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Pandanus Language
A pandanus language is an elaborate avoidance language among several of the peoples of the eastern New Guinea Highlands, used when collecting ''Pandanus'' nuts. Use Annually, people camp in the forest to harvest and cook the Nut (fruit), nuts of karuka (both ''Pandanus julianettii'' and ''Pandanus brosimos''). Many normal words are thought to be unhealthy for the plants, as they carry associations inimical to the proper growth of the nuts. An elaborate vocabulary of up to a thousand words and phrases has developed to replace the taboo vocabulary. The new vocabulary focuses on words involved with trips to harvest karuka nuts, and changes as words become known outside an area. The language is often spoken to control the claimed magical properties of the higher elevations where the karuka grows, and to placate dangerous nature spirits like ''Kita-Menda'' (also called ), the ritual keeper of the free-ranging dog, feral New Guinea singing dog, dogs. ''Pandanus'' language generally s ...
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Pandanus Julianettii Nuts
''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified in the order Pandanales, family Pandanaceae, and is the largest in the family. Description The species vary in size from small shrubs less than tall, to medium-sized trees tall, typically with a broad canopy, heavy fruit, and moderate growth rate. The trunk is stout, wide-branching, and ringed with many leaf scars. Mature plants can have branches. Depending on the species, the trunk can be smooth, rough, or warty. The roots form a pyramidal tract to hold the trunk. They commonly have many thick stilt roots near the base, which provide support as the tree grows top-heavy with leaves, fruit, and branches. These roots are adventitiousness, adventitious and often branched. The top of the plant has one or more crowns of strap-shaped leav ...
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Kalam Language
Kalam is a Kalam language of Papua New Guinea. It is closely related to Kobon, and shares many of the features of that language. Kalam is spoken in Middle Ramu District of Madang Province and in Mount Hagen District of Western Highlands Province. Thanks to decades of studies by anthropologists such as Ralph Bulmer and others, Kalam is one of the best-studied Trans-New Guinea languages to date. Dialects There are two distinct dialects of Kalam that are highly distinguishable from each other. *, with 20,000 speakers, is centered in the Upper Kaironk and Upper Simbai Valleys. *, with 5,000 speakers is centered in the Asai Valley. It includes the Tai variety. Kobon is closely related. Kalam has an elaborate pandanus avoidance register used during karuka harvest that has been extensively documented. The Kalam pandanus language, called (pandanus language) or (avoidance language), is also used when eating or cooking cassowary. Phonology Consonants Vowels Evolution ...
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Pandanus Avoidance Registers
''Pandanus'' is a genus of monocots with about 578 accepted species. They are palm-like, dioecious trees and shrubs native to the Old World tropics and subtropics. Common names include pandan, screw palm and screw pine. The genus is classified in the order Pandanales, family Pandanaceae, and is the largest in the family. Description The species vary in size from small shrubs less than tall, to medium-sized trees tall, typically with a broad canopy, heavy fruit, and moderate growth rate. The trunk is stout, wide-branching, and ringed with many leaf scars. Mature plants can have branches. Depending on the species, the trunk can be smooth, rough, or warty. The roots form a pyramidal tract to hold the trunk. They commonly have many thick stilt roots near the base, which provide support as the tree grows top-heavy with leaves, fruit, and branches. These roots are adventitiousness, adventitious and often branched. The top of the plant has one or more crowns of strap-shaped leav ...
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Ritual Languages
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally associated with gestures, words, or revered objects, rituals also occur in non-human species, such as elephant mourning or corvid object-leaving. They may be prescribed by tradition, including religious practices, and are often characterized by formalism, traditionalism, rule-governance, and performance. Rituals are a feature of all known human societies. They include not only the worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also rites of passage, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages, funerals and more. Even common actions like hand-shaking and saying " hello" may be termed as ''rituals''. The field of ritual studies has ...
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Korean Ginseng-harvesters' Cant
Korean ginseng-harvesters' cant () are a collection of cants that are widely used by ginseng-harvesters () when harvesting and looking for ginseng. In modern day, these cants are not used as much, though some harvesters still may use some of the jargon. However, due to modern laws protecting environmental areas where harvesters once worked, decline in wild ginseng and a decline of interest among younger generations regarding the harvest of ginseng, the number of ginseng-harvesters has declined, and so has the use and knowledge of the slang. History Ginseng-harvesters are first recorded in the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty as ''Sancheok'' during the rule of Seonjo of Joseon () and were quite acclaimed due to the quality of ginseng they harvested. Over time, these harvesters often formed secretive groups, which eventually led to the creation of unspoken and unique rules, manners and important practices and superstitions that were passed down. Eventually however, due to go ...
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Huli Language
Huli is a Tari language spoken by the Huli people of the Hela Province of Papua New Guinea. It has a pentadecimal (base-15) numeral system: means 15, means 15×2 = 30, and means 15×15 = 225. Huli has a pandanus language called (bush divide taboo) used for collecting karuka nuts () as well as hunting or traveling. is used to evade malevolent bush spirits. The grammar for is nearly identical to normal Huli, but the vocabulary is changed, often borrowing words from Duna but with changed meanings. Phonology Huli has a syllable structure of (C)V. Vowels /ɑ/ is pronounced more fronted as �before /r/ and /ʝ/. Vowel nasality is phonemic A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ... in the language. Vowels can also carry three phonemic tones; high-falling, mi ...
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Donald Laycock
Donald Laycock (1936–1988) was an Australian linguist and anthropologist. He is best remembered for his work on the languages of Papua New Guinea. Biography He was a graduate of University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia and later worked as a researcher at the University of Adelaide in Anthropology. He undertook his Ph.D. at the Australian National University in linguistics and became one among the leading authorities on the languages of Papua New Guinea.Dutton, T., Ross, M. and Tryon, D. (eds.). 1992. ''The Language Game: Papers in memory of Donald C. Laycock''. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. He performed several pioneering surveys of the languages of the Sepik region of New Guinea. The first of these, his Ph.D. research under the supervision of Stephen Wurm, was published as ''The Ndu languages'' (1965), and established the existence of this closely related group of languages. In subsequent surveys, Laycock found the Ndu languages were part of a larger language ...
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Cassowary
Cassowaries (; Biak: ''man suar'' ; ; Papuan: ''kasu weri'' ) are flightless birds of the genus ''Casuarius'', in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites, flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones. Cassowaries are native to the tropical forests of New Guinea (Western New Guinea and Papua New Guinea), the Moluccas (Seram and Aru Islands), and northeastern Australia.. Three cassowary species are extant. The most common, the southern cassowary, is the third-tallest and second-heaviest living bird, smaller only than the ostrich and emu. The other two species are the northern cassowary and the dwarf cassowary; the northern cassowary is the most recently discovered and the most threatened. A fourth, extinct, species is the pygmy cassowary. Cassowaries are very wary of humans, but if provoked, they are capable of inflicting serious, even fatal, injuries. They are known to attack both dogs and people. The cassowary has often been labelled "the wor ...
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Taiap Language
Tayap (also spelled Taiap; called Gapun in earlier literature, after the name of the village in which it is spoken) is an endangered Papuan language spoken by fewer than 50 people in Gapun village of Marienberg Rural LLG in East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea (, located just to the south of the Sepik River mouth near the coast). It is being replaced by the national language and lingua franca Tok Pisin. History The first European to describe Tayap was , a German missionary-linguist, in 1937. Höltker spent three hours in the village and collected a word list of 125 words, which he published in 1938. He wrote that “it will be awhile before any other researcher ‘stumbles across’ Gapun, if only because of the small chances of worthwhile academic yields in this tiny village community, and also because of the inconvenient and arduous route leading to this linguistic island”. Höltker's list was all that was known about Tayap in literature until the early 1970s, when the Au ...
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Angal Language
Angal, or Mendi, is an Engan language complex of the Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea. Mendi has a pandanus language used during karuka The karuka (''Pandanus julianettii'', also called karuka nut and ''Pandanus'' nut) is a species of tree in the screwpine family (Pandanaceae) and an important regional food crop in New Guinea. The nuts are more nutritious than coconuts, and ar ... harvest. References Engan languages Languages of Southern Highlands Province Pandanus avoidance registers {{papuan-lang-stub ...
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Melpa Language
Melpa (Medlpa, Mbowamb) is a Papuan language spoken by about 130,000 people predominantly in Mount Hagen and the surrounding district of Western Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea. Melpa is a Pandanus language used during karuka harvest. Melpa has a voiceless velar lateral fricative, written as a double-barred el ( Ⱡ, ⱡ). Melpa is notable for its binary counting system. A dictionary of Melpa has been compiled by Stewart, Strathern and Trantow (2011). Phonology Consonants Vowels Numeral system Media Temboka, a dialect of Melpa, is the native language of the Ganiga tribe, who featured prominently in the Highlands Trilogy of documentaries by Robin Anderson and Bob Connolly Bob Connolly is an Australian film director, cinematographer and author. He is best known for his documentaries produced over the past 30 years, including ''First Contact (1983 film), The Highlands Trilogy'' and ''Rats in the Ranks'', most of t ... ('' First Contact'', ''Joe Leahy's Neighbours ...
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Kobon Language
Kobon (pronounced , or ) is a language of Papua New Guinea. It has somewhere around 90–120 verbs. Kobon has a pandanus language, spoken when harvesting karuka. Geographic distribution Kobon is spoken in Madang Province and Western Highlands Province, north of Mount Hagen. Phonology Vowels Monophthongal vowels are , diphthongs are . and may be and word-initially. () is written and () is written . Only and the diphthongs occur word-initially, apart from the quotative particle, which is variably /a~e~o~ö/. occur syllable-initially within a word. All vowels (including the diphthongs) occur syllable-medially (in CVC syllables), syllable-finally and at the ends of words. Many vowel sequences occur, including some with identical vowels. Consonants Kobon distinguishes an alveolar lateral , a palatal lateral , a subapical retroflex lateral flap ( ), and a fricative trill , though the frication on the latter is variable. Voiced obstruents may be prenasaliz ...
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