Item 05: 'Aboriginal words and names chiefly from the Upper Clarence River Dialect, collected by Thomas George Hewitt of Grafton and Lismore', ca. 1909 and transcribed with additional notes by Robert L. Dawson, 6 June 1938 - Page 6

[Page 6]

                                                                                                                                                                                  1

Aboriginal Words. the great majority of the words are almost

certainly from the dialect of the Upper Clarence blacks's.

This is further confirmed by the fact that most of the

place names refer to stations and other places up

river, or inland, from Grafton. A few words are 

definitely from the Richmond river, or other localities,

and these are specified separately herein.

I have not altered Mr Hewitt's spelling though occasionally

tempted to do so in order to make the correct pronunciation

(to my thinking) somewhat clearer. In some cases Mr

Hewitt has himself given alternative spellings evidently

in an effort to overcome the problem of reproducing the

exact Aboriginal enunciation, often a most difficult

thing to do. I have used the letter G,g, where the sound 

is hard, as in "gun", and J.j. where it is soft as in June.

Division of words into syllables makes, I think, the correct

sounds easier to catch. It is strange that the Upper

Clarence dialect, taking Grafton, roughly speaking, as a 

dividing line, is entirely different to that of the Lower

Clarence down to the Coast Line. But these differences

are quite usual in Australian native dialects and