Of the thirteen languages tabulated above, one of the most difficult, and the most guttural, is the tongue spoken by the Resigero group of tribes. Nonuya, also guttural, is perhaps equally difficult, whilst Andoke is possibly the worst, as it is almost ventral. Okaina, though presenting many difficulties, is easier to acquire than the first-named three, and may be characterised as nasal, while Boro and Witoto are neither nasal nor ventral nor impossibly guttural. Muenane is somewhat akin to Boro, but is richer in words. Menimehe approximates more to the speech of the Uaupes River Indians, and it again is nasal.
The endeavour to reproduce the guttural expressions of the Indian in Roman letters is rendered the more complex by the uncertainty of his utterance and the aural variations of his European interpreters. The same word phonetically transcribed by an Englishman, a German, a Frenchman, and a Spaniard bears little or no resemblance to a common inspiration. Each European observer conveys to his written word the error of his national idiosyncrasy of impression and pronunciation.
The difficulty of a phonetic rendition of a foreign language into English has long been apparent, and is one shared—though in a lesser degree—by all Continental linguists. To meet this difficulty the Germans have devised a system almost Chinese in its intricacy, while the French seek to reproduce such simple sounds as that of our English “W” by combinations of diphthongs. Many of these elaborate phoneticisms have been adopted by English writers without consideration of the lingual limitations of their inventors, or of the confusion induced in the mind of the student.
To simplify transliteration, though at the sacrifice of the finer distinctions of the language, the orthographic system of the Royal Geographical Society has been used in this work,[402] and the explanation of the system given in the appendix with the Witoto and Boro vocabularies is taken from the rules laid down by that Society and adopted by the Royal Anthropological Institute.[403] This system ordains that an approximation to the sound should be aimed at only, as any system which attempted to represent the more delicate inflexions of sound and of accent would be so complicated that it would merely defeat itself.
I attempted to make a vocabulary of Andoke words, but the language is, as I have noted, so guttural, not to say ventral, that it renders all attempts impossible without some medium to work upon at the start, such as I had with Boro and Witoto. In these two cases Brown’s knowledge of the latter, and even his very slight acquaintance with the first, were of great use to me as a basis upon which to work.
As an example of the difficulty to be faced without some common medium, I have asked a native, “What is this?” and touched my head or a stick, but could find no clue to whether his answer referred to the thing touched or my action in touching it. Only a long and tedious study can overcome conundrums of this description, and when to these is added the impossibility of conveying accurately by written signs the sound as uttered, the attempt proved beyond my powers and resources.
Mention has been made by one writer of the “‘cluck’ of satisfaction—common to all the tribes of the Provincia Oriental.”[404] I consider the sound emitted by the Issa-Japura peoples as a sign of assent or pleasure is more ventral than that described by Simson. It is approximately Hurrr! like a grunted sigh of satisfaction. The exclamation of surprise amongst all these peoples is very similar and may be written Huh! This sound, lengthened considerably, is the Witoto affirmative Huhhh. Huh! huh! huhh! as affirmatives are very freely used in conversation. The more an Indian agrees with the speaker the more ventral do his ejaculations become. The negative will not be used except in direct answer to a question, for it is contrary to Indian custom and etiquette to interrupt or contradict. The absence of the affirmative Huh! is practically a contradiction, on the ground of doing nothing being itself negative. A similar idea is seen in the tobacco palaver, where the dissentient signifies his disapproval by abstaining from licking tobacco. Should an Indian, however, wish to give an affirmative answer to a negative question, he will then make use of the negative No, for to answer Yes in Indian parlance would be to confirm the negative.
This brings us to the question of construction, and it is at once apparent that in Witoto, for example, the construction of a sentence tallies more with the construction of the deaf and dumb mute’s gesture language than with anything else, that is to say it is the very antithesis of the Chinese, or of our own. It may be said of the Indian, as Tylor wrote of the deaf and dumb mute, that he “strings together … the various ideas he wishes to connect, in what appears to be the natural order in which they follow one another in his mind.”[405] For instance the Witoto say, Benomo honne, literally “here put it”; benomo ekkono, “here open it you”; eijo rie dotoenyino, “much fruit put in it not do you”—“do not put much fruit into it.”
It will be noted that the personal pronoun here has become the suffix of the verb. This is the general rule, as in dinitikwe, “I shall carry it”; a chimitekwe, “I am going to see”; ona dueruetckwe, “I want you.” But this rule is not invariable, as we find kwe mona, “I am unable”; ke hanyete, “I do not understand,” with the pronoun kwe or ke placed, as we should put the “I” before the verb; nor is the variation caused by the negative, as “I do not want you” is ona dueruenetckwe. In this instance the position of the personal pronoun kwe is probably determined by the objective ona, which structurally must precede, otherwise the meaning of the phrase would be inverted and become “You do not want me.” A pronoun is also used as a prefix to a noun to denote possession, as tano, “cassava,” ometano, “your cassava.” According to Koch-Grünberg the suffix make indicates some other place, or thing; it occurs in baimake, “other”; naimake “them”; but I am not aware that it acts as a definitely differentiating suffix in these or any other case.
In Witoto nyete as a suffix negatives what proceeds it, the literal meaning of the word inyete—a compound of ite = are—being the equivalent of the French il n’y en a pas.[406] As examples of its use we get figora, “good,” figonyete, “bad”; huchite, “twisted,” huchinyete, “straight,” that is to say “not twisted.” The Boro negative is ne, as for instance in imine, “good,” nemine, “bad,” i.e. “not good.”