New Langua

Discoveries

By a Special Writer

It now turns out that ther far more languages in P; New Guinea than we yet the whole linguistic picti far more simple.

HHHERE are not 500 lang A which is the figure whicl been officially listed for years, are at least 700, and there ma} be 1,000. But only a small prop, of these are major languages.

Many of the New Guinea lan§ are more closely connected the first thought.

These are the findings of Bud born Dr. S. A. Wurm, Senior F m Linguistics at the Aust National University, Canberra, work, the first proofs of which only recently been made public vides an interesting new picture < New Guinea language problem.

It could mean, for example, the teaching of English migl made easier because instruction be given initially in a native lan| The existing arguments again; use of native languages in Guinea for administrative and mentary education purposes been largely based on the assurr that there is an enormous multi} of languages and a very small ber of speakers of each. But i is now proved incorrect, the tz not impossible.

Big Groups

The new investigations i that about half the native popui of New Guinea—more than 1,25 out of a total of 2,480,000 —b to only 12 language groups. J 1,500,000 speakers belong tc groups, and it is possible, with fi investigation, that four of groups may prove to be inter-re This would reduce the numb non-Melanesian language group nine, and could produce one groi inter-related languages comp; more than 920,000 speakers.

That fact means there is at one group of languages well the trouble of learning!

Dr. Wurm has proved that i of the languages are so closel lated that natives who now hav

(Continued on p. 133)

intercourse can learn to speak to each other after only a few weeks tuition. He says the people of Bena Bena in the New Guinea Highlands, for example, can learn to speak Gahuku, the language in the Goroka area, in two or three weeks. The language spoken by the Erave people is similar to that spoken by the people of Wabag and can be learned by these people in probably only four weeks. (Over)

Many New Guinea natives are really passively multi-lingual. Dr.

Wurm says this achievement is “fan tastically wide-spread”. It helps speakers of one of the languages within a group to achieve passive understanding of another language in the group in an unbelievable short time and without much effort.

There are, however, very big dif ferences between languages belonging to major groups and those not be longing to them. But it happens that natives in small language groups are often fluent in one of the nearby languages belonging to a large group, and this tendency is growing because of the increased mobility of the natives. This fact means that the larger languages will grow in im portance.

It is the opinion of many linguists that it is easier to teach natives English by first working through their own languages, and Dr. Wurm thinks this method could be used with great success in New Guinea.

“It’s a big thing to teach a native English while he has still to grasp the fundamentals of learning his own language—writing it and under standing it,” says Dr. Wurm. “One could train teachers in these major language groups, who could be able to reach these people. After the

natives have learned the study habit they will grasp the teaching of English much more quickly than if they had been started off with English from scratch.”

Dr. Wurm will shortly publish a paper discussing these points.

Dr. Wurm first began an exhaustive survey of the languages in the Eastern, Western and Southern Highlands of New Guinea in 1958. One of his re search scholars, Don Laycock, began work in the Sepik District the follow ing year and discovered about 40 new languages there. The new language picture of New Guinea has followed from both their investigations.

The Summer Institute of Linguistics has now begun to conduct in the Territory short courses in the tech nique of learning native languages.

They are for the benefit of Admini stration officers.