Тиви: язык и культура австралийских аборигенов

Isolate language spoken in Australia

Tiwi '/t//iː//w//i/ is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Tiwi people on the Tiwi Islands, within sight of the coast of northern Australia. It is one of about 10% of Australian languages still being frequently learned by children. Traditional Tiwi, spoken by people over the age of fifty by 2005, is a polysynthetic language. However, this grammatical complexity has been lost among younger generations. Tiwi has around one hundred nominals that can be incorporated into verbs, most of them quite different from the corresponding free forms. Tiwi has long been regarded as a language isolate due to its large scale of linguistic differences from other languages in the mainland Australia regions. However, recent research using historical linguistic techniques suggests that the Tiwi language might be under the Gunwinyguan family (a language family that consists of languages primarily spoken in North Central Australia).

The concept of ethnomedicine in the Tiwi community is built upon their existing social practices in utilization of nature's resources, and their cultural beliefs of nature's intricate connections with an individual's body in itself. The Tiwi members believed that the foods they hunt and gather in nature helps maintain their physical well being. Tiwi men and women participated in a relatively equal division of labour in their hunting gathering efforts, where they would hunt for "bush foods" such as fish, turtle eggs, mussels, yams, and mangrove worms. One of the theories in Tiwi medicine centres around the concept of tarni, which is considered by Tiwi speakers as the state of general "sickness". The term tarni was derived from Tiwi’s particular cultural belief of the sharp, pointed tip of yams, as they believed that these yams carried the tarni sickness. They believed that if pregnant women ate them, their sharp pointed tips would pierce the womb, which would release the sickness and kill the baby. The Tiwi community also uses plants for remedies and treatments for the common ailments that their members experience. For example, the pandanus is believed to be an ideal treatment for diarrhea, where the leaves are cut and the middle part is chewed and swallowed. If the leaves are cut from the centre of the plant, and are placed on the patient’s forehead for around two to three days, it is believed that this procedure can help alleviate headaches.