Finding Dory

Having found ‘nimo’ in the Kope language, I thought I would see if ‘dori’ was hiding somewhere too.

First I searched through the database on my computer. This is stored in a programme called Flex, or Fieldworks Language Explorer. This is where I enter, gloss and analyse the Kope language. As my collection of texts builds, so does my concordance of words, but Dory was not hiding there.

Next I looked at the dictionary which we have under construction. These words were collected from various literacy workshops my colleague Robbie has run. There are a few of us, scattered across the world, attempting to get the first edition of this dictionary edited and published online, but for me it has been a low priority with everything else that is going on. As I continue learning, recording and translating Kope, I have more and more words that ‘one day’ need to find their way into the dictionary. Dory was not hiding in the dictionary, but maybe one day she will be.

My third place to look was with a friend in our language family, which as the Dory movie is about family, seemed an appropriate move. Language families are those languages which have a common ancestry. The picture below gives a graphic sense of the family English belongs to.

http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196

Our Kiwaian language family is much smaller in both numbers of languages and speakers of those languages, but at least we have relatives. I have heard local Kope speakers say that they can understand Kerewo people if they try really hard, and when in Daru, they understand words, but can’t really talk to people. They also know that their people once migrated from the Daru area. One day I hope to hear and record the traditional story of that migration to better understand who the Kope are and how they got to where they are now.

Small language families are a feature of PNG, a country which is home to more than 10% of the world’s languages. Some of them, like our neighbours in the Ipiko tribe, have no close linguistic family. Add to that the fact Ipiko is only two villages and maybe 500 speakers, and you get a sense of the complexity of our linguistic situation.

The Kiwaian family member I consulted did not know of Dory in Bamu, but said that they had “the same 'lousey us' combo”. Word play is an occupational hazard among linguists. We then got sidetracked into a discussion of where Bamu has a paucal (pronoun meaning ‘few’), Kope uses the same pronoun as a trial* (affix meaning ‘three’). Paucals are rare linguistically, but trials are even rarer. It’s nice to know our family is special, even if we don’t have Dory!

*trials: said like ‘tree-alls’, rather than sounding like a court appearance.