THE LINGUISTIC SITUATION ON TRISTAN DA CUNHA

ARNE ZETTERSTEN

The isolated Community on Tristan da Cunha has never ceased to fas-cinate the worid. The disastrous volcanic eruption in 1961, which forcedthe inhabitants to leave their homes, was the starting-point for a series ofnewspaper Interviews and radio and television programmes, which madethe Situation of the islanders even more widely known. Several booksabout life and conditions on Tristan da Cunha have been written byOutsiders', who for some reason or other spent sonie time on the island.The Norwegian Scientific Expedition to Tristan, da Cunha 1937-1938resulted in more than fifty publications on a variety of topics such svolcanology, sociology, ornithology, etc. Considering this, it is rathersurprising that practically nothing has been written about the languagespoken on Tristan. Only stray remarks on the peculiar pronunciationcan be found in some of the books referred to above.1

Languages spoken in isolated communities are, indeed, of very greatinterest. The special conditions, under which the inhabitants on Tristanda Cunha lived for about 150 years, are strongly reminiscent of life onPitcairn Island in the South Seas. The linguistic Situation, however, isentirely different. The Pitcairnese language, spoken by the descendantsof the mutineers of the Bounty, is a kind of pidgin a mixture of Englishand Tahitian.2 The language spoken on Tristan da Cunha, on the other1

See K. M. Barrow, Three Years in Tristan da Cunha (1910), 11; H. Deherain, DansV Atiantique (1912), 127; W. Robert Foran, "Tristan da Cunha, Isles of Contentment",The National Geographie Magazine, 74 (1938), 673; J. Brander, Tristan da Cunha1506-1902 (1940), 258; P. A. Munch, Sociology of Tristan da Cunha (= Norw. Sc.Exp., No. 13) (1945), 314; Martin Holdgate, Mountains in the Sea (1958), 36; R.Svensson, Tristan da Cunha South Atlantic (1965), 22. In this paper the abbreviationNorw. Sc. Exp. is used for the Results ofthe Norwegian Scientific Expedition to Tristanda Cunha 1937-1938. I take the opportunity here to thank Professor RandolphQuirk, London, and Docent Jan Svartvik, Gteborg, for helping me to gain accessto the tape-recorded material of the dialect spoken on Tristan da Cunha.2 The language spoken on Pitcairn Island has been described by A.S.C. ROSS in The

Pitcairnese Language (1964).

120 ARNE ZETTERSTEN- i

hand, has been English ever since the first settlement in the early nine-teenth Century, although it has been modified in various ways under theinfluence of the different idiolects or micro-dialects of the settlers. Inthe case of Pitcairnese one can follow the birth of a nevv language fromits earliest stages.3 The language spoken on Tristan da Cunha, on theother hand, is a dialect of British English in which the contributions tothe spoken language by the early settlers cannot be distinguished withany certainty. In one field, however, the similarities are apparent. Theplace-names on both islands are pristine, i.e. names whose origin andcreation are known.4

The colony on Tristan da Cunha dates back to 1816, when the Islandwas used s a British base. Three men of the original garrison wereallowed to remain on the island and one of thern, Corporal William Glassfrom Kelso, was to become the leader of the Tristan colony during thefirst half of the Century. He was married to a coloured woman fromCape Town. The two other men were stonemasons from Plyrnouth,Samuel Burnell and John Nankivel. In the course of the Century mostof the newcomers to the island were shipwrecked sailors. The mostnotable change in population was caused by the Immigration of five co-loured women from St. Helena in 1827. They married the five bachelorswho had been living on the island together with two married couples.It is clear that the local dialect on Tristan acquired its peculiar characterduring that Century and it is not without interest to study a list of theancestors5 of the present population amounting to about 250 people:

Name Place of birth ArrivalWilliam Glass Kelso, Scotland 1816Maria Magdalena Glass, nee Leenders Cape Town 1816Alexander Cotton (English) [Unknown] 1821Thomas Swain Hastings 1826Maria Cotton, nee Williams St. Helena 1827Sarah Swain, nee Williams St. Helena 1827Mary Green, nee Williams St. Helena 1827Peter William Green (Pieter Willem Groen) Katwijk, Holland 1836Rogers New England 18363 See ROSS, op.cif., 11.

4 This term was coined by ROSS, who regards a place-name s pristine "if, and only

if, we are cognisant of the actual act of its creation" (Ross, "Notes on some 'pristine'place-names of Pitcairn Island*', Acta Salamanticensia, Filosofia y Lettras, XI, (1958),333.5 See Munch, op. dt., 47, and Svensson, op. cit., 22.

THE LINGUISTIC SITUATION ON TRISTAN DA CUNHA 121

Andrew Hagen New England 1849Susannah Swain, noe Philips St. Helena 1863Andrea Repetto Genoa 1892Gaetano Lavarello Genoa 1892Elizabeth Glass, nee Smith (Anglo-Irish) Kilkenny 1908Agnes Rogers, nee Smith (Anglo-Irish) Cape Town 1908The accepted leader of the Community after William Glass's death in 1853was Peter Green, who died in 1902. These two men thus governed theCommunity and led the development of the island for a whole Century.In spite of the fact that several nationalities were represented among thepeople who stayed on the island, including Dutchmen, Italians and Scan-dinavians, besides the British and the Americans, the common languagewas always English, s can be seen from the letters written in English byPeter Green and Andrea Repetto.6 A few American whalers settled onthe island during the first half of the Century and may have exerted someinfluence on the language. It was sufficient at least for Erwin H. Dodgson,the clergyman and schoolmaster of Tristan da Cunha, to write in a letterto the Gospel Missionary in 1882 that "all the people here speak Englishslightly Yankeefied s they do a good deal of trade with Yankeewhalers".7 The whale trade, however, soon took other directions. Thelast American whaler to settle on Tristan da Cunha was Joseph Beetham,who arrived about 1866.

In 1961, after the evacuation of the population of Tristan, recordingsof the speech of the Tristan people were made by members of UniversityCollege, London, in co-operation with the British Broadcasting Cor-poration. Through the kindness of Professor Randolph Quirk I havegained access to this material. Before the Tristans returned home in1963 other recordings were made by Miss Katherine Patch of the Pho-netics Department, University of Edinburgh. Under the direction ofProfessor Abercrombie work i s now being done on the phonology of thedialect.

It is, indeed, fortunate that these recordings were made in time. Thearchaic peculiarities are best preserved among people of the older gen-eration. Naturally the young people adapted themselves more easily toconditions in England and were open to the influence of other people,teachers, the radio, etc. The details characterizing the dialect of Tristanda Cunha, which I mention below, are representative of people of mature

v

6 See Brander, op. cit., 237-38, and Deherain, op. cit., 126.

7 See Brander, op.

122 ARNE ZETTERSTENf

or old age. I found the following informants particularly useful: WilliRepetto (59), Sidney Glass (51), Gordon Glass (63), Alfred Glass (72),Mary Swain (64), Robert Lavarello (64), and Arthur Repetto (62).

The following features in the phonology are the most striking.Consonants: The frequent use of the glottal stop, particularly s an

allophone of /t/; sometimes an intrusive /h/ initially in words like up,egg; the general dropping of A's initially; /f, v/ for RP /, /; /igk/ for/irj/ in everything, morning, but otherwise generally unstressed /in/ for/ii)/ in pres. participles; and the use of/w/ for RP /v/.

Vowels and diphthongs: A tendency to lengthen certain vowels canbe observed. Words like dog, donkey, across, pot, cqffee, long, Job, havea characteristic lengthened vowel. In square, there, hair, etc., [e:s] is usedfor RP [es], It is also worth mentioning that /aj/ infine, etc., has a back,rounded initial element, while /oj/ in boil, etc., has a closer initial elementthan is found in RP.

In the morphology and syntax the following details may be mentioned:Fs, you's, we's, they's are used in the present tense of be, s well s wewas, etc., in the preterite. "How you is?" is the Standard phrase for"How are you?", the answer being "Fs fine, thanks".8 The formation oftenses is sometimes strnge. "How many minutes is they been in?",9 and"When you done went"10 for "When you have gone" are examples ofphrases peculiar to the dialect. Double negatives are frequent, too, andphrases like "we's best walk", "them hardies" for "those hardies", and"he, she don't" for "doesn't", can also be observed.

The vocabulary provides many interesting details. A great many ofthe words used on the island are words whose form and meaning arethe result of special local conditions. Words like Fleshie's tea, molly-bags,and tassel-mats, etc., are highly specialized and are unlikely to be foundin any dictionary. Below I have chosen five groups of words in order togive a few examples of the special Tristan vocabulary r11

A. CLOTHES:Blood-shirt: an old jacket or shirt made of canvas used when the is-landers kill a sheep or shoot wild cattle. Munch, 92.Cappie: a head-covering worn by girls. It is probably a loan-wordfrom Afrikaans, perhaps introduced by the Boer woman, Maria Mag-

8 On these phrases see Holdgate, op. cit., 36.

9 See A.B. Crawford, / Went to Tristan (1941), 119.

10 See Holdgate, op. cit., 36.

11 These words are found either in the tape-recordings or in the books by Barrow,

Crawford, F. Wild (Shackletorfs Last Voyage, 1923), Holdgate, and in the variousvolumes of Results ofthe Norwegian Scientific Expedition.

THE LINGUISTIC SITUATION ON TRISTAN DA CUNHA 123

dalena Leenders, who arrived in 1816. She was the first woman tosettle on Tristan (cf. Munch, 48, 90).

B. FOOD:12Brady: This word occurs in pumkin brady and cabbage brady whichare boiled dishes mixed with meat.Fannie's tea, Fancy tea: boiled water and milk.Fleshie's tea or Island tea: tliis is a tea substitute based on one ofthe wild plants, Chenopodiwn tomentoswn.

C. DAILY WORK:Kraal: small enclosure in which the sheep are penned for the night.Also called lamb-house which indicates that it jnay earlier have beena roofed hut. Cf. Munch, 132 and Barrow, 37. The word kr aal is aloanword from Afrikaans. See OED, s.v. kraal (< Colonial Du. kraai),Mollybags: bags in which the Tristan mollymawks are carried homeafter being skinned. See Y. Hagen, Birds of Tristan da Cimha ( Norw.Sc. Exp., No. 20) (1952), 67.Tassel-mats: mats made of the yellow plumes of the penguins. Tassel