231 



SOME REMARKS ON THE AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGES. 



By Dr. John Fraser. 



[_Read before the Royal Society of N.S.W., December 3, 1890.'] 



1. The Grammars. 



No large effort has yet been made to master the difficulties that 

 present themselves in the study of the comparative grammar of 

 the Australian languages. The only thing in this direction, thp/t 

 I know of, is a paper on the "Position of the Australian Lan- 

 guages, by W. H. J. Bleek, Esq., Ph.D.," published in 1871. Dr. 

 Bleek was a philologist who, in 1858, assisted in cataloguing the 

 Library of His Excellency Sir Geo. Grey, k.c.b., then Governor of 

 Cape Colony. Twenty years previously, Sir George (then Captain 

 Grey), as leader of au expedition into the interior of our continent, 

 had excellent opportunities of seeing the native tribes in their 

 original condition ; and the knowledge thus gained was enlarged 

 by him and matured, while he was Governor of South Australia. 

 Any one of us, although not specially interested in Philology or 

 Ethnography, can understand how valuable to science would be 

 the publication of the MS. records of the knowledge of so intelli- 

 gent an observer as Sir Geo. Grey. These records are now in the 

 South African Public Library, Cape Town, having been presented 

 to that Library by him, along with his collection of books and 

 other manuscripts. The Government of the Cape is not likely to 

 take so liberal an interest in our aborigines, as to publish Sir 

 George's account of what he saw and learned of the natives in 

 South Australia ; but I think that any one of our Colonies would 

 do itself an honour if it got these manuscripts copied for publica- 

 tion here. Their contents would certainly be interesting to Aus- 

 tralians. 



The catalogue of Sir George Grey's Library was published by 

 Triibner & Co., London, and Dr. Bleek devotes a portion of the 

 second volume to the philology of the Australian languages.* 



The earliest of individual efforts to deal with any single lan- 

 guage of the Australian group was made by the Rev. L. E. Threlkeld, 

 who, for many years, was engaged as a missionary among the blacks 

 of Lake Macquarie, near Newcastle, New South Wales. His 



* Throughout I say ' languages '; although, in fact, there is but one 

 Australian language with many dialects ; I also use the word ' language ' 

 instead of dialect, wherever the meaning is clear. 



