The late Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) was an amateur linguist as well as an author of exotic adventure tales set in Africa, on Mars, and at the Earth's core. In his "Tarzan of the Apes" books, he invented and described two different imaginary languages for his characters, giving many specific words of each. One was the "Language of the Apes," spoken by the "Gray Apes" (Australopithecines? Homo habilis?) who brought up the orphaned young Lord Greystoke as Tarzan, "White-Skin," but also understood by most other denizens of the African jungle. The other was the language of the "pithecanthropi" of the dinosaur-haunted Central African "lost land of Pal-ul-don" in what would now be southern Zaire or northeastern Angola.
Burroughs filled Africa with many "lost" races, civilizations, and cities in his Tarzan books. In Tarzan the Terrible (1921), Burroughs created a whole African "lost world" in Pal-ul-don, the"Land of Men," his African answer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's South American Lost World. Sealed off from the outer world by almost impassable deserts and swamps, Pal-ul-don preserved a prehistoric fauna long extinct in the outer world: Triceratops-like dinosaurs, saber-toothed tigers, and no less than three distinct races of primitive hominids, whom Burroughs called "pithecanthropi," after Pithecanthropus erectus, the early 20th century name for Homo erectus.
Pal-ul-don's three races or species of "pithecanthropi," sharing Pal-ul-don with the Triceratops-like dinosaurian "gryf," were the "Ho-don" ("White Men"), the "Waz-don" ("Black Men"), and the "Tor-o-don"("Beastlike Men"). All three races of "pithecanthropi" were distinguished from Homo sapiens by possessing prehensile tails and feet with thumb-like opposable big toes. Here, obviously, Burroughs was oblivious to the fact that no hominids ever had tails: the Australopithecines, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neandertalensis were all tailless. The most nearly human Ho-don, living in cities on a roughly Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, or Mayan cultural level, have hairless bodies and white skins, combined with tails and thumb-like opposable big toes. The somewhat more primitive, cliff-dwelling Waz-don have bodies entirely covered ape-fashion with black hair. The gigantic, far more brutish and subhuman Tor-o-don, with bodies covered with reddish-brown hair, are reminiscent of mid and late 20th century accounts of the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, and Yeti.. The Tor-o-don, incidentally, have learned to "tame" and even ride the gryf.
Burroughs devised an imaginary Pal-ul-don language for his Ho-don and Waz-don, rivaling the "Language of the Apes" of his earlier Tarzan books. He even included a brief Pal-ul-don glossary at the end of Tarzan the Terrible, listing and defining a couple of dozen Pal-ul-don words from a "light," ab "boy," ad "three," and an "spear" to waz "black," xot "one thousand," yo "friend" and za "girl." From “conversations with Lord Greystoke and from his notes " Burroughs began the glossary,
"there have been gleaned a number of interesting items relative to the language and customs of the inhabitants of Pal-ul-don that are not brought out in the story." For the "benefit of those who may care to delve into the derivation of the proper names used in the text, and thus obtain some slight insight into the language of the race,"
he "appended an incomplete glossary taken from some of Lord Greystoke's notes."
A linguistic "point of particular interest," Burroughs noted, lay in
"the fact that the names of all male hairless pithecanthropi" of Pal-ul-don "begin with a consonant, have an even number of syllables, and end with a consonant, while the names of the females of the same species begin with a vowel, have an odd number of syllables, and end with a vowel". On the other hand, "the names of the male hairy black pithecanthropi while having an even number of syllables begin with a vowel and end with a consonant; while the females of this species have an odd number of syllables in their names which begin always with a consonant and end with a vowel."
Burroughs'/"Lord Greystoke's" Pal-ul-don vocabulary consisted mostly of nouns, proper names, adjectives, numerals, and a few verbs, along with the grammatical particles or connectives e "where," jad "the," o "like, similar," and ul "of." Jad "the" and ul "of" were used exactly like their English equivalents. That is true likewise of o "like, similar," as in O-lo-a "Like-star-light" and Tor-o-don "Beast-like-man." As in English, the "of" relation can be expressed either by simple juxtaposition or by the use of a preposition, as in A-lur "City of Light" versus Pal-ul-don "Land of Men." Burroughs listed no pronouns, unless we count e "where" as a relative pronoun, so we have no idea of how he imagined his "pithecanthopi" said "I, me, you, we, he, she, they, this, that, who?, what?" We get the impression of a perhaps somewhat irregular verb conjugation from lav "run or running" but so "eat," sod "eaten, sog "eating," son "ate." The plural of nouns can be indicated by reduplicating the first consonant: d'don (pronounced dadon) "men," k'kor (pronounced kakor) "gorges" as plurals of don "man," kor "gorge," according to a footnote in the story itself.
The Pal-ul-don numerals bring out Burroughs' linguistic amateurism, combining extremely primitive lower numbers with extremely sophisticated higher ones. We get en 1, enen 2 (1+1), ad 3, aden 4 (3+1), adenen 5 (3+1+1), adad 6 (3+3), adaden 7 (3+3+1), adenaden 8 (3+1+3+1), and adadad 9 (3+3+3)-but then also on (10), ton (20), fur (30), ged (40), het (50), og (60), ed (70), et (80), od (90), san (100), and xot (1,000). We get no indication, incidentally, of how to pronounce the x in xot - did Burroughs intend it to be pronounced "ks" as in "axe, extra," "gz" as in "exact," "z" as in "Xerxes, Xerox, xenophobia, xylophone," "sh" as in Brazilian "Xingú," like the Scottish "ch" in "loch" or German "ch" in "Buch" as in the Greek, Russian, and International Phonetic Alphabets, or like a "click" sound as in the usual transcription of Zulu and Xhosa? As I just said, it's these Pal-ul-don numbers that bring out his linguistic amateurism. A language that uses en 1, enen 2 (1+1), ad 3, aden 4 (3+1), adenen 5 (3+1+1), and adad 6 (3+3) would be very unlikely to also use ton (20), fur (30), ged (40), het (50), og (60), ed (70), et (80), od (90), san (100), and xot (1,000). Some Australian Aboriginal and Native South American languages are said to simply count "1, 2, many," with all numbers 3 or higher simply called "many"-but I've never heard of such languages using higher-number words comparable to the Pal-ul-don og (60), ed (70), et (80), od (90), san (100), and xot (1,000)!
Burroughs' Pal-ul-don number en "1," incidentally, resembles the German "ein" and Greek "hen," either or both of which probably suggested it to him. Likewise his ul "of" is probably an unconscious echo of the Arabic al-, el- "the," often used with the meaning "of" in a common Arabic construction, as in _ras al-kalb_ "head of the dog, dog's head," literally "head the-dog," or kitâb al-malik, "the king's book, book of the king," literally "book the-king." While Arabic al-kalb, al-malik by themselves simply mean "the dog, the king," coming immediately after another noun they mean rather "of the dog, of the king." Burroughs need not have actually known any Arabic to have been subconsciously influenced by seeing Arabic al-, el-, or ul- thus used in countless English-language books and magazine or newspaper articles dealing with Arabic, Islâmic, or Middle Eastern topics. Pastar "father," as in Pastar -ul-Ved, "Father of Mountains," Pal-ul-don's highest peak, is an obvious echo of the Latin and Greek pater. Gryf "Triceratops" is almost certainly derived from "griffin/gryphon." Otherwise, Burroughs' Pal-ul-don words seem largely arbitrary inventions, though a few display an unconscious natural psychological sound-symbolism, as el "grace, graceful," guru "terrible," and lul "water," with a smooth liquid "l" suggesting "soft, pretty, gentle, graceful, liquid, flowing" versus a rough rasped or trilled vibrant "r" suggesting "angry, aggressive, dangerous, frightful, terrible, horrible." Again, den "tree," ta "tall," and ma "child" suggest, probably by sheer coincidence, the very ancient "Proto-World" words *ta, *da, *te, *de, *tik, *dek "tree, stick, erect, standing, finger, pointing, counting, one"and *mak, *mik "child, small" postulated by some linguists (Morris Swadesh, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, Joseph H. Greenberg, Merritt Ruhlen, etc.) for our very earliest Homo sapiens ancestors coming into Eurasia from Africa some 60,000 or so years ago to supplant the Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and other archaic hominids.
by: "T. Peter Park"
Sun Sep 12, 2004
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