An English mother who says to her baby, “Didums wantum’s bottleums denums?” uses language sufficiently like that in ordinary use to be intelligible to a mere bachelor, but the Lhotas have a curious custom, when addressing small children, of using words which are in no way connected with the speech of every-day life. For instance, “boiled rice” is called mama, “madhu” is koko, “rain” is tsetse, “eat” is hamto, “go to sleep” is shoboto, “get up” is hoksi, “sit down” is phato, “go along” is tsatsato, “I will smack you” is khakto, and so on.
The origin of this baby dialect is unknown, but it is noticeable that the Aos use almost identical words in addressing their children. [[226]]
[1] Linguistic Survey of India, Vol. III., Part II., pp. 284 sqq. [↑]
[2] The name of an Ao-Konyak village. [↑]
[3] A Sema name for the Sangtams. [↑]
[4] A similar tradition is to be found in many Naga tribes as well as among the Padam Abors and possibly other tribes on the north bank of the Brahmaputra.—J. H. H. [↑]
[5] Dr. Witter gives -katola as the suffix of the apodosis. I am myself inclined to think that the word tsokatola is the ordinary future form tsoka, plus a suffix -tola. [↑]
[6] The Kayans of Borneo tell a similar story in which the argus pheasant and the coucal take the place of the cuckoo and crow (The Pagan Tribes of Borneo, Hose and McDougal, Vol. I., p. 247). The Greenland Eskimo give a similar account of how the raven became black. Cf. “The Raven and the Goose,” in Eskimo Folk-tales, by Knud Rasmussen and W. Worster, p. 66 (Gyldendale, 1921). [↑]