When we talk about avoidance speech, the first thing that comes to mind is the language one might use when referring to the deceased, or things related to the deceased. After all, in some cultures, they might believe that a deceased person’s soul would become a malevolent entity, and death is perhaps the greatest misfortune one would encounter in their life.

As a result, during a mourning period following a passing of a loved one, speakers of certain languages are forbidden from referring to the deceased person by name. Instead, a more generic term may be used to refer to the deceased. However, in some languages, this taboo might also extend to anything that even sounds similar to the deceased’s given name. This avoidance of referring to someone or things related to them by their names, instead preferring a different word to refer to them, is what avoidance speech essentially is. In this specific case, this avoidance speech is called the taboo on naming the dead.

Another type of avoidance speech applies to kinship systems. In languages where avoidance speech is used to refer to certain relatives, such phenomena are called mother-in-law languages. A speaker might use a different register to converse or refer to their in-laws, for example. Such avoidance might extend beyond language, and reach into behaviour as well. For instance, a Dyirbal man and his mother-in-law may not directly talk to each other, and cannot even make eye contact at all. A workaround is to refer to each other in third-person. Prominent examples of mother-in-law languages and taboo on naming the dead can be found in the indigenous languages of Australia like Guugu-Yimithirr.

But on the island of New Guinea, there exists a type of avoidance speech that is not used for things related to people. Instead, this is used in proximity to a certain plant, during a certain period. This type of avoidance speech is found almost exclusively to the New Guinea Highlands, where languages like Kalam, Kewa, and Melpa, which has around 100 000 native speakers. Collectively, this category of avoidance speech is known as the pandanus languages.

The word “pandanus” derives from the plant genus Pandanus, a palm-like plant which can be found in Malaysia, Madagascar, and across the Pacific. From this genus, we also find the pandan plant, from which a rather unique fragrance is extracted, and used in desserts. The leaves may also be used as food packaging.

But in New Guinea, the type of Pandanus found and grown there generally belong to the species called Pandanus julianettii, more commonly referred to as “karuka”. To the pandanus languages, the karuka nut is an important food crop, and the people who depend on karuka nuts would want this crop to grow well, to yield a great harvest. Some people groups believed that the use of ordinary language would hurt the growth and quality of the karuka plant, and so, during harvest season, would avoid using ordinary language in the proximity of those very plants. Perhaps a more important thing to note here, is that in some villages, these karuka plants do not really grow in ordinary places, necessitating expeditions to harvest these nuts.

This culminates in the creation of an alternative vocabulary, leading to the term “pandanus language”, as this is the register of speech one would use only in the proximity of the karuka plant during harvest season (with other extensions depending on language). Sometimes, entirely new words are used in the pandanus register, while in other cases, an existing word in a normal register would adopt another meaning in the pandanus register. Some forms may also overlap with the aforementioned types of avoidance speech, where a more generic word would be preferentially used in the avoidance register. So to say “to walk”, “to run”, “to swim”, and so on, using the avoidance register, one might say “to travel” or “to go”. However, while different words are used in the pandanus register, the grammars may or may not differ depending on the language.

There are at least seven languages on New Guinea that have been documented to have some sort of pandanus register, belonging to several language families. For instance, the Kewa language is part of the Engan language family, Kalam and Kobon belong to the Madang language family, and the Taiap language is part of the Torricelli language family. But as these languages are spoken in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, this might allude to the geographical ranges of the karuka plant as well.

Kewa is one of the more well-documented pandanus languages mentioned here, with most of its work being done by the linguist Karl Franklin in the 1970s. Here, we see examples of the various patterns in which pandanus register words are formed, such as the use of the word palaa in place of repena to mean “tree” and “fire” in the pandanus register. Another example is yoyo, a more semantically generic word used to refer to anything that hangs from the human body, like an ear or hair. Keraa is normally used to refer to a bush, but in the pandanus register, would mean any type of winged thing. In the pandanus register, a bird, aeroplane, and a fly would be called keraa.

Franklin also noted that the pandanus register has a more simplified grammar than standard Kewa as well. Verbal inflections may be different, and verb endings in the pandanus register would lack the type where something is done for a beneficiary, usually the speaker.

Kalam is also another language where its pandanus register has been extensively documented. Here, while the grammar remains largely the same, there is a pandanus register word for almost all of its ordinary words. This has been noted by the linguist Andrew Pawley, who has documented the various features of the Kalam language. There are also various words which are taboo in the pandanus register, and do not really have equivalents. Such affect vocabulary includes words pertaining to moisture, and words like “bitter”, “sour”, “hollow”, and “empty”. These words generally fall under the category of potential descriptors of the karuka nut that would hurt its quality or yield. Thus, out of superstition, these words are taboo in the pandanus register.

There are some extended use of the pandanus register in some languages as well, such as for hunting and travelling in the Huli language, and interestingly, eating and cooking cassowary for the Kalam language. It turns out that the Kalam people respect the cassowary, and would show this respect to the bird through using this type of avoidance speech, in addition to other respectful gestures or actions.

So these are the three broad types of avoidance speech observed in languages around the world. Some languages might adopt a combination of these types, such as the taboo on naming the dead and the mother-in-law languages commonly seen in the indigenous languages of Australia. We might have missed out on a special type of language register called a secret language, but I have written up a separate short essay covering that topic. Nevertheless, it is quite interesting to explore the different ways and reasons people use different registers of speech, which might sound drastically different from the standard way of speech in those languages.

Further reading

Franklin, K. J. (1972) ‘A ritual pandanus language of New Guinea’, Oceania, 43, pp. 66-76.

Franklin, K. J. & Stefaniw, R. (1992) ‘The ‘Pandanus languages’ of the Southern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea – a further report’, Culture change, language change – case studies from Melanesia, 1-6, Pacific Linguistics C, 120, Australian National University.

Lomas, G. (1988) ‘The Huli language of Papua New Guinea’, PhD Thesis, Macquarie University.

Pawley, A. (1992) ‘Kalam Pandanus Language: An Old New Guinea Experiment in Language Engineering’, The Language Game: Papers in Memory of Donald C. Laycock, Pacific Linguistics Series C, 110, Australian National University, pp. 313–334.