Dictionary of the Language of Rennell and Bellona, Part 2: English to Rennellese and Bellonese

Part 2

English to Rennellese and Bellonese

SAMUEL W. ELBERT ROLF K U S W E L TOOMAST TAUPONGI

PUBLISHED B Y T H E NATIONAL MUSEUM O F DENMARK COPENHAGEN

T h e publication of this book was made possible by grants from T h e Danish Research Council For T h e Humanities and T h e Carlsberg Foundation Printed hv Winds Bogtrvkkeri N S . Haderslev Copyright by T h e National Museum of D e n m a r k . 1981 ISBN 87-48043 15-8 Background of cover design: one of the first traditional narratives written in the language of Rennell, an account of the conversion to Christianity, Written by Moa of H u t u n a . February 20. 1958 (see From the Two Canoes. page 407).

CONTENTS N A MA1 ' A N G A I G O T 0

English Preface IX Bellonese Preface XI11 Acknowledgments XIV Arrangement of the Dictionary XV Abbreviations and Explanations XVI The Dictionary 1 4

References 101 Appendix A. Additions to Part 1 102 Appendix B. Corrections to Part 1 108 Appendix C. Personal Names 111

ENGLISH P R E F A C E N A K U P U M U ' A 0 TE ENGLISH

This dictionary contains about 5,500 entries but is smaller than the Rennellese and Bellonese to English dictionary (Part 1 of Volume 111) because much of the information in Part 1 is not repeated here. It will be necessary for persons using this dictionary to consult Part 1 continually. Even native speakers will have to do this, as many of the words in Part 1 pertain to the old religion and rituals that have not been practiced since the introduction of Christianity in 1938. Much of the value of this volume is due t o this very fact. Without the first volume, much of the knowledge of the ancestors might have 4 been forever lost. Part 2, however, is more than a list that will help people locate the information in Part 1. Many new words have been introduced into the language of the two islands in the 1970s. These have been included, as well as many Biblical terms, some irregular past tenses of English verbs, and common English phrases and sentences. The object of the new book is t o help the people of the two islands with English, and at the same time to help Euro-Americans who want to learn Rennellese or Bellonese, or who are interested in this unusual language and culture for scholarly research. How was the book made, since it took so many years of work? In 1975. almost as soon as Part 1 was published, Pranee Kulavanishaya, then at the University of Hawai'i, began key punching cards for every English word with Rennellese translations and in some instances with the Bellonese form. She typed in all 19,722 cards, each English word being on a separate card. These were put into a computer at the University of Hawai'i, which in seconds arranged the cards alphabetically and printed them in a very large volume of 346 pages. T h e present editors then typed out these pages, simplifying many entries, hunting out errors, introducing new Rennellese words for some of the English words, and adding many new English words. This was started in Hawai'i and finished in 1979. when Samuel H. Elbert and Toomasi Taupongi came t o Copenhagen to work with Rolf Kuschel, Sofus Christiansen, Torben Monberg, and Jane Mink Rossen. Even a casual reader of Part 2 will notice that for many English words Rennellese and Bellonese offer an extraordinary number of translations. Note the following entries in Part 2 (digits are the numbers of entries). break: 88 carry: 31 cut: 82

demeaning terms: 58 fish: 68 varieties with English or Latin names, 33 varieties unidentified

songs: 27 trees: 136 varieties yams: 48 kinds

The onlv table in Part 2 is one listing 15 categories of counting from one to infinity. A man's sanctity and prestige depended on the quantity and quality of his offerings. It was necessary to count the number of yams. taros. bananas. fish and other product$ offered to the gods. See under counting. In spite of such proliferation$. many English words seem lacking in the language under r e ~ i e w .A few termc hai,e been coined. as equivalents for botany. computer. ornithologr, and independence. For come words unavailable in Rennellese the compilers used substitutes that seemed to be used in the same contexts as the English words:

English term color courteous. polite excuse me pretty, handsome. beautiful, cute, nice shocked sorry sweet weather

Rennellese substitutes and literal meanings

moulzage, mounoho 'many kinds': 1 ~noukigi 'many surfaces' a'aki gaoi 'good behavior' Hai kau ... ' I must ...' (reason for departure) gaoi 'good' gegema'ugi 'surprised' patu'a, sanga 'made a mistake' gogo 'oily' 'aso 'day'

For artefacts not found in the culture of the two islands, or recently introduced, the most common source by far is English. An analysis of words taken from English has not been made and only brief comments are made here. The introduced words seem to fall into three groups. Those that came before 1938 are scarcely recognizable as of English origin, as gahumanlr 'government', kunini 'medicine' (English quinine). paahati 'by heart', poati 'bottle'. solaghi 'flag', and sonotia 'soldier'. Terms introduced during the decades immediately following World War I1 in general have but slight phonetic modification of the English sources, as 'aspilini 'aspirin', kori 'court', memba 'member', poka 'fork'. sukulu 'school', suponi 'spoon', spiriti 'spirit'. However pamulo 'tractor' (named for the old Farmall tractor) and pileipili 'playfield' are less obvious. Following the independence of the Solomons in 1978 an avalanche of English words pronounced about as in English poured into the language and it is anticipated that hundreds more will enter. Who will say me'a e hakalzegeu ai when 'telephone' is so much easier. Such introductions are far too numerous to be included in this volume. The

reader may assume. without roo great a chance of error. that if common English vmrds are not included in Part 2. that they are pronounced ahout as in English. as baseball. basket ball, cabinet, cents. communism. France. premier. president. pope. In order to save space. certain shortcuts were used. Instead of printing out in full all the derivatives of a given base. only the prefixes and suffixes occuring ~ . i t hbases were usually given. A few examples will illustrate this method. Here is an example of the way puke is entered: puke (he- . . . -'aki, pa-. -nga) pakepake f h a k a - ) T h e parts in parentheses are to be read hepake'aki, papake, pakenga. and hakapakepake. Hepake'aki is a reciprocal and may be translated 'to cheat one another, many people to cheat'. Papake and pakepake are reduplications, and indicate continued and plural deceit and tricks. Pakenga is a noun meaning 'trick. plan, strategy'. Hakapakepake means 'to cause o r plan trickery'. 'Mosquito' is entered as follows: N a m u (see also Parr 1, pp. 192-193) ( - a , -ina). T h e Rennellese parts in parentheses are to be read rtarnua, namuina. T h e reference t o Part 1 indicates that on pages 192-193 are words indicating kinds of mosquitoes. Namua and namuina both may be called multiplicathes: they mean many many mosquitoes. ' T o steal' is entered as follows: Kaia'a (he- . . . -'aki. he- . . . -taki, -ria). T h e parts in parentheses are to be read hekaia'a'aki, hekaia'ataki, kaia'atia. The first two are similar to hepake'aki in that they too are reciprocals. Both may be translated 'to steal from one another'. Kaia'atia is a passiveltransitive. T h e sentence Te pegea anu me'a e kaia'atia goa may be translated 'the person whose things were often stolen'. T h e causativers are baa-, bee-, haa-, haka-. This list of affixes is incomplete. For details. see Part 1 and the forthcoming grammar bv Samuel H . Elbert. New words or new meanings to words entered in Part 1 are listed in Appendix A . Words listed in the present ~ ~ o l u mmay e be found in this apper~di-rif rhe!, are not listed in Parr 1 . Corrections to Part 1 are in Appendix B. I t must be emphasized that. like all dictionaries. this one is incomplete. Many new words were being discovered every day as we worked with newly gathered texts, and as we queried the ever patient Taupongi. A sorrow. or delight, of lexicographers (and perhaps of most scientists), is that their work is never finished. In addition two scholars. Jane Mink Rossen and Torben Monberg, have gathered hundreds of technical terms in their respective fields - - - music and pre-Christian

rituals. Both Rossen and Monberg have been untiringly helpful to the two non-specialists who have had to conclude, with reluctance, that all their terms cannot be included in this book. There are too many of them. and they are too specialized to interest most users of this book. Specialists will find their glossaries eventually in the books they now are writing. In Appendix A we have included 343 words and meanings not found in Part 1. In Appendix B is a list of corrections to Part 1. Appendix C. by Rolf Kuschel, is a list of 1.645 Bellonese personal names, with translations when possible. This is undoubtedly the first time that almost all the personel names in a Polynesian community as large as Bellona have been listed exhaustively. The list is here; the analysis is to follow. T o all of these and to the many others we cannot name, we say in the demeaning style of the islands that we are merely toenails (lango ba'e) and childish seekers of torn fragments of the wisdom of the ancestors (nu mi'ipegea hakatamagiki manga sasaga iza mi'ihoto pa'asi ebeebe o te na'a o na sa'amaatu'a).

SHE RK

BELLONESE P R E F A C E NA KUPU MU'A

T e dictionary nei (number 2 ) manga iai 5.500 tatau. Kae soo atu teengaa dictionary (number 1) noko hakatu'u i te ngea 'anga o Mugaba ma Mungiki. E 'eha tuiakinga lualua he'e hai hakahoki i teenei puka ho'ou. Na pengea e hakasahe te puka nei e 'aonga te hiina'i i te gholoba e tasi ki te dictionary mu'a (number 1) ma te me'a mungi nei (number 2). E 'aonga ma'u ki na pengea o Mugaba ma Mungiki ke hai te puka mu'a, i te 'eha kupu e i ngoto i te puka mu'a, kogaa na noho na kupu ngiu 'atua. Poi he'e hai i te dictionary mu'a, mano kua nimo na naa'anga o na 'atu mu'a. E 'eha kupu kua hai ho'ou ki te languisi o Mugaba ma Mungiki i te 1970 ke noko hano. Na kupuna, na kupu ho'ou, ma na kupu o te Bible manga i te dictionary nei. E hai ma'u te puka ho'ou na kupu kesekese, kongaa na noho did (past of do), sang (past of sing), was (past of is). Kua 'eha o na ghapu te hai hekau ai. T e ghapu 1975 noko 'oti ai te dictionary mu'a (number 1) ka teengaa te ghapu noko hakatu'u e Pranee Kulavanichaya, te pengea o te University Hawai'i, noko tipatipa e ia ko ba'i kupu English i te dictionary mu'a, 19,722 kupu. Noko sungu na kupu ki te 'inisini pipiki naa'anga (computer) i te University Hawai'i. Teenei 'inisini hai ho'ou noko hakatootonu e ia, i te mi'igholoba, te a, e, i, o, u , ma te tipatipa ma'u na kupu ki te puka ngoangoa o na ngau e 346. Na hakatu'u te puka ho'ou i Hawai'i i te ghapu 1975, na haka'oti i Copenhagen i te ghapu 1979 i te boo mai 'anga a Samuel H. Elbert ma Toomasi Taupongi o hai hekau hakapingi ai kia Sofus Christiansen, Rolf Kuschel, Torben Monberg, ma Jane Mink Rossen. Copenhagen, December 7,1979.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HAKA'ATU'ATU

Two Danish institutions have generously supported this project. T h e Danish Research Council For T h e Humanities gave financial aid for the publication of this volume and they sponsored trips by Rolf Kuschel and Taupongi between Bellona and Denmark. T h e Carlsberg Foundation supplied funds for Part 1 of Volume 11. and now for Part 2 of that volume. We are most grateful to them. Next we mention our long-time collaborator Toomasi Taupongi. who has been Elbert's mainstav for more than two decades. and Kuschel's for a decade during four trips to Bellona. I n Canoes. 1965, pages 43-43. Monberg wrote a summary of Taupongi's abilities. Now in 1979 Taupongi is still helping us. In the ensuing years he has grown in his knowledge of the past as he sought out old people and questioned them discretely and carefullv. He seems to have remembered all they told him. H e is a dancer, a singer. and a spell-binding story teller with a flair for language. Elbert and Kuschel are grateful that he had consented to act as co-author of this volume. T h e East Asian Institute of the University of Copenhagen furnished excellent offices that made our work pleasant and efficient. T h e director of the Institute. Professor Ssren Egerod, was especially helpful. Christian Ejlers of the National Museum of Denmark arranged for publication of the book. We are most grateful to him and to the National Museum of Denmark. In Honolulu in 1972 Pranee Kulavanichaya. then of the University of Hawai'i, keypunched 19,722 cards as the first step in the transfer of data in Part 1 to Part 2. Robert Hsu of the linguistics department of the University of Hawai'i supervised the processing of these cards in a computer. thus saving months of labor and increasing the accuracv of the output. Others who have helped throughout the years include Tepuke Sengeika of Bellona and Joseph Puia of Rennell. In Denmark our debt is very great t o Torben Monberg, as it has been for so many years. for his profound knowledge of the Bellona language and of the social system and the old religion. H e has ever been ready to help us. Jane Mink Rossen added many musical terms. Sofus Christiansen cheerfully and carefully checked names of flora and fauna, and Torben Wolff advised us about insect names. W e are gratefully to all af them for their help. good company. and hospitality. .$

ARRANGEMENT OF THE DICTIONARY H A K A M A M A N U ' A N G A 0 TE DICTIONARY

1. The English entries are in alphabetical order and in bold face type. If two o r more English words have the same spellings but different meanings and in some cases different pronunciations, they are numbered, with the most common first. See kind I , 2 and wind 1,2. 2. Following the English entries, Rennellese equivalents in roman follow, with the most common first; less common Rennellese words follow the common ones in alphabetical order. (See Part 1, pages IX-X for alphabetization of Rennellese words.) Bellonese forms that differ from Rennellese (other than the predictable Bellonese ng for Rennellese g) follow the Rennellese forms in parentheses: bad. Songo (maase'i) . . . cause. Ghaghi (ngaghi) . .. yam. Beetape (betaape) . .. Speakers of each dialect usually know the forms used by speakers of the other dialect, but either never use them, or use them sparingly (as the words for bad). Imperfectly understood Rennellese and Bellonese words are followed by question marks. 3. For some English words (see break, carry) Rennellese has many equivalents. The most common ones are listed first, followed by less common ones, usually in alphabetical order. Some Rennellese words are defined more exactly by parenthetical English descriptions, or by English illustrative phrases with translations. Complete English sentences and translations are last. 4. >>See