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Language study for New Guinea students
This Monograph, reprinted from Oceania, Vol. XI, No. i, pp. 40-74, contains the substance of three lectures given at my request by Dr. Capell in March of this year to a group of Administrative Officers and Missionaries. Most persons engaged in administrative and missionary work in Papua and New Guinea require, at least some knowledge of phonetics and some facility of writing down the sounds they hear, if only for the purpose of recording names of individuals and places or native terms. In addition, Missionaries must learn the native languages if their teaching is to be understood.
Dr. CapeU, who, incidentally, is our leading authority on Melanesian linguistics, gives in Part I an introduction to the phonetics which will suffice for the above needs, and in Parts II and III provides a general background and survey of the general features and the grammatical structures of the non-Melanesian (Papuan) and Melanesian languages of the region. The reader who becomes familiar with these two parts will have some idea of what to expect when he commences his study of a particular language. The map with its key shows the distribution of the types of languages in the Mandated Territory as far as is known. In Part IV Dr. Capell has added brief notes on learning a native language.
I commend this Monograph to ah whose work takes them amongst Papuans and Melanesians, as well as to aU who are interested in the languages of these peoples. Readers wiU also find useful Dr. Capell's article, " The Structure of the Oceanic Languages," Oceania, Vol. Ill, No. 4, pp. 418-434.
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