Jane Simpson What a good decision in today’s Australia Day honours to make Laurie Baymarrwangga Senior Australian of the Year 2012! Read Claire Bowern’s post for an appreciation of her and her work documenting the Yan-nhaŋu language and getting it written down. She sounds a delightful person. 2012 is also National Year of Reading. Everyone with a … Read more
Three things to think about/do.. 1. Creeping towards constitutional recognition Section 127A Recognition of languages The national language of the Commonwealth of Australia is English. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages, a part of our national heritage This is what was proposed in a report on recognising Aboriginal and … Read more
Canberra is breath-taking at the moment, and I am just catching breath between marking and Langfest … it starts today with the French Studies conference. Tomorrow=Monday, dictionary-making, with AUSTRALEX, and a keynote by Sarah Ogilvie, the soon-to-be-director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre. Wednesday brings New Zealand and Australia together with the combined mega-conference of … Read more
The Australian Society for Indigenous Linguistics (AuSIL) has done a wonderful thing. They’ve put on the web: dictionaries of Australian languages that SIL staff worked on with speakers [currently: Burrara, Iwaidja, Warlpiri, Tiwi, Wik Mungkan, Walmajarri, Martu Wangka, Yinjibarndi, Kriol] bibles that SIL teams have translated, linking to the Bible site [so far Burrara, Djambarrpuyngu, … Read more
The failure of language revivalists to get people to accept a standard language (here the Swiss language Romansh Grischun) is the topic of a sad little article by Deborah Ball in the Wall Street Journal. (Reprinted in The Australian 3/9/2011 but without the interesting graphics). Google led me to an earlier article on the same … Read more
First there was (and still is, if you move quickly) the Inquiry into language learning in Indigenous communities being held by the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, discussed here. Then came the National Cultural Policy. This shouldn’t just be for visual and performing artists. It includes Cultural … Read more
If you go to Lincom’s web-page, you’ll see they’ve just issued some PhD thesis grammars of (mostly) Australian languages as books. Published in facsimile, I gather (no editing) and for around 70 to 80 euros in your Warenkorb. Lincom does a service in getting the stuff out. But it could be so much better… Lodge … Read more
I nearly missed this [thanks Bruce!] Mick Gooda, the Social Justice Commissioner celebrates International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples – the birthday cake theme this year being ‘Indigenous designs: celebrating stories and cultures, crafting our own future’ His press release notes that International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples marks the day of the … Read more
Central Australia is home to some of Australia’s few communities where Aboriginal languages are still spoken by children: Warlpiri, Pitjantjantjara, Pintupi and some Arandic languages. For many years they had mother-tongue-medium instruction programs at school, often taught by trained Indigenous teachers and supported by linguists and teacher-linguists. Governmental support for these programs has eroded over … Read more
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