Now, some light may probably be thrown on the problem of this women’s language from a custom mentioned in some of the old books written by travellers who have visited these islands. Rochefort himself (p. 497) very briefly says that “the women do not eat till their husbands have finished their meal,” and Lafitau (1724) says that women never eat in the company of their husbands and never mention them by name, but must wait upon them as their slaves; with this Labat agrees.
XIII.—§ 2. Tabu.
The fact that a wife is not allowed to mention the name of her husband makes one think that we have here simply an instance of a custom found in various forms and in varying degrees throughout the world—what is called verbal tabu: under certain circumstances, at certain times, in certain places, the use of one or more definite words is interdicted, because it is superstitiously believed to entail certain evil consequences, such as exasperate demons and the like. In place of the forbidden words it is therefore necessary to use some kind of figurative paraphrase, to dig up an otherwise obsolete term, or to disguise the real word so as to render it more innocent.
Now as a matter of fact we find that verbal tabu was a common practice with the old Caribs: when they were on the war-path they had a great number of mysterious words which women were never allowed to learn and which even the young men might not pronounce before passing certain tests of bravery and patriotism; these war-words are described as extraordinarily difficult (“un baragoin fort difficile,” Rochefort, p. 450). It is easy to see that when once a tribe has acquired the habit of using a whole set of terms under certain frequently recurring circumstances, while others are at the same time strictly interdicted, this may naturally lead to so many words being reserved exclusively for one of the sexes that an observer may be tempted to speak of separate ‘languages’ for the two sexes. There is thus no occasion to believe in the story of a wholesale extermination of all male inhabitants by another tribe, though on the other hand it is easy to understand how such a myth may arise as an explanation of the linguistic difference between men and women, when it has become strong enough to attract attention and therefore has to be accounted for.
In some parts of the world the connexion between a separate women’s language and tabu is indubitable. Thus among the Bantu people of Africa. With the Zulus a wife is not allowed to mention the name of her father-in-law and of his brothers, and if a similar word or even a similar syllable occurs in the ordinary language, she must substitute something else of a similar meaning. In the royal family the difficulty of understanding the women’s language is further increased by the woman’s being forbidden to mention the names of her husband, his father and grandfather as well as his brothers. If one of these names means something like “the son of the bull,” each of these words has to be avoided, and all kinds of paraphrases have to be used. According to Kranz the interdiction holds good not only for meaning elements of the name, but even for certain sounds entering into them; thus, if the name contains the sound z, amanzi ‘water’ has to be altered into amandabi. If a woman were to contravene this rule she would be indicted for sorcery and put to death. The substitutes thus introduced tend to be adopted by others and to constitute a real women’s language.
With the Chiquitos in Bolivia the difference between the grammars of the two sexes is rather curious (see V. Henry, “Sur le parler des hommes et le parler des femmes dans la langue chiquita,” Revue de linguistique, xii. 305, 1879). Some of Henry’s examples may be thus summarized: men indicate by the addition of -tii that a male person is spoken about, while the women do not use this suffix and thus make no distinction between ‘he’ and ‘she,’ ‘his’ and ‘her.’ Thus in the men’s speech the following distinctions would be made:
He went to his house: yebotii ti n-ipoostii.
He went to her house: yebotii ti n-ipoos.
She went to his house: yebo ti n-ipoostii.
But to express all these different meanings the women would have only one form, viz.
yebo ti n-ipoos,