Dictionaries of Alekano–English
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Dictionaries of Alekano - English Dictionaries of Alekano – English and English – Alekano Compiled by Wanimapi (Ellis W. Deibler, Jr) 2008 Summer Institute of Linguistics Ukarumpa, E.H.P. Papua New Guinea Table of Contents Introduction ……………………1 Alekano – English …………….10 English – Alekano ……………131 Appendices …………………...289 Map …………………………..318 iii Alekano-English Dictionary Introduction History of Project Most of the material for this dictionary was gathered during fieldwork in the Alekano area during the years 1959-1979, under the auspices of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL). During much of that time, the author lived in the village of Wanima and did language learning, phonological and grammatical analysis, literacy and translation work. The New Testament, Monoq Gotola Gosohaq, under the old language name Gahuku, was dedicated in 1974. From 1970 to 1979 a literacy campaign was conducted in many villages in the area. During those years much material for literacy was put on file cards, but there was no effort to produce a publishable dictionary. The author left Papua New Guinea permanently in 1979. In 2005 the author decided the time had come to work on the dictionary. He gathered material from many sources and had it all put on computer. Then in 2006 he spent five months in PNG, at the SIL center of Ukarumpa. During that time there were two teams of two men from the language area who came to Ukarumpa and did a lot of work on the dictionary, providing many new entries and going over the whole dictionary. Copies were then given to two of them to go over for a final check. Work on the dictionary was basically completed in the U.S. in 2007. Aims of the Dictionary The dictionary will be made available in two forms. One will simply be an electronic form for linguists. In this form the Alekano entries will be given using the old orthography, in which glottal closure on vowels is indicated by a /q/ following those vowels. Where possible the forms will indicate high tone by an acute accent on that vowel. It is hoped that this dictionary will help preserve much of the rich lexical material in what may well be a dying language, and may also help linguists who are interested in doing reconstructive work in Eastern Highlands languages. 1 The published form of the dictionary will have three parts: the Alekano-English dictionary, the reversed English-Alekano dictionary, and a set of Appendices giving lists of entries according to various lexical classes – types of birds, trees, etc. In the published form, form, glottal closure is indicated again by an acute accent over the vowel which has glottal closure, and no indication of tone is given. This is primarily because tone has a very low functional load, and printed materials in Alekano do not indicate tone. It is hoped that the published form of this dictionary may serve several purposes. First of all, it is hoped that native speakers of Alekano may see some of the richness of their language and be encouraged in its use. It is hoped that it can also be used by those who have not been taught the language by their parents but who have learned English, and who may want to know the equivalent Alekano words and expressions. And finally, it is hoped that bit may be used by those from other areas who wish to learn some of the language. As far as is known, there are no other lexical studies of the Alekano language. The Speech Community The Alekano language is spoken by perhaps 40,000 people who live surrounding, but mostly to the north and northwest of, the town of Goroka in the Eastern Highlands Province. There are many, many thousands of speakers of other languages who now live in the language area. Therefore Tok Pisin is used by almost everyone as a means of communication between these various languages. There are some fifty villages within the Alekano area (see the Appendix). There are very slight dialect differences in lexicon, and in a few cases these are indicated as alternate forms in the dictionary. But the expressions in this dictionary reflect the language spoken in the village of Wanima, which is more or less in the center of the language area. The name ‘Alekano’ has a curious history. Previous to the author’s involvement in the language, linguistic references used the name ‘Gahuku’ or possibly ‘Gahuku-Gama’. But Gahuku is simply the name of the largest clan in the area, and Gama the name of the second-largest clan. Therefore those from other clans were resentful of the term ‘Gahuku’. But there did not seem to be a name for the language. But after many years went by, occasionally I heard people refer to the three languages in the northwest end of the Goroka Valley as Alekano, Tokano, and Dano. These terms have a common 2 Alekano - English Dictionary meaning: ‘Bring it!’ So in 1985, when I presented a linguistic paper in Goroka and explained a bit about the name of the language, Norm Mundhenk of the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea asked if I was serious about changing the name of the language. I told him I was. So he took care of the details. At that time I spoke to a large gathering of pastors in the area and told them I was thinking of changing the name of the language on the revised New Testament on which I was working, and they all cheered and applauded when I told them of the suggested change. One still hears some people use the word ‘Gahuku’, however. Brief Cultural Sketch The language area slopes fairly gently from the Asaro River to the mountains to the north-northeast. In fact, since there are no expressions in the language for ‘north’ or ‘south’; the people use ‘above’ to represent north and ‘below’ to represent south. The land is very fertile; most families grow Arabica coffee, and it is of excellent quality. The villages are located between about 5,000 ft. above sea level to about 7,000 ft. Traditionally the people have lived in grass roofed houses. Before the Europeans arrived, they lived in very small hamlets, not in villages. There is no word in the language for ‘village’. The men and young boys lived in men’s houses – grass roofed, but very long. The houses were made by fastening rafters to a circle of sharpened stakes of casuarina wood, with a woven wall of pitpit fasten around the outside. The grass eventually rotted, and every two or three years the houses bad to be rebuilt. They had one low doorway and no windows. A small fire was usually kept going night and day, for warmth and for cooking. The staple of the area has always been sweet potatoes. Traditionally the only meat available was pigs, but these were killed and cooked only for special occasions. Cooking of pigs was done in a ground oven, an amisi. Certain foods, such as pandanus, were very seasonal. Vegetables such as corn, beans of various types, squash, are traditional. Bananas of many kinds were the main traditional fruit, but papayas were evidently introduced long before we arrived on the scene, and have a local name (gusigusí). Now, however, the people grow a vast variety of fruits and vegetables. The first contact by Europeans was in 1934-35, when patrol officer Jim Taylor came through. During World War II, government officials built a ‘dummy’ airstrip in what is now North Goroka., to attract Japanese bombs. After the war, a number of Europeans came and secured land to begin coffee plantations. Nearly all the Europeans have now left, the businesses being Alekano - English Dictionary 3 owned and operated by New Guineans. Starting in late 1960 the first villagers bought vehicles – usually with a whole village taking bags of coins to dump o a table to pay for it, to the dismay of the salesman. Now there are some passenger cars, but mainly a large number of mini-buses and trucks. The Highlands Highway, which goes through the center of the language area, was sealed in 1967. A few other roads are sealed, but their condition has badly deteriorated. There is an airstrip very close to the center of Goroka, with flights to coastal cities every day. Traditionally the people were animists. Christianity came primarily with the Lutheran Mission about 1935. Now there is a very wide range of Christian groups in the area. The Australians began to set up primary schools, but for many years education was not too effective, and very few Alekano people could speak any English. But that is greatly changed, and a fair percentage of children complete high school. Sources of Entries When I was learning the language, I learned it monolingually. I made no effort to ever use English or Tok Pisin. I carried a small notebook in my pocket wherever I went. And whenever I heard a new expression, I pulled out the notebook and wrote the words down phonetically with my guess at the meaning. It also contained long lists of names of various kinds of classes of items such as birds. All that material has gone into the dictionary. Over the years I accumulated a lot of text material of various kinds. That material was also keyboarded in 2006, and an alphabetic list of every word or expression was made, and that material went into the dictionary. During the years 1959-79 I made a dictionary file on cards kept in two shoeboxes. That material was keyboarded and put into the dictionary.