⁂ Herr Van Rosenberg distinguishes two chief dialects. 1. A vocabulary collected at Wammer, Watelei, and Traugan. 2. His “Wanumbae Vocaby.” Others are the Wokam Uju dialects, given by Herr Von Eybergen. Mr. Wallace writes Wamma, Wokan and Ougia. P. J. V.
Aropin.
A Papuan dialect, vernacular in S. Pacific. See Latham, p. 332.
Arorae.
An island of Kingsmill group, S. Pacific. The language is a mixed dialect of Samoa and Sandwich groups. First reduced by missionaries from Hawaii, 1858; now occupied by Samoan Christian teachers. W. G.
Arrow-Head.
A term employed to designate writing of a particular kind. The ancient inhabitants of Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia, Persia, and other adjacent regions used characters of which the ultimate element was the wedge: ► The resemblance of this form to the metallic point with which arrows were anciently tipped caused our early Oriental travellers to call all characters thus composed “arrow-headed.” Recently, the term “cuneiform,” adopted from the French, has displaced “arrow-headed,” which is now seldom used. It is important to remember that the two terms, whichever of them we employ, in no case properly designate a language, or an alphabet, but simply a manner of forming the conventional signs of speech. There are at least five quite distinct “arrow-headed” alphabets; and in one case the same cuneiform alphabet is used to give written expression to two quite different languages. G. R.
Aryan.
A name for the Indo-European family of languages, derived from Ariana, a province of the ancient Persian empire. The word is widely diffused throughout Eastern Asia: ex. gr., the small river Arius, now Heri-Rúd, on which stands the city of Herat; also the river Arus, or Araxes, near Mt. Ararat, in Armenia; Iran, Irac, or Iron. The term “Aryan,” in Sanskrit, implies “noble,” but the root is very widely diffused in an agricultural sense; as in the Greek ἀρόω; Latin, “aro” “to plough;” English, “arable.”