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Was the didgeridoo a bit of Irish to the Aborigines?

By Daniel Dasey

National Museum Opening-didgered. Pic by Aboriginal photographer Wayne Quilliam.

23 June 2002 - Faith and begorrah! The linguistic origins of Australia's most iconic musical instrument, the didgeridoo, have been called into question with an academic claiming the name is of Irish derivation rather than from an Aboriginal dialect.

Flinders University PhD student Dymphna Lonergan suggests the term may have its roots in an old Irish and Scottish expression meaning black trumpeter or horn blower.

She also suspects an Irish influence on other Australian terms.

"The response has been amazing," Ms Lonergan said. "When I go through my theory people are generally accepting and find it convincing."

Ms Lonergan, whose PhD is on the history of the Irish language in Australia, said she investigated the linguistic origins of a host of terms proposed by a colleague in Sydney. While most proved unconnected to Gaelic, her suspicions were aroused by didgeridoo.

She found the first appearance of the word didgeridoo in Australian dictionaries occurred in 1919 in the Australian National Dictionary.

The word is not in any Aboriginal dialect and linguists have long suspected the word is imitative of the sound made by a didgeridoo. But Ms Lonergan said an experiment she conducted asking subjects to make the sound of the instrument yielded words full of vowels starting with the letter "b" or "m". No subjects made the sound didgeridoo.

She instead believes the word is derived from the Irish and Scottish Gaelic term dudaire, which is is pronounced dooderreh or doodjerra and means a pipe smoker, a nosey person or a trumpeter or horn blower.

The Gaelic term for black is dubh, pronounced duv or do. In combination, the terms produce doodjerra doo.

Ms Lonergan said she suspected early immigrants drew on their native tongues to describe their new country and believes other common Australian terms may also have Gaelic origins.

The term for Australian wild horses, brumbies, resembles an old Gaelic plural term for young horses, brumaigh, pronounced brummy.

Similarly, the expression to crack on to, where young people chat up members of the opposite sex, resembles the Irish expression craiceann, a slang expression for sexual intercourse.

Even the humble chook may have an Irish link. The word resembles the Gaelic term tiuc, meaning "come here". Ms Lonergan can picture early Irish settlers calling "tiuc, tiuc" to their hens.

Source: The Sun-Herald

related links :

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  13 March, 2003 - BBC - Manyallaluk, Northern Territory, Australia - The Didgeridoo is both the cultural icon of Aboriginal Australia and a keepsake for thousands of tourists each year.
• Aussies' broken rules
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• Didgeridoo popularity cuts both ways
  19 December, 2002 - As demand grows, so too does poaching for the prized didgeridoo timber on traditional Aboriginal land, particularly in the Northern Territory, the Top End, where it's known more as the "yedaki". Now Aboriginal leaders are looking at ways to wrest back some control of their cultural icon.
• Diplomatic bagging for Irish MP who provoked motion commotion
  April 28, 2001- When it comes to Australia and matters of international diplomacy, don't mention the 't' word - 'treaty'. Irish MP Michael Higgins did recently, but he didn't quite get away with it.
• Ancient didgeridoo adopted by the digital generation
  June 23, 2002 - For aborigines, the music of the didgeridoo is less an art in itself than a conduit to Dreamtime, the ongoing creation story that is the center of Aboriginal ritual and myth. For Goma, the challenge was fitting the ritualistic, transcendent possibilities of the instrument to his own particular background.
• Didgeridoo & Co Magazine carrys news and dates for Didgeridoo lovers in Europe. English version. German version

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