Category Archives: Pacific
Language Documentation Hiatus
My slow and erratic progress on documenting Numbami, the language I did fieldwork on in Papua New Guinea in 1976, suddenly gained traction on October 1, when I imported my old Numbami dictionary file into a new software package I … Continue reading
Filed under language, Papua New Guinea, publishing, scholarship
Alien Encounter at Mercury Bay, 1769
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 104-105: Most scholars believe that sailing canoes set off from the Society Isles, or the nearby Cook Islands, between A.D. 800 and 1200, … Continue reading
Filed under anglosphere, Britain, language, New Zealand, Pacific, Polynesia
Cook’s Endeavour: Victualled, Flogged, & Pickled
From: Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by Tony Horwitz (Picador, 2002), pp. 16-17, 28-29: ON MY FIRST night aboard the replica Endeavour, I sat down with my watchmates to a dinner advertised on galley blackboard … Continue reading
Legend of Sens-Pas-King in Kamtok & Tok Pisin
From West African Pidgin-English: A Descriptive Linguistic Analysis with Texts and Glossary from the Cameroon Area, by Gilbert Donald Schneider (Athens, Ohio, 1966), pp. 177-179. I have followed Schneider’s spelling of Kamtok (except for collapsing mid vowel distinctions) and his … Continue reading
Filed under anglosphere, Cameroon, language, Papua New Guinea
Varieties of Kamtok (vs. Tok Pisin)
From West African Pidgin-English: A Descriptive Linguistic Analysis with Texts and Glossary from the Cameroon Area, by Gilbert Donald Schneider (Athens, Ohio, 1966), pp. 226-229. Each English phrase is translated into three versions: a. anglicized Kamtok, b. “broad” Kamtok, and … Continue reading
Filed under anglosphere, Cameroon, language, Papua New Guinea
Guam: New Predator, New Prey
From Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, by Alan Burdick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 31: In simple ecological models, the relationship between a predator and its prey is straightforward, Malthusian. In the classic model, there are … Continue reading
The Zen of Ecological Niches
From Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion, by Alan Burdick (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), pp. 135-136: For Charles Elton and many of his successors, biological invasions were a way to probe and characterize the way that ecological … Continue reading
Blogging Sabbatical
I began blogging six years ago this month, in December 2003. Since then, I’ve published over 2,000 blogposts, most of them excerpts from books I was reading. But the number of posts has declined each year—from over 550 in 2004 … Continue reading
Filed under blogging, language, Papua New Guinea, scholarship
Among the Spice Island Sago-eaters
From The Spice Islands Voyage: The Quest for Alfred Wallace, the Man Who Shared Darwin’s Discovery of Evolution, by Tim Severin (Carroll & Graf, 1997), pp. 142-144: More than a century before Wallace‘s visit, the people of Gorong were still … Continue reading
Filed under food, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, travel
Japanese Soldier Ethnographer in Indonesia, 1944-45
From: Peter T. Suzuki and Reiko Watanabe Reiger (2003), A Japanese Soldier’s Ethnography of Molu Island (Tanimbar): Ken Sasaki’s Account (1944-1945), Archipel 66: 161-199 (doi: 10.3406/arch.2003.3789). Moru Shima Ki: An Account of Molu Island by Ken Sasaki Following is a … Continue reading
Filed under food, Indonesia, Japan, language, Papua New Guinea, scholarship, war
