(Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, p. 46.)
A special vocabulary for the generative organs and functions is
very widespread. Thus, in northwest Central Queensland, there is
both a decent and an indecent vocabulary for the sexual parts; in
Mitakoodi language, for instance, _me-ne_ may be used for the
vulva in the best aboriginal society, but _koon-ja_ and _pukkil_,
which are names for the same parts, are the most blackguardly
words known to the natives. (W. Roth, _Ethnological Studies Among
the Queensland Aborigines_, p. 184.) Among the Malays, _puki_ is
also a name for the vulva which it is very indecent to utter, and
it is only used in public by people under the influence of an
obsessive nervous disorder. (W. Gilman Ellis, "Latah," _Journal
of Mental Science_, Jan., 1897.) The Swahili women of Africa have
a private metaphorical language of their own, referring to sexual
matters (Zache, _Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 2-3, pp.
70 et seq.), and in Samoa, again, young girls have a euphemistic
name for the penis, _aualuma_, which is not that in common use
(_Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie_, 1899, Heft 1, p. 31); exactly the
same thing is found in Europe, to-day, and is sometimes more
marked among young peasant women than among those of better
social class, who often avoid, under all circumstances, the
necessity for using any definite name.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142