At 10:05 AM +1000 8/10/02, Geoffrey Heard wrote: >At 11:09 AM +0300 3/10/02, John & Marjo Brownie wrote: >>Mr Brown? That's what they call me in Mussau, where they don't >>speak English. Do I lose that last syllable when it goes across the >>Pacific, too? > >Whaaaattttttt???? What self-respecting Austronesian language would >drop a vowel sound? Tell them they should be embarrassed. Or am I >wrong in assuming Austronesian? 8-))
Yep, it's Austronesian, but Mussau people often drop final vowels. Sort of a reverse of the Australian way of abbreviating by adding a final o (arvo, smoko, etc)! I suspect that (perhaps not in Mussau, but in Australia & PNG) it's also part of that "Nobody could be called Brownie - that's a (choose one) junior girl guide / old type of camera / chocolate!" [Curses Scottish ancestors who changed the name to sound more English a couple of centuries ago...] John -- John Brownie Summer Institute of Linguistics, Papua New Guinea On furlough in Kouvola, Finland [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------- The Nisus Interactive List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/nisus-interactive%40nisus.com/ To unsubscribe from this list please send a message with "unsubscribe nisus-interactive" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
