KAURNA WARRA.

The Kaurna Warra site reproduces a 19th-century dictionary of the now extinct language of the Kaurna people of southeastern Australia (the second link says the name is “pronounced garna”):

In Adelaide, 1840, a remarkable event occurred. Reverends Teichelmann and Schürmann published their work Outlines of a Grammar, Vocabulary, and Phraseology of the Aboriginal Language of South Australia. The amazing feature relates to its creation. Two German priests recorded essentially the language of the Kaurna people for the English speaking colonists to read. Indeed, these two remarkable men began teaching the Kaurna children in their own vernacular until forbidden to do so by the government.
Their book was originally self published. Advertisements in the local newspaper detailed the availability of this work. But interest was slight and copies sold slowly. If the Kaurna people were now subjects of the king, it was important that they deal in the king’s English…

I’m not sure why the creators of the site felt the need to sneer at attempts to revive the language (“The good folk of Adelaide will not accept the learning of an ancient language as a substitute for English because of sentimental reasons”)—or why the site renders my Back button inoperative, which is extremely annoying—but it’s an interesting enough site I’m posting it anyway. There’s a nice links page too. (Via Plep.)


Some of the entries are quite discursive, for instance:

burka
adj. and s. old, of age, an adult, man. It is frequently as an affix in compound words, corresponding with the terminating syllable “er” in English; as pinnariburka – loiterer; nittatiburka – idler. In these examples the first or radical parts are verbs; but burka may be an affix to a substantive, for instance, wodli-burka, an inhabitant of the house. If affixed to a district of country, it implies that the individual is the proprietor and inhabitant; as mullawirraburka, dry-forest-man (King John’s Kaurna name). If affixed to the name of a child, it means the father of the child; as ngultiburka, kudmoburka. See the word pankarra.

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