TASMANIA Words: hebrew: ‘shin’

N.J.B. Plomley had provided a 10 000 or so long word list of Tasmanian words in:

Plomley, N.J.B. 1976. A word-list of the Tasmanian Aboriginal languages. Launceston: N.J.B. Plomley in association with the Government of Tasmania.

The respelling of the few remaining entries in this list had proceeded slightly since the last blog entry (‘TASMANIA Words: 'snake' pain) was devised and posted an hour ago. The illustration below shows the addition of four words after bawaya: ‘pain in bowels’ in the top line:

page	line	Australian	respelt	English
385	9	har.war.yer	bawaya	pain in bowels
388	40	put.ter.rer.me.var	badaramiba	like, like that
389	30	kanewedigda	gani wididya	{sing}
390	22	payngunnana	banganana	whiz (like a ball, etc.)
392	28	hebrew	dibaru	? skin, ? shin
393	7.1	nẽeãmãrrăr (?nẽeărnãrrăr)		skin
395	2	malougna		{sleep}
395	21	nenn here		{sleep}
396	34.1	tavengana		less
396	36	lough.we		short
397	26	poiné nire		fragrant
425	13	wore.rang.ning.he.ner		tear
425	31.2	[how.un.de.un.dur.ic]		[poor]

The time had arrived to consider the curious entry ‘hebrew’ in the 5th line in the table above. Eventually this was rendered as dibaru. What follows explains why this respelling was chosen.

Review

But first, let us backtrack a little. When looking at vocabulary documents from nearly 200 years ago it is tempting to dismiss as fanciful some of the stranger entries, and ‘hebrew’ here seemed a case in point.

Nevertheless in the previous post it was ventured that ‘hebrew’ might possibly be a considered attempt at rendering a real Tasmanian word into an understandable English form. That is to say it might have been a genuine respelling rather than an apparent and wholly unexpected reference to Judaic people. Note, too, that it is spelt ‘hebrew’ and not ‘Hebrew’. In the previous blog post yibru had been proposed as a modern respelling for it.

Now, in an attempt to give credit to the original recorder, Your Amateur Researcher (YAR) carried out searches in the database for ‘yibru’ or ‘…ibru…’, or just ‘…bru…’. This was reasonable given that some of the recorders had noted that ‘consonant clusters’ were commonly found in Tasmania. These ‘clusters’ refer to consonants put together in a manner very common in English, as is the case in ‘cl’ and ‘st’ in the very word ‘cluster’. Three-letter clusters are also common in English, and the practice is taken still further in the case of, say, 'strength', or the -ftsb- in ‘Shaftsbury’. 

Cluster-pairs do occur in the Sydney language Biyal Biyal (the subject of the original Bayala database) but mostly only with with -mb- and -nd-, and in a more limited way in the -lg-, -nb- and -nm- and a few other pairings. Much more frequently, indeed almost invariably except as noted, consonants in Australian Indigenous languages are separated by a vowel.

While the same might once have been the case with Tasmanian languages, the recorders appear to have heard cluster-pairs in common use.

Hebrew/yibru

But back to the searches for words of the form ‘yibru’. These enquiries came to nought. Nevertheless it was noted that the word rendered as ‘hebrew’ was purported to mean ‘skin’ or ‘shin’.

Still with a desire to give the original recorder of ‘hebrew’ the benefit of the doubt, YAR set about improving his still rudimentary Tasmanian database to include a feature found in the others in the Bayala database series: word classification. So he identified and classified all words (about 1400) in the Tasmanian collection that were body parts (as were ‘skin’ and ‘shin’). When this had been completed a new search was carried out for words in the body parts group, but now using the formula:

*ib@r*

The non-letter characters in this formula have specific functions in a search:

*         =          ‘any number of unspecified letters’

@        =          ‘any single unspecified letter’

This formula meant that words were being looked for:

—beginning with anything,

—followed by ‘ib’

—followed then by any single letter

—followed by ‘r’

—finally followed by anything.

The theoretical basic possibilities resulting from this *ib@r* search are the following:

bibara bibari bibaru bibira bibiri bibiru bibura biburi biburu	dibara dibari dibaru dibira dibiri dibiru dibura diburi diburu	gibara gibari gibaru gibira gibiri gibiru gibura giburi giburu	libara libari libaru libira libiri libiru libura liburi liburu	mibara mibari mibaru mibira mibiri mibiru mibura miburi miburu
nibara nibari nibaru nibira nibiri nibiru nibura niburi niburu	ngibara ngibari ngibaru ngibira ngibiri ngibiru ngibura ngiburi ngiburu	ribara ribari ribaru ribira ribiri ribiru ribura riburi riburu	wibara wibari wibaru wibira wibiri wibiru wibura wiburi wiburu	yibara yibari yibaru yibira yibiri yibiru yibura yiburi yiburu

Possible basic search results for the combination *ib@r*

The actual result, with repeat variations omitted, was the following: 

127	44	dẽe.vĕr.rẙ	dibari	[genitals – female]
392	28	hebrew	dibaru	? skin, ? shin
128	27	tibera	dibira	{genitals - female}
11	5.1	tiberatie	dibiradi	Ear
1	17.3	tĕburcărlōōner	dibur galuna	Breasts
93	39	tee.bur.ic	diburig	leg
15	15.5	lepera	libara	Neck
59	41.1	lipara	libara	(throat: )
119	32	lee.pore.rer	libura	neck
89	19	lee.pur.ner	liburna	thumb
115	32.2	[nubamibére]	mibiri	[eye]
11	25.1	niparana	nibarana	Face
11	25.31	niperina	nibarina	Face
92	7	nip.per.ren.er	nibarina	knee
92	8	mip.per.ren.er (?)	mibarina	knee
115	33	eve'rai	yibira	eye

Body-parts search results for the combination *ib@r*

The original ‘hebrew’ entry, the subject of this enquiry, was the following: 

"hebrew"

dibaru

"? skin, ? shin"

shin

Plomley [:392:28] [T-Wst]

This being the case, the words in the above list most likely to be of interest are those related to ‘skin’ or ‘shin’. These are the records for ‘leg’ and ‘knee’, related to ‘shin’, with no records seeming to relate even remotely closely to ‘skin’. It might in fact reasonably be concluded that ‘skin’ was a recording or transcription error for ‘shin’, given the handwritten similarity of the letters /h/ and /k/. 

93	39	tee.bur.ic	diburig	leg
92	7	nip.per.ren.er	nibarina	knee
92	8	mip.per.ren.er (?)	mibarina	knee

 Most relevant entries

Of the two ‘knee’ entries, the first is more likely. Plomley provided seven ‘knee’ entries, five beginning with n, and one respelt as inibi, leaving only the mibarina entry seemingly out of step with the rest. The other entry, nibarina, does not sound much like ‘hebrew’ while diburig does suggest something of a similarity.

Precision in terminology

In Indigenous languages more specific words were used for the limbs than in English. Thus where we loosely say ‘arm’, Indigenous people used precise words for either ‘forearm’ or ‘upper arm’. Likewise in the case of ‘leg’ they had separate words for ‘leg below the knee’ and ‘leg above the knee’ (thigh). As the word ‘shin’ has been offered in the example under examination, it is possible that the word given for it, transcribed as ‘hebrew’, might have been dibaru, based on the word given for ‘leg’: diburig (‘tee.bur.ic’).

So rather than ‘hebrew’ being an example of 19th century nonsense to be dismissed out of hand, the entry for it, plausibly dibaru, might have actually provided more specific information about the diburig entry. For ‘hebrew / dibaru’ being defined as meaning ‘shin’ then diburig was in all probability not just approximately ‘leg’ but specifically ‘leg below the knee’, the nearest word for this in English being ‘shin’.

Jeremy Steele

17 June 2015, revised 5 July 2024