Piet Drabbe

Last updated
Piet Drabbe
Born
Petrus Drabbe

(1887-06-04)4 June 1887
DiedOctober 22, 1970(1970-10-22) (aged 83)
NationalityDutch
Occupation(s)Linguist, anthropologist, and missionary
Academic work
Main interests Papuan languages and ethnography
Notable worksHet leven van den Tanémbarees (1940)

Piet Drabbe (born Petrus Drabbe in Heino, Netherlands, June 4, 1887; died in Arnhem, Netherlands, October 27, 1970) was a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart who worked successively from 1912 to 1960 in the Philippines, the Tanimbar Islands, and on the southern coast of Dutch New Guinea, now the Indonesian province of Papua.

Contents

Biography

Born Petrus Drabbe in Heino, Netherlands on June 4, 1887, he was the son of a teacher. Piet Drabbe attended the seminary in Tilburg and took his monastic vows at the age of 19. In 1911, he was ordained a priest. Since his childhood, he had dreamed of becoming a missionary in New Guinea, but he did not realize his dream until decades later.

In 1912 he was sent to Lipa, Batangas, Philippines, but shortly afterwards his congregation decided to leave the diocese. Drabbe was transferred to the Tanimbar Archipelago in 1915, where he would stay for 20 years. Only in 1935 could he go to Dutch New Guinea, where his congregation had the entire southern coast as a mission field. He stayed there for 25 years and was forced to repatriate in 1960 after falling victim to severe malaria and dysentery in 1959. He died 10 years later in Arnhem, Netherlands at the age of 83.

Scientific research

Like the other priests of the Sacred Heart – including Petrus Vertenten, Jos van der Kolk, Henricus Geurtjens, and Jan Boelaars – Drabbe has conducted valuable linguistic and ethnological research. Het leven van den Tanémbarees (The life of the Tanimbarese), a lengthy monograph that appeared in 1940, continues to be one of the main sources on Tanimbar ethnography. Linguistics was also of great interest to Drabbe. Because of his talent for teaching and describing languages, he was appointed a "mission linguist" in New Guinea, which allowed him to extensively document various Papuan languages. He has thoroughly documented a number of languages and dialects of southern Dutch New Guinea. Petrus Drabbe's works remain the primary source for many languages of the southwestern coastal areas of New Guinea. [1] In 1962, he received a Zilveren Anjer (Silver Carnation) medal from Prince Bernhard for his many years of linguistic research.

Publications

Notes

  1. Foley 1986: 13

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder</span> Dutch missionary (1906–1995)

Petrus Josephus Zoetmulder S.J. was a Dutch expert in the Old Javanese language. He came from Utrecht and was associated with the Society of Jesus by 1925. He worked at Leiden University in the 1930s. His first work appeared in 1930 and he continued to write into the 1990s. He lived in Yogyakarta and was interred in the Jesuit necropolis at Muntilan, Java.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ekari language</span> Trans–New Guinea language of Indonesia

Ekari is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken by about 100,000 people in the Paniai lakes region of the Indonesian province of Central Papua, including the villages of Enarotali, Mapia and Moanemani. This makes it the second-most populous Papuan language in Indonesian New Guinea after Western Dani. Language use is vigorous. Documentation is quite limited.

Mark Durie is an Australian Anglican priest and a scholar in linguistics and theology. He is the founding director of the Institute for Spiritual Awareness, a Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a senior research fellow of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at the Melbourne School of Theology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bima</span> City in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

Bima is a city on the eastern coast of the island of Sumbawa in central Indonesia's province of West Nusa Tenggara. It is the largest city on the island of Sumbawa, with a population of 142,443 at the 2010 census and 155,140 at the 2020 census; the official estimate as at mid 2022 was 157,362. It is separate from the adjoining Regency of Bima which had a population of 520,444 according to the mid 2021 official estimates..

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Asmat–Kamrau languages</span>

The Asmat – Kamrau Bay languages are a family of a dozen Trans–New Guinea languages spoken by the Asmat and related peoples in southern Western New Guinea. They are believed to be a recent expansion along the south coast, as they are all closely related, and there is little differentiation in their pronouns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marind–Yaqai languages</span> Family of Papuan languages

The Marind–Yaqai (Marind–Yakhai) languages are a well established language family of Papuan languages, spoken by the Marind-anim. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Stephen Wurm and Malcolm Ross, and were established as part of the Anim branch of TNG by Timothy Usher.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Bird's Head languages</span> Families of Papuan languages

The South Bird's Head or South Doberai languages are three families of Papuan languages. They form part of the Trans–New Guinea languages in the classifications of Malcolm Ross (2005) and Timothy Usher (2020), though Pawley and Hammarström (2018) do not consider them to be part of Trans–New Guinea. However, according to Dryer (2022), based on a preliminary quantitative analysis of data from the ASJP database, South Bird's Head languages are likely to be a subgroup of Trans–New Guinea.

The Etna expedition (1858) was an early policy-oriented exploration of the then virtually unknown south and north coast of Dutch New Guinea, that can also be regarded as the second Dutch scientific expedition to the main island of New Guinea since 1828.

Jan Pouwer was a Dutch anthropologist with a thorough grounding in his profession in terms of fieldwork and theory. He studied Indology and Ethnology at Leiden University under the renowned Jan Petrus Benjamin de Josselin de Jong. He worked as a ‘government anthropologist’ and conducted extensive fieldwork in Netherlands New Guinea, 1951–62. He subsequently served as Professor of Anthropology at Amsterdam, Wellington (N.Z./Aotearoa) and Nijmegen Universities, 1962–87.

Pitumpanua is a small town and kecamatan in the Wajo Regency of South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The town is located on the eastern coast of South Sulawesi on the Gulf of Boni. The Keera River flows through this area and into the sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dem language</span> Language spoken in New Guinea

Dem is a divergent Papuan language of West New Guinea. Although Palmer (2018) leaves it unclassified, it was tentatively included in the Trans–New Guinea family in the classification of Malcolm Ross (2005), and Timothy Usher ties it most closely to Amung.

Grand Valley Dani, or simply Dani, is one of the most populous Papuan languages in Indonesian New Guinea. The Dani people live in the Baliem Valley of the Western Highlands.

Marind is a Papuan language spoken in Malind District, Merauke Regency, Indonesia by over ten thousand people. Dialects are Southeast Marind, Gawir, Holifoersch, and Tugeri. Bian Marind, also known as Boven-Mbian, is divergent enough to not be mutually intelligible, and has been assigned a separate ISO code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tontemboan language</span> Austronesian language spoken in Sulawesi, Indonesia

Tontemboan is an Austronesian language, of northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. It is a Minahasan language, a sub-group of the Philippine languages.

Boazi (Bwadji), also known as Kuni after one of its dialects, is a Papuan language spoken in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea by the Bwadji people in the vicinity of Lake Murray and is written using the Latin script, with ⟨æ⟩ for, ⟨ø⟩ for, and ⟨꞉⟩ for vowel length. Some recordings of songs and stories have been made in this language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wolani language</span> Language in Papua

Wolani (Wodani) is a Papuan language spoken by about 5,000 people in the Paniai lakes region of the Indonesian province of Papua. It is related to the Moni, Ekari, Auye, and Dao languages and may be related to the Dani languages. Documentation is quite limited.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dora van der Meiden-Coolsma</span> Dutch writer (1918–2001)

Theodora Hermina "Dora" van der Meiden-Coolsma was a Dutch columnist and the author of children's fiction. She wrote 25 children's books. Seven of these were written together with Coos Covens. Two others were written under the pen name Constance Hazelager, under which she also wrote columns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolaus Adriani</span>

Nicolaus Adriani was a Christian missionary from the Netherlands who did work in Indonesia. He studied linguistics of the East Indies at Leiden University, obtaining his PhD in 1893. He was sent by the Netherlands Bible Society. He worked as a linguist in Poso, Central Sulawesi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johannes Cornelis Anceaux</span> Dutch linguist

Johannes Cornelis Anceaux was a Dutch linguist and anthropologist known for his extensive work on Papuan and Austronesian languages.

Yap Goan Ho was a Chinese Indonesian translator, businessman, bookseller, and publisher based in Batavia, Dutch East Indies. In the 1880s and 1890s, he was one of the first Chinese Indonesians to own a printing press and the first to publish Chinese language novels in Malay language translations.

References