My Friends the Savages Part 21

Well, what do you think? Now it has pa.s.sed amongst the Sakai boys that when the _Orang Putei_ gets angry he says "_Sacramento_!". And they repeat the oath with all the emphasis and air of a trooper, yet I had not taught them it nor should I have wished them to learn the exclamation.

The Sakai language is, as I have said, very poor indeed, so much so that it is impossible to form a long phrase or keep up the most simple conversation because there are no means of connecting the various words one with the other.

An idea is expressed by a single word or perhaps by three or four together so that it requires a great deal of practice, attention and also a special study of the mimicry which accompanies and explains these terse vocal sounds, to enable one to follow out the thought.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A group of Bretak boys.

_p._ 156.]

Their vocabulary is soon exhausted for it is composed only of those words which are strictly necessary to make known their daily wants, the necessity of defence and their superst.i.tious feelings. They refuse to adopt any of those expressions that their brethren of the plain have learnt from other races, considering them as impure and perilous as the people themselves. This is an implacable application of the maxim "_timeo danaos et dona ferentes_" by folks who do not understand Latin and who ignore the existence of the Greeks but who know thoroughly well their stranger neighbours.

It is therefore vain to seek among the Sakais those poetical metaphors and that flowery, figurative style of speech which is attributed by us to all Orientals without distinction.

I am not a student or professor of glottology, contenting myself with being able to speak one or two languages without troubling my head over their origin, so I dare not judge upon the affinity more or less remote of the not too sweet Sakai idioms with others, but there seemed to me such a marked difference between the Malay and Sakai phraseologies that I should have declared them to be absolutely distinct one from the other.

However, the recent studies of the German, W. Schmidt, and the more profound ones of the Italian, A. Trombetti, have proved that all the tongues spoken by the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula as well as those to be heard in the neighbouring isles are in connection with each other.

The most part of the words used by the Sakais are of only one syllable, polysyllables being very rare, and the way in which these accents are shot out from the lips would make a foreigner decide at once that the best method of translating their talk would be by a volley of shots.

For the curious and the studious I have here added a short list of the words commonly used amongst the Sakais but as their language is totally exempt from every rule of orthography I have tried as well as I can to give a phonetic interpretation of the same.

Arm -- _glahk_

Arrow -- _grog_

" (poisoned) -- _grog mahng tshegrah'_

" (not poisoned) -- _grog pe' m tshegrah_

Bamboo -- _annahd'_

Banana -- _tellah'e_

Betelnut -- _blook_

Bird -- _chep_

Body -- _brock_

Born -- _egoy_ (_alphabetical sound of_ e)

Blow-pipe -- _blahoo'_

Brother -- _tennah'_

" (elder) -- _tennah' bop_

" (younger) -- _manang se ne_ (_e sounded as in_ met, men)

Child -- _kennon_

Cigarette -- _rock_

Come soon -- _hawl aghit_ (_a_ as in _father_)

Cover -- _tshenkop_

Day -- _e eah top_

Dead -- _daht_

Death -- _daht_

Dog -- _chaw_

Ear -- _garetook_

Earth -- _in noos_

Evening -- _danwee_

Evil -- _ne' ghne' e'_ (_alphabetical sound of_ e)

Eye -- _maht_

Father -- _abbay'_, _abboo'_, _appah'_

" (in-law) -- _tennah' amay_

Fear -- _sayoo neot_

Female -- _knah_

Fish -- _kah_

Flute -- _tshinelloi_

Foe -- _pay kabaad_