Today we look at the Diyari word widlhapina (also pronounced wilhapina), which means ‘old woman’, and other related words for female people. There are some important cultural aspects related to these terms, and they are used in different ways from English terms. The discussion is based on the Reuther’s Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers.
In Diyari, the word widlhapina (or wilhapina) is used to refer to an ‘old woman’, generally one whose children have grown up. It is a positive term of respect and indicates that a person has lots of knowledge and life experience. The corresponding term for men is pinarru ‘old man’.
The following are the Diyari words used to refer to the various life stages of females:
thitharri ‘new-born baby’, before he or she has been given a name;
kupa ‘child’, after naming and up to about 10 years old. This term can be used for both girls and boys;
mankarra ‘girl’, a female child;
mankarra mulurru ‘girl who is not old enough yet to be married’. Traditionally, this would be up to 15 years old;
karluka ‘young woman’ who has not yet given birth to a child;
widlha (also pronounced wilha) ‘woman’ who has given birth to a child;
widlhapina ‘old woman’.
Note that the general term karna ‘Aboriginal person’ can be used for females and males at any stage of life. For non-Aboriginal people we say walpala, which comes from English ‘white fella’.
Today we look at the Diyari word nhari, which means ‘dead’, and other words related words to it. We will see that Diyari has a rich variety of terms to describe people whose relatives have died. The discussion is based on the Reuther-Scherer Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers.
The Diyari word nhari means ‘dead’ and from it we can derive the following verbs:
nhari-ri-rna ‘to die’
nhari-nganka-rna ‘to kill
There are a number of terms to refer to children who have lost a parent:
kupa ngama thungka ‘orphan’ — a child whose mother has died (note that ngama means ‘breast, milk’ and thungka means ‘stinking, rotten’)
kupa ngama kaldri ‘orphan’ — a child whose mother has died (note that ngama means ‘breast, milk’ and kaldri means ‘salty, bitter’)
kupa matyumatyu ‘orphan’ — a child whose father has died
kupa ngamurru ‘orphan’ — a child whose both parents have died, a complete orphan. Note that a ngamurru should be brought up by their papa ‘father’s sister’ after the parents have died
We also have mangawarru ‘widow, widower’ — a woman whose husband has died or a man whose wife has died. This term seem to originate from a base manga ‘head’ (the modern Diyari term is manga thandra), and warru ‘white’.
Reuther describes in his dictionary traditional practices that were carried out on the death of a husband or wife (see also this account from the Australian Museum):
White is the colour [symbolic] of mourning, red that of joy. As soon as a husband or wife has died, the surviving marriage partner, together with their nearest relatives, withdraws to the rear of several sandhills, without taking part in the funeral [ceremony]. The long hair of a widow is immediately cut off, and the head is plastered over with gypseous clay, even the face, also the beard in the case of a man. In the deepest depths of sorrow not a word may be spoken. One merely indicates by signs what is required, e.g. water. All day long the mourning husband [or wife] sits in his hut, brooding over [his situation], silent, alone, and lost in thought, After two or three days all relatives gather together once more at the grave, towards evening. Now the sorrowing spouse also turns up. He or she draws near, and several times crawls around the grave as a sign of deepest sorrow, This is the last visit to the grave. After a considerable lapse of time, the [principal] mourner is brought forward and smeared with fat which has been mixed with red ochre. With this the mourning [period] has come to an end. The widow now provides a ceremonial meal for all those who assisted in her husband’s burial.
Here is a picture of a widow’s cap made from gypsum that can be found in the Australian Museum collection.
Today we look at the Diyari word daku, which means ‘sandhill’, and other related words for sand. There are also some cultural aspects of these terms. The discussion is based on the Reuther-Scherer Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers.
An important feature of Diyari country in northern South Australia is sandhills, called daku in Diyari. There are various types of sandhills, including those with bushes and trees growing on them (as in the picture above), as well as those that are entirely bare. Sandhills are a favourite place for Diyari people to make their ngura ‘camp’ as they rise above the plain and provide a location from which to see animals or people moving about.
Diyari people use words for parts of the body to describe the various elements of sandhills, as in:
daku durru ‘ridge of a sandhill’ (literally, sandhill hunchback)
daku mangathandra ‘crest of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill head)
daku mudlha ‘point of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill nose)
daku ngalpa ‘incline or slope of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill lap)
daku ngudlhu ‘brow of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill forehead)
daku panki ‘slope of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill side)
daku piti ‘worn away brow of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill anus)
daku thinthipiri ‘corner of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill elbow)
daku wakarra ‘crest of a sandhill’ (lit. sandhill back of neck)
daku pudlu ‘sandhill without any vegetation’ (;it. sandhill gypsum)`
mudlha pantya ‘end of a breached sandhill’ (lit. nose knee)
According to Reuther, daku relates to the ancestor Kadni ‘ stumpy-tail lizard, bluetongue lizard, shingleback lizard’ (scientific name Tiliqua rugosa), who named the sandhills daku because he loved to walk around on them.
The soft, fine, wind-blown sand at the top of a sandhill is also called ngalara ‘(soft) drift sand’. The hard, coarse sand near the bottom of a daku or in a karirri ‘creek’ is called dirtyi ‘rough sand’. Notice that English just calls both of these ‘sand’.
Today we look at the Diyari words mitha and pulyurru, both used to talk about different kinds of earth or soil. There are also some cultural aspects of these terms. The discussion is based on the Reuther-Scherer Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers.
In Diyari, mitha means ‘soil, earth, ground, land, country’. Here are some examples:
Thana wapayi Diyari mithanhi kudnarranhi ‘They are going to Diyari country on Cooper Creek’
Ngamamayi mithanhi ‘Sit down on the ground!’
Ningkirda ngayana ngura kurrayi nhungkangutha mitha ngumunhi ‘We are camping here, here where the land is good’
Different kinds of soil have their own names, like mitha thaka ‘hard earth, lump of soil, clod’, mitha thakathaka ‘ground covered with pebbles’, mitha danthu ‘broken, cracked ground’, mitha thungka ‘bad ground’ (literally, ‘stinking soil’). There are also some special idioms using this word: mitha dingarna ‘to run one another up the wrong way’ (literally ‘to rub the earth’) and mitha putyu ‘when the midday sun is shining very fiercely that your eyes are blinded and you can no longer follow footprints’ (literally ‘blind ground’).
Notice that mitha is only used for dry soil — if it is thoroughly wet then we call it pulyurru ‘mud, clay, bog’, as in:
Kupakupa pulyurranhi purirna warayi ‘The child fell over in the mud’
There is a special expression pulyurru yalyuyalyu which is used when what looks like dry soil is lying like a crust on top of a soft boggy area, so when you walk on it, you sink down into the mud. Note also that pulyurru is used in two culturally distinct ways:
to describe a widow or widower who is mourning the death of their husband or wife, e.g. nhauya pulyurru ‘He is a mourning widower’
to describe someone who goes his own way, unconcerned about the Laws of the old people. Such a person does not care about what has been required or forbidden according to tradition.
Diyari also has various words for ‘sand’, and we will discuss these in the next post.
Today we look at the Diyari word parlu which is sometimes translated into English as ‘naked’ and ‘bare’, but it also has a wider range of other uses. In addition, it is found in some idioms about thinking — idioms are ways of speaking where the parts do not necessarily add up to the meaning of the whole (like English ‘kick the bucket’ to mean ‘to die’).
By using information in the Reuther-Scherer Diari dictionary (see here) and our own work with Diyari speakers, we can find the following examples showing the different uses of parlu:
A part of the body, with no hair or markings on it:
karna parlu hairless person
kupa parluparlu newly-born child
mangathandra parlu bare head; bald head without hair on it
nyurdu parlu person without any body hair
marna parlu bare mouth, a man without a moustache
mudlha parlu bare, beardless face
ngarnka parlu bare beard, a man with a shaved-off beard
thuku parlu a man with a smooth back, without scars or cicatrices.
thidna parlu soft, smooth feet
pirda parlu bare navel, birds that have lost their feathers
A bare part of nature, with nothing covering it:
mitha parlu bare ground, without any plants or bushes on it
palthu parlu a clear, bare track, with no grass growing on it
pariwirlpa parlu bare sky, cloudless sky
thalara parlu sheer rain, when the sky is covered with virtually black clouds
piti parlu cloudless horizon
pirta parlu bare tree
pantu parlu a lake-bed with no trees or bushes growing on it
yawa parlu wild onion that has had the skin peeled off
nganthi parlu an animal that has had its hair singed off in hot ashes, ready for cooking
A smooth object with no markings on it:
marda parlu smooth stone
panyi parlu small, smooth sticks
kalthi parlu smooth spear
kira parlu boomerang without any engraved markings on it
pirra parlu coolamon without any engraved markings on it
An empty object with nothing in it:
mingka parlu an empty burrow, without footprints leading to the entrance
Idioms of ways of thinking:
thiri parlu smooth anger, where everybody is angry with one another
yawarra parlu smooth words, that are aimed to flatter others
manu parlu even temperament, not getting angry
tharlpa parlu a person who listens attentively and obeys (literally ’empty ears’)
mara parlu a man who has no helpers (literally ’empty hands’)
It is possible to create Diyari words from parlu using the endings -ri-rna ‘to become …’, -ri-pa-rna ‘to cause to become …;, -lha ‘associated with …;, and -yitya ‘habitually connected to …’. Here are some examples with –ri-rna ‘to become’:
nyurdu parlu-ri-rna for a body to become naked of hair, when the body hairs are singed off
mangathandra parlu-ri-rna for a head to grow bald
ngura parlu-ri-rna for a place or camp to become empty of people
kantha parlu-ri-rna for grass to dry off and the ground become bare
pirta parlu-ri-rna for a tree to shed its leaves
yawarra parlu-ri-rna for words to become smooth, for various opinions to become reconciled
manu parlu-ri-rna for ideas to meet with agreement
ngulku parlu-ri-rna for an accusation to become unanimous, as when people agree in their judgement over the actions of another
tyilpi parlu-ri-rna to even out disagreement and convince someone to [adopt] the same point of view
Here are some examples with –ri-pa-rna ‘to cause’:
nganthi parlu-ri-pa-rna to singe the hairs off an animal, in preparation for cooking it
yawa parlu-ri-pa-rna to peel the skin off wild onions
kapi parlu-ri-pa-rna to shell an egg
mitha parlu-ri-pa-rna to sweep and smooth the ground, as the wind does by clearing everything away, or a flood does by clearing the ground and filling hollow places with water
Finally, here are a couple of other examples based on parlu with added endings:
parlu-lha a person who has no friends and has to rely on himself alone (literally, ‘a bare one’)
parlu-yitya the sole surviving relative, a person whose relatives have all died (literally ‘one who is habitually bare’)
There is a large amount of published and unpublished material on the Diyari language which was put together by German Lutheran missionaries between 1866 and 1915. Some of this is translations from German, such as the New Testament (Testamenta Marra) by J.C. Reuther and C. Strehlow, published in 1897.
Another major source is a four volume manuscript Diyari to German dictionary compiled by Rev. J.G. Reuther, amounting to 1,238 pages. The manuscript is handwritten in a script that is difficult to read and the only copy is held in the South Australian Museum in Adelaide — here is a sample page photographed by Philip Jones in 2021.
In 1974, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS, now Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AIATSIS) provided funding for Pastor Philipp Scherer, the first archivist of the Lutheran Church of Australia, to translate the whole of Reuther’s manuscript into English. Here is a page from Scherer’s translation (in 1981 a microfiche of the translation was published by AIAS — it is difficult to use because specialist equipment is needed to read it):
The dictionary is very rich in having 4,179 numbered entries, with over 16,000 sub-entries, mostly compounds or phrases that exemplify particular meanings or uses of the entry word. There are over 6,000 notes that provide additional information about entries, such as relationships to Diyari mythology, or ethnographic information about traditional practices, as in the instance of “muntja tapana” (in modern spelling muntya thaparna) ‘to suck on a patient’ seen in the picture above. It is a remarkable record of material culture, ceremony, trade, mythology, and associations between them and the landscape. Much of this mythological and traditional knowledge is not available in materials arising from subsequent research because it was lost following the closure of the mission in 1915, and the subsequent disruption of the Dieri community and its transmission of culture. In addition, the dictionary is an extremely valuable source for idioms or other ways of speaking which reflect Dieri cosmology or categorisation, as well as how to interact. An example of this is the many idioms based on body-part terms which appear scattered throughout the examples in the dictionary. However, the dictionary still remains difficult to use in its current form because of problems with the spelling, grammatical information, and the scattered and inconsistent nature of the content. It is also very difficult to search in both its paper version (which only exists in the AIATSIS library) and the microfiche publication.
In 1989, David Nash and Jane Simpson, working at AIATSIS on the National Lexicography Project, scanned Volumes I to IV of the Scherer typescript using a Kurzweil Discover 7320 Model 30 scanner and optical character reader to create digitised plain text files like the following (compare the picture above of this page):
Over many years, I edited the scanned files to correct mistakes (such as ] instead of j or q instead of g in the example above), and then in 2014-2015 with funding support from the Dieri Aboriginal Corporation, David Nathan processed my files to clean up more errors and inconsistencies and produced an XML-marked-up version, where tags in <…> encode the type of information, as in the following sample showing the pages illustrated above:
It is possible to derive various kinds of documents that display this tagged information in different ways. Once suitably marked up, the XML document can be linked to using Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT) to select and restructure structural elements, and a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to define the display characteristics when viewed in an XML processor or a web browser. For example, an edition can be created showing Diyari words and glosses only (a simple vocabulary list), or another using different layouts, type faces, and colours to display the data for viewing or proofing. Here is a sample for the tapana entries discussed above (generated by David Nathan in 2016):
Since 2021 I have been working with David Nathan and Ed Garrett to add further tags to the Reuther-Scherer dictionary (such as type and sub-type of notes), clean up more errors and inconsistencies, and create an index of roots which brings together all the related words that Reuther separated as different entries. We also plan to create an English to Diyari finderlist so that users can search for material in the dictionary related to particular English words or expressions. The ultimate goal of this project is to create a major reference resource which will be easily accessible on the internet, and something that will be of value to the Dieri community, and to all students of the language and culture.
Today we look at the Diyari word mudlha (also pronounced mulha) which can be translated into English as ‘face’ and ‘nose’, but also has a wider range of other uses. It is also found in a lot of idioms — ways of speaking where the parts do not necessarily add up to the meaning of the whole (like English ‘kick the bucket’ to mean ‘to die’).
Here are some examples showing the different uses:
‘nose’
thanali muku kurrarna wanthiyi mudlhanhi ‘They used to put a bone in their noses long ago’
mudlha kilthi ‘snot, nasal mucus’
mudlha murru ‘dried crust of snot under the nose’
mudlha kumarri ‘nosebleed’
mudla wirlpa ‘nostril, hole in nose’
mudla durru ‘hook of the nose’
mudlha ngankarna ‘to rub the nose’ (ngankarna generally means ‘to do, make’)
nganhi mudlha pununu parrayi ‘my nose is itching’. People believe that when your nose itches then someone must be talking about you behind your back.
‘tip of a body part’
mara mudlha ‘tip of the finger’ (mara means ‘hand, finger’)
thidna mudla ‘tiptoe’ (thidna means ‘foot, toe’)
‘tip or edge of something in nature’
ngarrimatha mudlha ‘the edge of rising flood waters’
wathara mudlha ‘the edge of an approaching windstorm’
daku mudlha ‘the point of a sandhill’
karirri mudlha ‘the line of trees marking the edge of watercourse or creek’
pirta mulha ‘the thick end of a fallen tree’
kalku mudlha ‘the bottom end of a reed where is is broken off the root or stalk’
‘tip or end of something that people make’
katu mudlha ‘the end of a windbreak’
palthu mudlha ‘the end of a road or path’
marda mudlha ‘the pointed end of a grinding stone’
‘face’
mudlha ngumu ‘beautiful, attractive face’
mudlha manyu ‘friendly face’
mudlha kurlikirri ‘clean washed face’
mudlha dulyardulya ‘dirty face’
mudlha malka ‘stripes painted on the face’. Traditionally, when someone died the women would paint their faces with black and white stripes using charcoal and gypsum
Here are some idioms that use mudlha where the overall meaning is not predictable from the other words in the expression:
mudlha putyu (literally ‘face blind’) ‘not paying attention when something bad could be predicted to happen’, for example, minhandru yundru kupa yinparna warayi ngapa padninhi? Yidni mudlha putyu?. ‘Why did you send the children out without any water? Couldn’t you see (they would nearly die of thirst)?
mudlha pirtarirna (literally ‘face become wood’) ‘to become sullen, surly, glum’
mudlha wararna (literally ‘face throw’) ‘to pull a long face, to look sad or disapproving’
mudlha thiri pardakarna (literally ‘face angry take’) ‘to make up, become reconciled with someone’. When two people are upset with each other meet and make up then they take the angry faces away.
mudlha wathirna (literally ‘face search’) ‘to look for someone among a group of people’
mudlha punthiparna (literally ‘face separate’) ‘to separate people into two groups and send them on their way’
mudlha matharna (literally ‘nose bite’) ‘to give someone the cold shoulder, for a woman to turn down an offer of marriage’
mudlha murruwarna (literally ‘nose scratch’) ‘to beat around the bush, to ask for something indirectly’
mudlha ngurdarna (literally ‘face stretch’) ‘to hurry ahead of someone’
mudlha kutya (literally ‘face feather’) ‘leader of a revenge expedition’. Traditionally, when someone died a group of men called a pinya would be sent out to avenge the death by killing someone from another group. The leader of the pinya is called mudlha kutya because they have feathers stuck on their face with blood.
German Lutheran missionaries lived among the Dieri for 45 years from 1869 to 1914. The missionaries studied the Dieri language and used it in their work and their daily lives, including preaching in Dieri and teaching it in the mission school. They prepared primers, schools books and dictionaries and grammars of Dieri, and translated a large number of Christian works into the language, including hymns and the Old and New Testaments.
One of the missionaries who was most keen to study Dieri language and culture was Rev. Johannes Georg Reuther who arrived at the mission in 1888 at the age of 27. According to the South Australian Museum, by July 1899 Reuther had completed a grammar of Dieri, followed by grammars of the neighbouring Wangkangurru and Yandruwantha languages. From 1903 to 1906 Reuther spent most of his research time completing a dictionary of Dieri that contains 4,200 entries. Reuther left Killalpaninna in 1906, after 18 years as a missionary; his massive collection of unpublished materials are now in the South Australian Museum. Reuther’s 13 volumes of manuscript notebooks were translated into English by Philipp Scherer between 1974 and 1978. The translation was published on microfilm in 1981 by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. In the 1990s David Nash and Jane Simpson scanned and OCRed the dictionary section of Scherer’s translation and deposited them as 66 digital files in the Aseda electronic archive.
Here is page 1920 of Reuther’s dictionary.
Unfortunately, in this form the dictionary is difficult to use and to find information easily, especially as there is no English-Dieri index that allows users to look up words by their English translation. Also, Reuther used the missionary spelling which is inconsistent and does not represent the sounds of Dieri very well (compare the entries here with those for thina in Peter Austin’s draft dictionary page shown in this previous blog post).
Over the last few years Bernhard Schebeck has been processing the Scherer dictionary translation files (including some work as part of the current ILS revitalisation project) to mark them up for the type of content (Dieri word, part of speech, English translation etc) and to create an English to Dieri listing. This is very useful, but the materials are still not yet fully usable or widely available.
The Dieri Aboriginal Corporation has now decided to fund a project by David Nathan of ELAR at SOAS to create a web version of the Reuther dictionary, building on and extending Scherer’s and Schebeck’s work. We hope that a hypertext version of Reuther’s dictionary will be available on the internet next year.
Note: The title of this blog consists of the familiar Dieri yawarra ‘Dieri words/language’, plus a new word kartyimalkarnayitya which is made up of:
kartyimalka the verb root meaning ‘turn over’ -rna the verb ending used to create a dictionary form -yitya an ending which turns a verb into a noun referring to the person or animal who does the action described by the verb (like the “-er” ending in English: talk – talker (person who talks) or run – runner (person who runs)
The combination yawarra kartyimalka-rna in Dieri is how we say ‘to translate’ — it literally means ‘to turn over words’. So, Dieri yawarra kartyimalkarnayitya means ‘Dieri language translators’ (“the ones who turn over Dieri words”).
We can use this combination of endings -rna-yitya with any verb in Dieri to create a noun that refers to the person who does an action. Here are some examples:
nganthi damarnayitya ‘butcher’ (one who cuts up meat) yawarra yingkirnayitya ‘preacher’ (one who gives words) yindrarnayitya ‘crier’ (one who cries)
Following the two-day Dieri ILS revitalisation workshop the Dieri Language Committee met for one and a half days to check over the draft Dieri-English dictonary, and to make recordings for the planned Dieri talking dictionary. We approached this by describing a set of pictures drawn by a Pitjantjatjara artist and made available to the group by Greg Wilson. Each language committee member took turns in describing some aspect of the pictures, making up Dieri sentences that they felt said something about what they saw in the drawings. Three generations of speakers were present, and everyone contributed according to their knowledge and abilities. The result was a nice selection of more and less complex constructions that will be excellent source materials for future Dieri language learners.
Winnie and Marjorie describing a picture
The group enjoyed the process and the opportunity to share their knowledge, especially when Aunty Winnie kept making jokes that got us all laughing. We even got some new words that were missing from the dictionary (and some example sentences that were a bit too rude to be included).
Note: the title of this blog post means “What is this here in the picture?” and uses a word borrowed from English pitya ‘picture’. You should be able to work out the rest of the sentence and its grammar from previous blog posts.
One of the activities we carried out on Monday during the ILS Dieri language revitalisation workshop was Lingo Bingo. This is a team game that involves remembering Dieri words, or looking them up in the available language materials (like the draft dictionary and the Dieri Yawarra book).
We had five teams of participants and 30 bingo cards (in various colours). For half the cards, Peter wrote English words on one side and for the other half he wrote Dieri words on one side. Each team got six cards and had to write either the Dieri word or the English translation on the other side, either by remembering the words we had learned before or by looking them up (and making sure they were spelled and pronounced correctly). Then the two rounds of competition began. For the first round everyone put their cards on the table so the Dieri words were facing up, and then Peter called out the words in random order. The goal was to hear the word, and the team with that card had to call out the English translation and then turn the card over. The team with all their cards turned over was the winner when they shouted out “Lingo Bingo”. Round one was won by a team from Broken Hill. For round two the teams turned the cards with the English facing up, Peter called out English translations and the teams had to say the Dieri word (making sure to pronounce it properly). This round was won by a team fr0m Port Augusta. Everyone got very engaged in the game and enjoyed it a lot, and got to share and practice their knowledge of Dieri words and pronunciation.
Ngayana Diyari Yawarra Yathayilha 