________________
299
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
word is tabued for a generation for fear of raising a ghost. Consequently a new word has to be invented to take its place, and this process is naturally perpetually going on. This embarrassing custom is common to several semi-savage peoples.
The Nicobarese dialects belong to the languages of Further India, or what Mr. Man calls the Tibeto-Assam family. They are agglutinative in development, and similar in structure to Malay, Peguan and Burmese, differing from Burmese and the allied tongues in the absence of homonyms differentiated only by intonation.
Very few words are borrowed from other tougues, although the men (but not the women) of the various groups can converse in Burmese, Hindustani, English and Malay.
Mr. Man, in writing the language, has adopted the system he pursued in his former well-known work The Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, and the point of speech that chiefly comes out therein is the great variety of nasal vowels and diphthongs. The stopped sound of many Burmese final consonants shewn in the Burmese character by, and which makes such a word as let-hmat (sign manual) sound like lemmá to Europeans, is also common to Nicobarese. The consonants specially liable to it are ch, j, and k, but Mr. Man's remarks shew that partially, as in Burmese, t, d, p, b, g, 8, sh, and may probably be added to the category.
As is the case with all rude forms of speech, the Nicobarese languages are rich, within certain limits, in specific, and poor in generic terms: but in expression by gesture the Nicobarese have no prescribed methods.
Their structure may be roughly described as follows: The roots of the languages are easily traceable. The explanatory parts of speech (prepositions, postpositions, adverbs, etc.) stand separately, and are not combined with other words in the sentence. Words can be used as adjectives, which properly belong to verbs, substantives, adverbs, and so on. Prefixes, suffixes and particles are freely used. Compound words are very common, composition being attained by simple agglutination without any mutilation of the components.
As regards the Grammar, the following remarks will be found to indicate its outlines. Substantives do not undergo grammatical alteration to denote number, gender or case. If the nomina
[AUGUST, 1891.
tive does not commence the sentence, en or pan is prefixed to denote it. Possession is shewn by making the possessor follow the thing possessed. What is called "case" in ordinary Grammars is denoted by prepositions.
Derivative nouns are formed thus: - Firstly from Verbs: -
(1) okngók, to eat: hokngók, food. homkwom, to give: omkwòm, gift.
(2) hoheat, to hook: henheat, a hook.
het, to chisel: henet, a chisel. kapáh, to die: takapdh, a carcase. tomkák, to lance: tenkák, a lancet.
(3) pahóa, to fear: pamahóa, coward.
enlúana, to exorcise: menlúana, a shaman. dáha, to whet: danáha, a whetstone. pem, to drink: pomem, a drunkard.
(4) pöya, to sit: enpöya, a bench. lop, to cover: oplop, a shawl. top, to drink: topa, beverage
(5)
(6)
Irregular derivatives on the above principles,
ofoak, to open: foàng, a window. Secondly from Adjectives: - (1) huyoie, drunk: mahuyòie, a drunkard. karú, large: kamarú, an adult. shi-tashe, old: shanitashe, age. (2) Irregular additions, as, - höi, far: kalahöiya, the sky.
Thirdly from Substantives: - (1) Irregular additions, -
hentain, a basket: mentainya, a basketful. kahe, moon: kamaheiwa, a lunation.
Fourthly, Compounds: -
(1) These are agglutinated as above explained. A peculiar class of grammatical derivatives of a similar structure to those already noticed exists, which is worth noticing:
enkòiña, a man: menkòiña, a man of a particular race.
enkána, a woman: menkána, a woman of a particular race.
kenyám, a child: kamenydma, a child of a particular community.
Paiyúh, a Nicobarese: Pamenyah, a Nicobares? of a particular community.
kaling, a foreigner: kamalenga, a foreigner of a particular community.
nót, a pig: memnita, a pig of a particular village.
1 The Myit-nge, lit. Little River, in Upper Burmah was always known to the engineers building the Railway bridge over it as "the Mingy."
