Piet Drabbe (born Petrus Drabbe in

Heino, Netherlands Heino is a village in the province of Overijssel in the Netherlands. It belongs to the municipality of Raalte and it has 7,080 inhabitants (January 2018). The village has a railway station along the railway Zwolle - Enschede and it can also be r ...

, June 4, 1887; died in

Arnhem, Netherlands Arnhem ( or ; german: Arnheim; South Guelderish: ''Èrnem'') is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands about 55 km south east of Utrecht. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both banks of ...

, October 27, 1970) was a member of the

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (MSC; la, Missionarii Sacratissimi Cordis; french: Missionnaires du Sacré-Coeur) are a missionary congregation in the Catholic Church. It was founded in 1854 by Servant of God Jules Chevalier (182 ...

who worked successively from 1912 to 1960 in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, the

Tanimbar Islands The Tanimbar Islands, also called ''Timur Laut'', are a group of about 65 islands in the Maluku (province), Maluku Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia. The largest and most central of the islands is Yamdena; others include Selaru to t ...

, and on the southern coast of

Dutch New Guinea Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea ( nl, Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea, id, Nugini Belanda) was the western half of the island of New Guinea that was a part of the Dutch East Indies until 1949, later an overseas territory of the Kingdo ...

, now the Indonesian province of Papua.

Biography

Born Petrus Drabbe in

on June 4, 1887, he was the son of a teacher. Piet Drabbe attended the seminary in

Tilburg Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-larg ...

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 Lipa (), officially the City of Lipa ( fil, Lungsod ng Lipa), is a 1st class component city in the province of Batangas, Philippines. According to the 2020 census, it has a population of 372,931 people. It is the first city charter in the pro ...

, 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

, 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 Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...

and

dysentery Dysentery (UK pronunciation: , US: ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications ...

in 1959. He died 10 years later in

at the age of 83.

Scientific research

Like the other priests of the

Sacred Heart The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus ( la, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum) is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devo ...

- including

Petrus Vertenten Petrus Vertenten (1884 – 1946) was a Belgian Missionary of the Sacred Heart in Dutch New Guinea. Vertenten lived and worked on the south coast of Dutch New Guinea from 1910 to 1925 among the Marind-anim, a Papuan people in the wider area of Mer ...

, 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 The Papuan languages are the non- Austronesian and non-Australian languages spoken on the western Pacific island of New Guinea in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, as well as neighbouring islands, by around 4 million people. It is a strictly geogra ...

. 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.Foley 1986: 13 In 1962, he received a Zilveren Anjer (Silver Carnation) medal from

Prince Bernhard , house = Lippe , father = Prince Bernhard of Lippe , mother = Armgard von Cramm , birth_date = , birth_name = Count Bernhard of Biesterfeld , birth_place = Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Germany , death_date = ...

for his many years of linguistic research.

Publications

*''Het leven van den Tanémbarees; ethnographische studie over het Tanémbareesche volk''. 1940. Leiden: E.J. Brill. *''Twee dialecten van de Awju-taal.'' Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 106: 93-147. 1950, 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. *''Talen en dialecten van Zuid-West Nieuw-Guinea 1'' 1950, Anthropos 45: 545–75. * ''Spraakkunst van het Ekagi, Wisselmeren, Nederlands Nieuw Guinea'', 1952, 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. *''Spraakkunst van de Kamoro-taal.'' 1953, 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. *''Talen en dialecten van Zuid-West Nieuw-Guinea.'' 1954, Micro-Bibliotheca Anthropos, vol. 11. *''Spraakkunst van het Marind, zuidkust Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea.'' 1955, Studia Instituti Anthropos, Vol. 11. Wien-Mödling: Missiehuis St. Gabriël. *''Spraakkunst van het Aghu-dialect van de Awju-taal.'' 1957, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. *''Kaeti en Wambon: twee Awju-dialecten.'' 1959, Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. *''Drie Asmat-dialecten.'' 1963, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, No. 42. 's-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff.

References

*Boelaars, J.H.M.C. 1950. ''The Linguistic Position of South-Western New Guinea''. Leiden: E.J. Brill *Foley, William A. 1986. ''The Papuan Languages of New Guinea''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. *Gonda, J. en J.C. Anceaux. 1970. "Pater Petrus Drabbe M.S.C.†". In: ''Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde'' 126 no: 4: 459–462. Leiden. *Jonge, Nico de & Toos van Dijk, ''Tanimbar; de unieke Molukken-foto's van Petrus Drabbe''. Alpen aan den Rijn / Leiden: Periplus Editions / C. Zwartenkot, 1995. *Voorhoeve, C. L. 1975. "A hundred years of Papuan linguistic research: Western New Guinea Area." In Stephan A. Wurm (ed.) 1975: 117–142. *Wurm, Stephen A., ed. 1975. ''Papuan languages and the New Guinea linguistic scene''. Pacific Linguistics, Series C, No. 38. Canberra: The Australian National University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Drabbe, Piet 1887 births 1970 deaths Linguists of Papuan languages Linguists of Asmat–Mombum languages Linguists from the Netherlands Linguists of Austronesian languages People from Raalte Dutch missionaries Missionaries of the Sacred Heart 20th-century linguists Missionary linguists