'344 



NOTES ON THE NORMAN VOCABULARY. 



It may be remarked that ** Port Sorell " is an evident 

 error for " Sorell." There was no church at Port Sorell, 

 on the North Coast, in the Rev. J. Norman's time, but 

 there was one at Sorell, where he actually lived as 

 minister from 1832 to 1867. 



The author of the MS. came to Tasmania in 1827, not 

 long before the tribal divisions of the Aboriginals were 

 ■obliterated — in 1853 there were practically no Aboriginals 

 left in Tasmania — and all that can be said of the origin of 

 the words in the Vocabulary is that they do not belong 

 to the Western or North-Western dialects. The dialects 

 have been already discussed by me in a paper which is 

 among the Transactions in 19a) of the Royal Society. 



In transcribing the AIS. for the printer, the pages have 

 been numbered for facility of reference, and the marks of 

 length or shortness and the accents found in the MS. and 

 in Curr's publication of Calder's list have been omitted, 

 for several urgent reasons. Lower case initials have been 

 mostly substituted for capitals in the Vocabulary, for the 

 sake of simplicity. The English equivalent is preceded in 

 each case by a hyphen, and followed by a full stop. 



It will be observed that the alphabetical order and 

 the placing of the English before the Tasmanian words 

 in the Vocabulary, as given in the Calder-Curr list, are 

 not in the MS. There, the words seem to have been put 

 down at random, and the list is occasionally interrupted 

 by notes suggested by the last words listed. 



These notes are very interesting in themselves, and 

 specially so because they do not seem to have been incor- 

 porated in any of the published accounts of the customs 

 of the Aboriginals of Tasmania. It is probable that 

 Calder sent them to Curr, and the latter ignored them, 

 as unsuitable for his purpose. 



In rearranging the words Calder or Curr evidently 

 overlooked the following: — Marlerpootenar, norner- 

 goodenar (p. 5), arrocare (p. 15), ninghenne, coorroo (p. 

 i6j, chellar (p. i8j, work (p. 19), pootherennar (p. 20), 

 perrethener, tarrarnarrar (p. 22), deanner, deererwither- 

 brar (p„ 26)., laggur, moledderner, talarprennar (p. 2y). 



