Tasmanian Times originally published this piece in September 2007. Since them, some of the terms have faded further into the biblichor of history, while others – such as pakana – have come into widespread use. What observations do you have about changing language use in Tasmania? Are we getting closer to or further away from ‘mainland Australian’?
Bruce Moore
Bluey, hydro, yaffler, nointer and rum’un are uniquely, exquisitely Tasmanian expressions and thus of particular interest to Bruce Moore, Director of the Australian National Dictionary Research Centre at ANU. Tasmanian Words is an edited version of the paper Bruce presented at Style Council 2007 (not to be confused with Paul Weller’s Style Council (1983))
Until recently, Tasmanian words have not been well served by the dictionaries. E.E. Morris in Austral English (1898) included a good sampling of flora and fauna: celery-top pine, horizontal (scrub), Huon pine, etc.; badger (for “wombat”), inchman (for a kind of ant), mutton bird, Tasmanian devil, Tasmanian tiger, etc.), but few words from other semantic categories.
There is piner for “one employed in felling Huon pines”, Vandemonian for a convict of Van Diemen’s Land, badger box for “a roughly-constructed dwelling”, and a few others. There are four words of indigenous origin: canagong refers to any of several succulent perennial plants commonly called “pigface”; boobialla is applied to a variety of Acacia longifolia and to several small shrubs of the genus Myoporum; lubra is a term for “Aboriginal woman”, and although its origin is disputed it is likely that it comes from Tasmania; a mariner is a shell used in the making of necklaces.
The next place we might have expected to hear about Tasmanian words would be in Sidney Baker’s The Australian Language, either in the first edition of 1945, or the second edition of 1966. Although Baker gives a very full list of terms used by mainlanders for Tasmanians, he is surprisingly silent on any Tasmanian regionalisms. The Australian National Dictionary (1988) is strong on Tasmanian flora and fauna, but if we were expecting this historical dictionary to provide a great number of “Tasmanian words” from the speech of ordinary Tasmanians, I am afraid that they are not there in any great numbers.
There are some terms from the Tasmanian convict system, including carrying gang (“party of convicts assigned to carrying logged timber”), probation system (“system for the management of convicts, introduced in Tasmania after the abolition of assignment in 1839”), model prison, and separate prison. The term muttonbirding is introduced, and the world of mutton birds is lexically productive: muttonbird oil, muttonbird (-feather) pillow (not greatly liked!), and muttonbird gales “the seasonal gales coinciding with the annual arrival of flocks of mutton-birds”. The verb dizz describes a method of cooking muttonbirds in their own fat. The term Tasmanian bluey for a woollen outer garment appears, as does tissue (also tisher) for a cigarette paper. But that is about all.
As part of a wider research project to test the extent of regionalism in Australian English the Australian National Dictionary Centre produced Tassie Terms: A Glossary of Tasmanian Terms in 1995. It is in Tassie Terms that we finally find some of the “real” Tasmanian words. Cordial is used to refer to a carbonated non-alcoholic drink, known elsewhere as a soft drink (with the consequence that one of the words used in Tasmania for the mainland word cordial has been syrup). Hydro, an abbreviation of Hydro-Electric Commission is frequently used in compounds such as hydro bill, hydro power, and hydro worker. Ringtail roarer is used to describe something that is exceedingly good of its kind.
Two words, nointer and yaffler, have their origin in British dialect. Nointer means “a mischievous child”, and derives its meaning from the notion of “one who deserves an anointing i.e. a thrashing”. Yaffler is used to describe “a loud-mouthed obnoxious person”. Yaffle is a widespread British dialect word for the green woodpecker and the verb yaffle is recorded in a number of English dialects meaning “to bark as a little dog”; this is no doubt the origin of the Tasmanian sense. These two words are used only by older Tasmanians, and are obsolescent.
There are three Tasmanian terms that would be heard in Englishes in some parts of the world, but not on mainland Australia. Cock as a form of address, usually male to male, is recorded in English from the early nineteenth century, and is common in Tasmania. Rum one, with a range of connotations from “eccentric person” to “likeable person”, appears as rum’n or rum’un in Tasmania. The standard sense of cranky is “of capricious temper, difficult to please”, but there is a second meaning “mentally out of gear; eccentric or peculiar in notions or behaviour”. It is this second sense, describing irrational rather than irritable behaviour, that has been retained in Tasmania but lost on mainland Australia.
Tassie Terms shows that indigenous culture continued to add terms to the Tasmanian lexicon. Moonbird became used as a name for the muttonbird, and then an actual indigenous word, yolla, became widely used. In order to distinguish themselves from mainland Kooris, Tasmanian Aborigines initially took up the term muttonbird koori, and then Palawa, a term used by Fanny Cochrane Smith in recordings from 1903.
Since the publication of Tassie Terms the Australian National Dictionary Centre has continued to seek out Tasmanian words. New terms include: beastly careless for “utterly indifferent”; chigga or chigger, deriving from the suburb of Chigwell, regarded as working class and uncul-tured, and synonymous with other Australian terms such as westie, bogan, bevan, and booner, toothie another shell used by indigenous people to make necklaces; Bridgewater Jerry “a rolling fog”; fizzy cordial “a soft drink”; and Liah Pootah for another grouping of indigenous people.
One of the trends in both Australia in general, and in Tasmania, is the number of words that are coming into Australian English from Aboriginal languages and cultures – from the revival, the renewal, and the development of those languages and cultures. This alerted me to the fact that one important Tasmanian term has been missed by all of the dictionaries, as illustrated by this recent newspaper passage:
Britain’s Natural History Museum has agreed to hand over some remains of four Tasmanian Aborigines-a partial victory for the state’s indigenous people after 20 years of tortuous negotiations to bring their ancestors home for burial. Sydney Morning Herald 28 April 2007 p. 22
Many of us will remember the phrase “the last of the Tasmanian Aborigines” which, like the comparable “pillow of the dying race”, seemed to legitimise linguistically the notion that this was a doomed people. Tasmanian Aborigine must be one of the earliest of “Tasmanian words”, and it will certainly find its way into the next edition of the Australian National Dictionary, along with most of the words noted above.
Australian Style is published by the Style Council Centre, Macquarie University. It is edited by Pam Peters, with executive assistance from Yasmin Funk. The editorial reference group includes Ann Atkinson, David Blair, Sue Butler, Richard Tardif and Colin Yallop. Views expressed in Australian Style and the styles chosen are those of the authors indicated. Design: Irene Meier. ISSN 1320-0941
