Transcription

[Page 132]

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COMPARATIVE TABLES.

In the first of the following tables seven of the above-mentioned languages of Queensland and the North-west of this Colony are compared, in a few examples, with Turuwul, the language of the extinct Botany Bay and Sydney tribe, with Wodi-Wodi, the language of Illawarra, with that of George's River, with that spoken about the Lower Hunter and Lake Macquarie (from the Grammar of the Rev. L. E. Threlkeld), with Dippil and Turrubul (spoken at Wide Bay and Moreton Bay, in Queensland), with one of the many languages of Victoria (from a work of D. Bunce, Esq.), and with that of the North- western Coast (as given by Andrew Hume.) The words of Wiradhuri are from a manuscript work by the Rev. James Günther, of Mudgee. The places where some of these languages are spoken are five hundred miles apart, and in the extreme instances about two thousand miles apart. There are many intermediate dialects — probably some hundreds in Australia. The dialects differ so widely that it seems proper to call them, as is done generally in this work, "languages"; but these tables afford evidence that all the dialects spoken in Eastern Australia are either derived from one language or are widely intermingled ; and, considering the jealous isolation of the tribes, it is impossible to account for the existence of the same words in Queensland and Victoria by any recent intercourse.

While the preceding pages have been going through the press, my attention has been called by a friend to some information of great interest, contained in a Report by Mr. Edward S. Parker, Protector of Aborigines in the Port Phillip District (now Victoria), printed and bound up with the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council

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