Jane Simpson Who gives a Gonski for Indigenous Education? Answer: three Australian states and the Australian Senate which yesterday passed the Australian Education Reform bill, aka the Gonski plan. This is a wonderful achievement. Funding based on children’s needs. At last, schools with lots of disadvantaged Indigenous children can get funding by right and not by favour. … Read more
Wow! Light Warlpiri has hit the news big time. Carmel O’Shannessy just published a paper in Language on it. And it’s been taken up as news: The Atlantic, and you can see it and other renditions in Google News. And the Atlantic makes use of the material on Carmel O’Shannessy’s research page. OK – they … Read more
In the midst of Endangered Languages Week there is the good and the bad. The good was the delight of reading Rob Munro’s post on what his company Idibon intends to do for NLP for endangered languages. The company is advised by Chris Manning, and I learned today that his wonderful Warlpiri dictionary presentation tool … Read more
This week we mourn the loss of two ANU colleagues, whose deaths have ended their different and remarkable contributions to documenting societies, languages and ways of life. Darrell Tryon documented new and old languages in Vanuatu, the Solomons and Australia, helped speakers work on their own languages, and wrote about the history of languages. Initial … Read more
Imagine … a world without memories is the evocative and chilling title of a project organised by the National Committee of Australia for the UNESCO Memory of the World. Through the Australian Memory of the World Register, the Committee, mostly volunteers, are building public awareness of the importance of maintaining records and objects associated with … Read more
Workshop Website University of Western Sydney/Bankstown Campus 13-14 June 2013 Sponsored by the Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA), the MARCS Institute (UWS) and the School of Humanities and Communication Arts (UWS) This workshop has a thematic focus on the phonetics and phonology of Australian Indigenous languages. The aim is to bring together specialists … Read more
NSW Ochre [.pdf] was released on 5 April, and has a pretty amazing set of goals for Aboriginal languages in NSW schools. I quote some relevant passages: “Language Nests in Schools aim to provide Aboriginal students and their families with a continuous pathway for learning from pre-school to Year 12 and into tertiary education (TAFE … Read more
Yesterday was UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day. Theme: Books for mother tongue education. Interesting, engaging, pleasurable, informative written material in people’s mother tongues. A great hope, a great challenge. And Jeanie Bell got to be interviewed on ABC Radio National Drive – they had a lovely peacful lowkey conversation, covering lots of ground – and … Read more
Check here for an account of the launch of the Kalam dictionary – what a feat! 48 years on..there’s hope for all of us with dictionaries in the bottom drawer.
Moving from Nigeria to Australia… We in Australia owe thanks to Maïa Ponsonnet, Loan Dao and Margit Bowler, who have shepherded the Proceedings of the 42th ALS Conference – 2011 to publication online on the ANU Research Repository in close to record time. Papers on lesser-known languages (old, new, created) include: On Australian languages (old … Read more
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