Endangered Languages and Cultures

Aboriginal Languages Workshop 2014

8 January 2014 by Jane Simpson

Don’t miss the annual Aboriginal Languages Workshop 2014 to be held at ANU’s beautiful Kioloa Coastal campus. The workshop web-page is up http://chl.anu.edu.au/languages/alw2014.php And for some previous workshops: 2012 on North Stradbroke Island and 2009 at Kioloa See the web-page for the call for abstracts – deadline: Jan 18, 2014.

First Footprints, Farsd Fatbrontz, Verst Pitprands: Spelling as if the language matters

21 December 201320 December 2013 by Nick Thieberger

I have watched the excellent series First Footprints a couple of times. It is a great overview of the origins of human occupation of Australia, with fantastic visual effects and photography. It starts with the declaration that “First Footprints seeks to treat Indigenous cultures and beliefs with respect”. Respecting Indigenous Australian languages should involve at least treating them the way you would any other language and checking that words in Australian Indigenous languages were written accurately. Think of the times you have watched a film that had misspelled English subtitles in it and what it makes you think of the care the subtitler took. It only took me a little effort to check on the following mistakes by web-browsing and by talking to people with experience in the particular languages.

ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language

20 December 2013 by Nick Thieberger

We have great pleasure in announcing that the ARC has funded a Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language over seven years. This project will be led by Nick Evans at ANU with a collaborative team from there, the University of Western Sydney, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne, and with many partners from other universities and institutions including AIATSIS and Appen.

We want this to be a centre for collaboration, for generating ideas and inspiration for linguistics in Australia and the world. In the New Year we’ll be putting up a web-page to give more information, In the meantime, here’s an overview of what we are planning.

Research, records and responsibility conference: Ten years of PARADISEC

11 December 2013 by Nick Thieberger

The conference celebrating ten years of PARADISEC in early December had a suitably interdisciplinary mix of presentations. Joining in the reflection on building records of the world’s languages and cultures were musicologists, linguists, and archivists from India, Hong Kong, Poland, Canada, Alaska, Hawai’i, Australia, the UK and Russia. The range of topics covered can be seen in the program: http://paradisec.org.au/RRRProgram.html

The conference ended with a discussion of what was missing in our current tools and methods. While it is clear that linguists have done pretty well at using appropriate tools for transcribing and annotating text, and building repositories to provide long-term citation and access to the material, there is still a long way to go.

Models of community engagement: LIP discussion

10 December 2013 by Lauren Gawne

Lauren Gawne recaps last week’s Linguistics in the Pub, a monthly informal gathering of linguists in Melbourne to discuss topical areas in our field.

Our final LIP for 2013 came at the end of 3 days of the PARADISEC conference, and we were fortunate to be joined by a diverse group of linguists from across the world who were able to contribute new perspectives from their fieldwork experiences. The topic of discussion was the documentation of cultural events, and what this task might mean for our research practice, and for the communities we work with. As usual, if you have another perspective on the topics covered feel free to add them in the comments below.

19 October National Day of Mourning

19 October 2013 by Jane Simpson

Today is 12 years since an unnamed boat sank on the way to Australia. The boat became known as SIEV X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel, Unknown). At least 146 children, 142 women and 65 men from Iraq and Afghanistan drowned; their names are tracked on a non-official website. The voices of the survivors are rarely … Read more

Vale Peter Newton

8 October 2013 by Amanda Harris

Readers of this blog will be saddened to hear of the passing of Peter Newton last week after a short struggle with illness. Peter was a poet, linguist, writer and editor, Associate Sydney Jazz Club and Jazz Archivist. Peter worked closely with PARADISEC to identify, sort and catalogue the extensive linguistic collection of Arthur Capell, … Read more

Kenneth L. Hale Award: Claire Bowern (Yale University)

18 September 2013 by Jane Simpson

Excellent news! Claire Bowern (see also Anggarrgoon) has been awarded the Kenneth L. Hale Award. Here’s the LSA’s commendation. Claire Bowern and her work is the embodiment of the qualities that the Linguistic Society of America would like to see in a Hale award winner. Claire has been involved with documentation of the Bardi language … Read more

The NT Government gets animated

16 September 2013 by David Nash

New animations with spoken audio in Anmatyerr (‘Anmatyere’), Kriol, Luritja, Warlpiri, and Yolŋu Matha were published on You Tube a couple of weeks ago. There are eight nicely done animations of a minute or two explaining aspects of the water supply in each of the five languages, all available through the NT Power and Water … Read more

CALC (Central Australian Linguistic Circle) meeting

26 August 201322 August 2013 by David Nash

Central Australian Linguistic Circle (CALC) 2013 Monday 9 September 2013, 8:30 am – 4:00 pm Venue: Desert People’s Centre Function Room (next to the Irrarnte Café), Desert Knowledge Precinct, South Stuart Highway, Alice Springs Map: http://desertpeoplescentre.org.au/contact-us/ Program: 8:30 am meet at Desert People’s Centre Function Room, set up, introductions 9:00-9:30 Cathy Bow, Charles … Read more