Endangered Languages and Cultures

LDLT-3 conference news

3 September 201116 August 2011 by admin

The third Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory conference will be held at SOAS in London on 19th to 20th November, preceded by a workshop on language documentation and archiving on 18th November. The conference programme and workshop programme are now available. On-line registration for the conference is now open here. Note that early bird registration … Read more

Maybe Faust got it right?

10 February 202312 August 2011 by Nick Thieberger

‘Lost indigenous languages to be revived’ is the news from the State Library of NSW: “The Library has entered into an exciting new collaboration with Rio Tinto to help revive and preserve critically endangered Indigenous languages and word lists that are embedded in historical documents held by the Library.” It quotes the NSW Arts Minister George Souris as saying, “A nation’s oral and written language is the backbone to its culture.” So why doesn’t the NSW government fund more Indigenous language work and why is Rio Tinto the hero here? This raises an important issue for us in our efforts to raise funds for language projects. It is an age-old question: how much do we provide a smokescreen of civility for companies like Rio Tinto when we accept their funds?

NRPIPA Symposium in Darwin 13-14 August 2011

11 August 2011 by Linda Barwick

Another stunning array of papers and associated performances will feature at the 10th Annual Symposium of NRPIPA (The National Recording Project for Indigenous Performance in Australia). This year there will be a focus on community databases for access to recordings. Venue: North Australian Research Unit, The Australian National University, Darwin, 13–14 August 2011 Presented in … Read more

Some rare grammars

11 August 201111 August 2011 by Jane Simpson

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

Happy IDWIP!! 29 years on

9 August 2011 by Jane Simpson

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

Birrguu Matya, or the game Tapatan

1 August 201131 July 2011 by David Nash

‘A new board game based on an ancient Aboriginal game has just been released by N S W Aboriginal artist Donna Hensen. Called Hunters Tactics,’ reported the Koori Mail 166 (17 December 1997), page 25. ‘Traditionally, the game was played on the ground using sticks, stones or kangaroo dung and was one of many used … Read more

More searching

7 July 2011 by admin

In a previous post I discussed ways in which it is possible to search for materials on endangered languages in various archives around the world (see also Nick Thieberger’s post on how much material doesn’t make it into archives). There is now another tool, namely the Virtual Language Observatory developed by the Max Planck Institute … Read more

Deeply depressing news from the Northern Territory

6 July 2011 by Jane Simpson

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

Visuals of now

3 July 2011 by Jane Simpson

In the early days of this blog, Jenny Green did a really nice post Sand talk – and how to record it which was one of our first posts with – gasp – photos. It showed how she recorded sand stories using 2 cameras and a ladder. Now you can follow the new Central Australian … Read more

History in the making

1 July 2011 by admin

Since 2005 I have been teaching a one Term introductory course each year on Historical Linguistics at SOAS and enjoying it a lot. The students especially like the coverage of semantic change, loanwords, and borrowing and language contact. One of the (standard) topics in this area that I cover is so-called folk etymology and typically … Read more