Do you swear like a sailor? Are you running low on bad words? Well, have I got a destination
for your bucket list: an island where every word can be a curse word.
It's vacation time. This year, forget old cathedrals or skyscraper cityscapes. You want
a real adventure. So you strap together an outrigger meticulously following ancient Oceanic
craftsmanship, and you set sail straight to the middle of who-knows-where in the South
Pacific. The place you land might be who-knows-where to YOU... ahem, to the locals it's Malaita,
one of the Solomon Islands.
You reach into your back pocket for that soggy South Seas phrasebook you hauled along with
you, but your sprinkles of French, Tahitian, Tongan and Samoan earn you
nothing but blank stares.
But clever people know exactly what to do when words fail: point and grunt. Nonverbal
communication. Within a day, you've mastered basic words for delicacies like pig guts (mmm!)
and words for basic needs like shelter and sleep. You're set. Or are you?
The next day you get really hungry. You work up the stomach to order more of those tender
pig guts. Your newfound hosts nod with understanding. Clearly, if eyes could talk, these eyes would
be saying, "Yes! Come! Let us walk for miles through the hot jungle together!" And yours
would answer back, "Please! By all means!" So they lead you to a new village. Guess they
were out of pig guts and had to talk to their suppliers? No problem. I mean, surely THIS
face knows where you can find a bellyful of scrumptious entrails. Looks so... friendly!
Hhh, here goes. "Oge 'eboo?" GASP!
My friend, what did you do?
Alright, clearly you crossed a line.
Fortunately, you're subscribed to NativLang. We're like insurance for your linguistic emergencies.
And double fortunately, you're not the first clueless stranger to wash up on these shores.
Back in the 1960s, anthropologist Roger Keesing lived with the Kwaio. Oh yeah, these are the
Kwaio. Say hi! And they speak, uh, well, Kwaio.
Keesing uncovered something strange about their language. See, the Kwaio really respect
their ancestors. There's a whole respect system. You might call it pig slaughtering. They call
it fo'ota, "offering". When important elders die, they have a chance to become a super-ancestor,
an adalo. And that's amazing because then your adult grandchildren or great-grandchildren
have to raise fo'ota pigs to sacrifice in your name. Well, not exactly in your name.
See, that's the thing. The root word in the adalo's name can become abu, taboo.
If the adalo's descendants decide to fa'aabua (enforce this taboo), it becomes offensive
to utter that word in their presence. How dare you! If anyone ever wants to talk about
you or your fo'ota pig, they have to use your fo'ota name, a sacred nickname for the adalo.
Got it? Well if that's too simple and you're wishing Kwaio etiquette had, like, more nuanced,
complicated layers than this, you win! Because those fo'ota nicknames that people use to
honor the dead without violating the taboo, well, sometimes those also become taboo. And
now the pig needs a new nickname for the taboo nickname that it needed because the original
name was taboo.
Hhh. The result is that the Kwaio have some mad serious taboos going on, especially since
most Kwaio names are made up of pretty useful, basic words. Back in his day, Keesing noticed
that "fight", "fish" and "money" were among the top five words used in both male and female
names. And this one time, on a walk over to a new village, his Kwaio hosts nonchalantly
warned him, "Oh, by the way, while we're there, don't ever say folia, xu 'i or ele." And "ele",
that's the word for fire!
When you break a taboo and you're face-to-face with those grim looks from the village elders,
there's only one thing to do. Set things straight. The ghost of Kwaio past demands a sacrificial
pig for your insolence. But, should you be short on pigs, a little cash could settle
this just fine.
Surely if they're living on an island but tabooing words like fish, they still need
some way to talk about the fish. So how do they replace taboo words?
Well, sometimes they tweak the pronunciation until it just sounds different enough, like
changing the word for "dry" from 'age to 'axe. Or they raid vocabulary from a nearby dialect.
That's how fire, ele, got replaced by dunga, the West Kwaio word for fire. There are even
whole descriptive runarounds, like 'afe "wife" becoming noni naa wane "a woman of a man".
But, typically, they switch it out for a word that means something similar. Similar enough.
Like "pig guts" going from oge 'eboo "stomach of pig" to 'ubule 'e boo "inside of pig".
And we're back to where this journey started: the pig guts. Precisely the info you needed
to avoid that cultural blunder. You know, the one where you demanded some food, walked
to the next town over and started cussing at the locals? Good job.
Kwaio's not alone here. It fits in with other Oceanic languages. So I guess don't be surprised
when you thumb through your Oceanic dictionary and see words crossed out, like, "Yeah, uhm,
don't say this anymore... it's taboo." But this brings up some linguistic questions.
How does this taboo on naming the dead fit in with taboo terms and curses and profanity
in other languages? Is "taboo" a wider, more general phenomenon? Also, if words are getting
replaced so often in Kwaio, does it change how fast languages like Kwaio
evolve over time?
So, some advice.
If you're traveling to the depths of Oceania, bring an up-to-date dictionary. Of course,
if you want to wing it, just carry around a lot pigs. Or money. Thanks for learning
with me, you're a real adalo! Stick around and subscribe for language.