Fijian-English Dictionary - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

FIJIAN - ENGLISH DICTIONARY R. GATTY
BRIEF NOTES ON THE LANGUAGE
I have wanted to write this book as a dictionary with very little grammar, syntax or other formal aspects
of language that might be boring to read. Al Schutz’s The Fijian Language covers those aspects
only, exhaustively and exhaustingly in something like a thousand pages. (Univ. of Hawaii, 1985.)
Originally Fijian had no written language and spelling has varied considerably since writing was introduced.
There have been differences as to how words or letters should be combined or separated – such as e
daidai or edaidai (meaning “today”). The word for “the knife” has been seen as nai sele or na i sele or na
isele. That little letter “i” transforms the root-word of the verb sele into a noun. On 11 March, 2008, the
Fiji Cabinet has determined that all should follow a newly imposed Government system, and I try to
oblige, reluctantly. Along with imposing a few other rules, they insist we attach that little “i” to the noun.
Thus na isele is “correct” by Cabinet decision.
Government officials are trying to enforce rules of spelling that differ from common practice. Teachers,
most of all, resist the change. I believe writers of dictionaries should follow what people do, as the people
write and like to read, rather than trying to dictate a scheme for “proper” spelling. George Bernard Shaw
tried to rationalise English spelling with absolutely no success.
Fijians’ compound words are made up from simple words but it has not always been clear if they are to
be written joined together as one word or to be separated by a space. To make things easier for the novice,
I have sometimes placed spaces between the little component words, or in a few cases I have used a hyphen
to separate them. It will be easier for foreigners to follow the meaningful parts. But in fact, Fijians
virtually never use a hyphen, and most often run words together when they write. Some Fijians may find
my hyphens annoying, and my spacing of words to be awkward. My apologies for that.
A problem arises with the alphabetic arrangement. Readers may have to search about to find the word
they want. I tend to put compound words close to the root-word that is their base, rather then in strict alphabetical
order.
Glottal stops may replace “t” or “k” in some areas but locals are not much bothered by this. In Fiji we
are accustomed to the fact the the “v” of mainland Fiji is likely to be replaced in Lau by an “f”, and a “b”
replaced by a “p” and a “t” replaced by a “j”, these changes being an influence of Tonga. In the western
part of Viti Levu, the “d” might be replaced by a “t”. We take that in our stride because in Fijian language,
unlike English, it is the vowels mainly that give meaning to a word, not the consonants.
Some teachers of Fijian language have thought it useful to invent Fijian words for the vocabulary of
formal grammar. Abaca (pronounced “Ambatha”) refers to the ABCs, the alphabet. A sentence is referred
to as a yatuvosa; a letter of the alphabet is matanivola, a capital letter is a matanivola levu, while a
lower case is matanivola lailai. A full stop (a “period” in USA) is digo, a comma koma, a colon koloni, a
question mark a cegu taro, and ikovu a bracket. A noun is a nauni, a kilanauni an adjective, a root-form or
verb is vu, but a vuwale the intransitive form of a verb, and dewa indicates the transitive form of a verb. A
prefix is ikuri liu. An acute accent as itoqa cabe and a grave accent might be itoqa siro. Et cetera will
appear as kei na so tale. A number of these words are known to very few Fijians and it would seem to me
much simpler just to use the English expressions without creating new Fijian words for them.
Fijian language as spoken today is a modern Anglicised Fijian, because the context of Fijian life today
corresponds closely to the European context of schools, and sports, and jobs and urban life in a money
economy. That is remote from village life that was more the context of my youth. So many youngsters
today are susu madrai, literally raised on European bread in the urban context, and know little of village
culture or their own heritage. Many have never visited the village of their father and a fair percentage
have never been “written down” as belonging to a certain tribe, clan, and village. A relationship to the
parental village is often no longer relevant. It can even be an unwanted burden. Mixed marriages, with
Europeans, Indians, Chinese and Polynesians lend to this trend, and there has been an enormous amount of
inter-breeding over the last couple of centuries. That may well bode well for future of Fiji society to give
stability with more homogeneity. But what evolves as Fiian language become a polyglot mixture of ancient
Austronesian, Proto-Central Pacific language of the Fiji, Samoa, Tonga complex, indigenous Melanesian,
with later Polynesian, and European overlay and a few Hindi words thrown in. The loan words
from English are so many and so obvious that I omit most of them from this dictionary. I try to retain the
original or ancient root-words, many that go back to Proto-Polynesian sources. In a few cases I show the
Tongan or Samoan cognates. It is the earlier, indigenous cultures that interest me, far more than the modern
aspects.
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