THE ABORIGINAL SPEECH OF TASMANIA. 



would be a man strong of body and swift of foot and 

 arm; and the song in his honour would lay stress on 

 these qualities, and express admiration for t'heir pos- 

 -> >r. 



Resuming our scrutiny, we find in 1). the first word 

 " nc," which does not occur in M. and W. We know 

 that "iH'-na" means "sharp;" it also means "yon," 

 and "no." and "that" (the probable meaning of the 

 ending "na"), and " lo !" or "pay attention!" 



We may take all these meanings together in the idea 

 of " separate from me." The significant sound "n" is 

 formed by closing the mouth and parting the lips ; with 

 the " sharp " teeth pressing on the tongue, the outer 

 world is shut off from the speaker. As the joining of 

 the lips inwards forms " m," and refers to the speaker 

 as " me," so the exclusion implies the " not-me," the 

 " you," " that," " no," the object of our attention. 



We may therefore take " ne " in D. to mean Lo ! 

 The real beginning of the song is pappela, popila, 

 poppvla. Ling Roth gives us pawpela and papla as 

 " big," " large." 



Here we notice first the reduplication of the " p," 

 which indicates emphasis, as implying greater energy 

 in pronouncing the initial sound of the word. Ling 

 Roth gives several examples of this — e.g., kana, to talk ; 

 kakana, to talk loudly ; mura, heavy ; mumura, tree. 



This leaves " pel " as the chief part, and in it we find 

 the echo of pill, ball, and the Tasmanian palla, " man " 

 and " sun," and peura, " round." To the Aboriginal 

 mind, muscular development or roundness was an indi- 

 tion of strength ; a lean man would not have the same 

 strength as a stout one. In confirmation of this, we 

 need only refer to the Japanese and Turkish wrestlers, 

 who are usually very corpulent. 



Thus we get for popela the meaning " very strong." 

 We have not taken any notice of the vowels, and that 

 for two principal reasons. In the first place, vowels in 

 all languages are very subject to variation, and secondly, 

 the uncertainty of the accuracy of the phonetic repre- 

 sentation of the vowels given in our records makes it 

 unsafe to rely on it for an argument. 



