Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- 1 Setting Off
- 2 “Haven't you got a machine?”
- 3 “You never talk it to me!”
- 4 Full of Unforgettable Characters
- 5 “Time to get back to wife”
- 6 “Drink this!”
- 7 “Of course we'll keep in touch”
- 8 “Doing all these Jalnguy”
- 9 Lots of Linguistic Expertise
- 10 “This way be bit more better”
- 11 “Happiness and fun”
- 12 “It's not”
- 13 “Those are good for you”
- 14 Loss
- 15 “I think I like that language best”
- Afterword
- Pronunciation of Aboriginal Words
- Tribal and Language Names
8 - “Doing all these Jalnguy”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Map
- 1 Setting Off
- 2 “Haven't you got a machine?”
- 3 “You never talk it to me!”
- 4 Full of Unforgettable Characters
- 5 “Time to get back to wife”
- 6 “Drink this!”
- 7 “Of course we'll keep in touch”
- 8 “Doing all these Jalnguy”
- 9 Lots of Linguistic Expertise
- 10 “This way be bit more better”
- 11 “Happiness and fun”
- 12 “It's not”
- 13 “Those are good for you”
- 14 Loss
- 15 “I think I like that language best”
- Afterword
- Pronunciation of Aboriginal Words
- Tribal and Language Names
Summary
It was a long drive down south, but we did it a lot quicker than on the way up. Dropping off the caravan in Brisbane, we had a day on the beach at Surfer's Paradise, and then popped in to see Dr Capell in Sydney. He took us to lunch, but didn't say very much when I talked about the mother-in-law style, the loss of initial syllables in Mbabaram, and the texts we had got. When he left, I mentioned to his research assistant (whom he'd invited along as well, confounding tradition) that Capell didn't seem at all pleased.
“On the contrary,” he assured me, “he was very pleased indeed. You've got to realise that his scale of emotional reaction is rather narrower than other people's – the average person might range from 0 to 100 but with Dr Capell it's 49 to 51. Take it from me, he was very pleased indeed.”
In Canberra, the AIAS was just the same as ever. I wondered whether I should play them Chloe's final “message to the government”, but decided against it. (They got a copy of the tape for their archives, of course.) We met Fred McCarthy, the executive member of the AIAS Interim Council, who was on his fortnightly visit up from Sydney.
“Did you record all the legends of the area?” he asked.
“Well, no, not really,” I hesitated, “although we did get a lot.”
“And vocabulary – did you get a pretty complete dictionary made?”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Searching for Aboriginal LanguagesMemoirs of a Field Worker, pp. 160 - 193Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011First published in: 1983