Austral English

as used in English, but though my appeal was scattered far and wide over Australia (chiefly through the kindness of the newspapers), few could really give the origin of the words. Two amongst the best informed went so far as to say that Australian words have no derivation. That doctrine is hard to accept. A word of three syllables does not spring complete from the brain of an aboriginal as Athene rose fully armed from the head of Zeus.

It is beyond all doubt that the vocabularies of the Aborigines differed widely in different parts. Frequently, the English have carried a word known in one district to a district where it was not known, the aboriginals regarding the word as pure English. In several books statements will be found that such and such a word is not Aboriginal, when it really has an aboriginal source but in a different part of the Continent. Mr. Threlkeld, in his <i>Australian Grammar</i>, which is especially concerned with the language of the Hunter River, gives a list of "barba