- “einga,” I; “nuka,” mine; “eingana,” me.
- “unda,” thou; “unguranga,” thine; “ngana,” thee.
- “era,” he; “ekurra,” his; “erinna,” him.
- “nuna,” we; “nunaka,” ours; “nungana,” us.
- “rankara,” you; “rakankara,” yours; “rankarana,” you.
- “etna,” they; “etnaka,” theirs; “etnana,” them.
As an illustration let us translate: “I like the boy”; we should have to transpose the words into the following order, “I boy like,” and the Arunndta would be: “Einga ware unjinum.” On the other hand, we might select the Sunday Island dialect as an example in which prefixes are used for representing the personal pronouns. The first personal prefix is “nun,” the second “min,” and the third “il” or “n’.” If, therefore, we take a simple verb like “jakuli” to “break,” we have:
- “nunjaluki,” I break.
- “minjaluki,” you break.
- “iljaluki” or “n’jaluki,” he breaks.
The third person plural is represented by “punjanga n’”; hence “punjanga n’jaluki” stands for “they (altogether) break.”
Whereas we have seen that an “n” might be interposed between two words for the sake of euphony, it no less frequently happens that two or more words are contracted into one for similar reasons. If, to quote a simple case, we wish to translate into Arunndta “You give (it) me,” we have three separate words, “unda” (you), “nuka” (me), and “dai” (give), which in the above expression are fused into one word, “nukundai.”
Apart from the full and pure vowel sounds, the Australian aboriginal dialects include the modified sounds expressed by the German diphthongs, œ, äu, and ue (i.e. the French u). The pairs of consonants, p and b, k and g, and t and d, are often interchanged during speech. Sibilant sounds are extremely rare. My own name was very difficult, if not impossible, for the Aluridja to pronounce; the best they could make of it was “Battedu.” So, also, the imported pet name of the domestic cat, “pussy-pussy,” as it is used by the settlers, cannot be managed. The Aluridja call it “putte-putte,” and the Arunndta “put-pudtha.”
Let us look into the construction of the Aluridja personal pronouns a little more carefully. Every pronoun consists of a stem, which is different for every person, and an ending, which varies with the case.
The stems are:
- First person, singular, “naiu”; plural, “nganan.”
- Second person, singular, “nuntu”; plural, “nurangari.”
- Third person, singular, “balu”; plural, “tana.”