing', Old Cornish carol 'a choir', Middle Welsh corelw 'a dance' and corelwi 'to dance', Modern Breton (Vann. and Corn.) koroll 'a dance' (Middle

Notes on the Phonology of the Palau Language

1. Geography. The group of twenty-six small islands known as Palau (Palao, Pelew, or Balau) 1 lies to the West of the Carolines in the western Pacific at longitude 135 degrees East, and latitude five degrees North. About five hundred miles due West of the Palau group lies Mindanao, of the Philippine archipelago, and about 350 miles to the South the head of New Guinea. In 1899 Germany purchased the islands from Spain and since that time they have been considered a part of the Carolines. The population of the Palaus is, according to Fritz 2, about four thousand. 2. Bibliography.-Keate, George. An Account of the Pelewu Islands.... Comnposedfromn the Journal and communications of Captain Henry Wilson and some of his officers who, in Autgust 1783, were there shipwrecked in the Antelope. London 1788. (The work concludes with a brief Vocabulary of the Pelew Language in which the native words are spelled according to English rules of orthography, e. g., too [Walleser tu] 'banana', aeem [Wall. oim] five'. It was published in an anonymous French translation, Relation des lles Pelezv, in two volumes, 8vo, by Maradan, Paris, 1793, and in Spanish translation, Relaci6n de las islas Pelew, by the bookseller G6mez Fuentenebro, Madrid, 1805).

Notes on the list of native words of the Oyster Bay tribe, presented by Mr. J. W. Beattie

Notes on the list of native words of the Oyster Bay tribe, presented by Mr. J. W. Beattie

List of native words of the Oyster Bay tribe, Van Diemen’s Land

List of native words of the Oyster Bay tribe, Van Diemen’s Land

XX. The Epic Use of Bhagavat and Bhakti

NO doubt Dr. Grierson is right in translating the first of these words as “Adorable” (JRAS., 1910, p. 159 f.), in so far as that translation expresses to the devout believer the supreme divinity of his adored God. Nor is there any objection to the view taken by Govindācārya Svāmi in his paper on the Artha-Pañcaka (ibid., p. 591), that, to the same believer, Bhagavat is the perfect God possessed of the five (or six) attributes— knowledge, power, etc. In a later paper (ibid., p. 861), Govindācārya Svāmi shows that Blessed, Perfect, Glorious, or God, anything, in short, to render approximately the content of the native word, would be sufficient in a translation, which is at best amakeshift, and, because it is devoid of the connotation of the original, can never really translate it to the heart. Any merely etymological translation would, of course, be as unsatisfying to a worshipper of Bhagavat as “loaf-holder” would be if offered as an equivalent of our “Lord”.

Geographical Notes

IN a paper (accompanied by a map) in the last number of the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, we are told by the author, Captain Langen, that the Key, or Ké, Islands derive their name from the native word Ké (pron. Kay), which signifies “What do you say?” The native tradition runs that when Macassar traders first landed there, and inquired in the Malay tongue after the name of the land they had set foot on, the Key natives answered “Kay?” which expression was mistaken by the questioners for the name of the islands; and under this name, which has been changed into “Key,” or “Ké,” we find them on charts of the East Indian Archipelago. The islands are very incorrectly laid down on all nautical charts, and Captain Langen's brother has taken great pains in drawing up a map according to his own survey, which is given in illustration of the paper. The group consists of two larger islands, of which the westerly one bears the name of Nuhu-roa, or Little Key, and the easterly one Ju-ud, or Great Key, surrounded by a number of smaller islands. There is no doubt that Great Key is geologically much older than Little Key and the other surrounding islands; it possesses elevations of from 2000 to 3000 feet, whilst Little Key and the other islands are very low. Great Key principally consists of a rocky and volcanic formation, whereas Little Key and the surrounding islands are formed of coral and interveined by flint and quartz. The traveller will find on the highest inland elevations of Little Key (200 feet) shells of various species, greatly damaged through long exposure to wind and weather. About thirty-five years ago, according to the most reliable chiefs, Little Key was raised out of the sea during the shocks of a severe earthquake, attended by a tidal wave; since then no earthquakes occurred until 1884, in the month of April. The members of the European settlement report that the day opened sultry and stifling, the sun shone till about 9 a.m., when the sky became overcast, and at 10 a.m. the first shock was felt, which caused our saw-mill, then in course of erection, to sway to and fro. No sooner had the workmen felt this first shock than they rushed out of the building, and after a short lapse of time two more slight shocks were felt, but fortunately without doing any serious damage. About half an hour's walk eastward from Doelah, is an extinct crater, filled with fresh water, of a great depth, and of a very dark blue colour. Every island belonging to the Key group is covered, down to the water's edge, with dense tropical jungle, gigantic creepers winding themselves from one tree to another, thus forming a close network and great impediment to travelling. These forests contain choice kinds of timber, which formed one of the principal inducements for the establishment of the present German colony.

Native and Foreign Words in De Quincey

Native and Foreign Words in De Quincey

African Exploration

MR. STANLEY'S letter and the map in the Telegraph of Monday enable us to realise somewhat more fully the nature and extent of the discoveries made by the intrepid traveller. Mr. Stanley is bent on calling the great river, so much of which he has explored, by the came of Livingstone. As a rule we think it a mistake to change native geographical names where these can be satisfactorily ascertained. In the case of the Lualaba-Congo, however, the river seems to have quite as many names as there are tribes or villages on its banks, and it would be a happy solution of the difficulty to confer upon it the most memorable name among African explorers. Mr. Stanley himself has taken great pains to obtain accurately the native names of tribes and places, and he animadverts with severity on geographers for crowding the map of Africa with names that probably correspond to nothing. For this they cannot be greatly blamed, neither need he be too hard on previous travellers for misunderstanding the significance of native words.

The Existence of Mixed Languages

THE existence of mixed languages is one of the vexed questions of Comparative Philology. By a mixed language is meant a language in which the grammars of two or more different languages have been fused together, not one in which the vocabulary is of a heterogeneous character. Mixed languages in the latter sense are, of course, plentiful enough; in fact there are languages like the Basque or the Telugu, in which the proportion of borrowed words is larger than that of native words. But though words may be borrowed, it is a grave question whether the expression of grammatical relations can be, and modern philology has been inclined to deny the possibility of such an occurrence. The grammar of one speech may be influenced by that of another, existing machinery being adapted to express grammatical conceptions introduced from abroad, or foreign modes of forming the sentence being imitated, and the idioms of one language may even be adopted by another, but anything beyond this is extremely unlikely. It is in grammar and structure that languages differ from one another; the expression of the relations of grammar embodies the mode in which a particular community thinks, and a change in their expression is equivalent to a change in the mode of thinking. And this mode of thinking is the result of a long succession of past experiences and stereotyped habits of thought. The Existence of Mixed Languages. By J. C. Clough. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1870.) On the Comparative Method of Learning Foreign Languages. By L. J. V. Gerard. (Leicester: 1876.)

On Musical Nomenclature

On Musical Nomenclature