Vocabulary of the Adelaide Tribe. 
109 
Art. IV. The Vocabulary of the Adelaide Tribe. By 
John Philip Gell, Esq. 
Perhaps language is the subject, of all others, most de¬ 
serving the attention of those who investigate the charac¬ 
ter and condition of a savage tribe. The vocabulary of 
barbarians is a list of their ideas; their grammar is a 
test of the strength and activity of the reasoning faculty, 
which still remains to prove that they have not ceased to 
be men. It is remarkable how a thing apparently so fleet¬ 
ing and so changeable as language survives all other 
relics of the past, and becomes a monument in which 
may possibly be traced an ancient connexion with 
some principal family of the human race. 
We must study the ideas of the barbarians, if we 
would have them enter into ours. It is in vain to attempt 
to bring their scanty knowledge to the level of our own, 
but by connecting the new notions with the old. In 
learning their language, we become familiar with their 
associations and trains of thought, and can inform with¬ 
out confusing their minds. 
'As a language with a well-ordered grammar is 
at once the result of a high state of mental activity, 
and the most valuable instrument of thought, we may 
stimulate the faculties and promote the intellectual pro¬ 
gress of a barbarian tribe, by establishing the neglected 
laws of speech, still traceable in the broken language, 
and by presenting to them the familiar instrument 
sharpened, tendered, and repaired. In this the German 
missionaries have done well, who teach the natives of 
South Australia to read and write the Aboriginal rather 
than the English language, and instruct them in their 
own, not in the English grammar. 
