Indigenous Australian languages in the news

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Indigenous Australian languages have been in the news recently. On the positive side, Liza Power has a long piece in The Age, The new songlines which looks at Indigenous languages and music [thanks Myf!], and brings in Nick Evans’ new book Dying Words. It’s in my bag waiting to be read when I get through oh the Mound of marking and stuff…..
Four Corners did a program on the decision to abolish bilingual education in the NT, focussing on Lajamanu, but with some footage at Yirrkala. They’ve also come up with a good set of links and resources, and extended interviews with Djuwalpi Marika (Chairman Yirrkala School Council), Wendy Baarda (former teacher-linguist, Yuendumu) and Gary Barnes, CEO NT Education Department. Barnes’ most quotable quote:

GARY BARNES: We absolutely want our young indigenous people to become proficient in the use of English language… It’s the language of learning, it’s the language of living, and it’s the language of the main culture in Australia.

And a quotable one-worder from the Chief Minister and Minister for Education:

DEBBIE WHITMONT (to Paul Henderson): Is it fair to expect that children who are trying to learn in a second language should meet the same benchmarks at the same time as children in other parts of the country who are learning in their first language?
PAUL HENDERSON: Absolutely.

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Contact

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Yuwali in front of Yimiri.jpg
Last night I saw a fascinating documentary about a group of Mardu people’s first contact with Europeans. As Australia entered the space race the group of about twenty women and children found themselves literally in the firing line. In 1964 a rocket, the Blue Streak, was about to be launched from Woomera in South Australia. The ‘dump zone’ for the rocket was the area of the Percival Lakes in the Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia. A pair of patrol officers was dispatched to the area to make sure that the region was uninhabited. Of course it wasn’t. Pretty soon they found recent fires and human tracks.

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Bird on redefining computational linguistics – Meladel Mistika

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[Meladel Mistika points to Steven Bird‘s new paper in the open access journal Computational Linguistics.] Steven Bird’s promoting for there to be more Comp Ling research to be aimed at assisting field linguists in maintaining and organising their data. He’s redefining what should be included as part of core Comp Ling research. Studies that would … Read more

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Vernacular education – PNG and Australia

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Four Corners is planning a program on bilingual education in the Northern Territory, currently scheduled for 14th September. It’s timely, as there’ve been several news items recently on the topic. Miliwanga Sandy, Jeanie Bell and Jo Caffery did an interview on Bush Telegraph on endangered languages. Peter Buckskin has headed a review into education (reported … Read more

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Forza dialetti!

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In Italy over the last couple of months the right-wing Lega Nord (“Northern League”), led by the indefatigable Umberto Bossi, who is also Minister for Institutional Reforms in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, has been engaged in a series of rather polemical discussions about Italy’s dialetti. Although this translates literally as “dialects”, many of the multitude of local speech forms covered by the term are in fact separate Romance languages, not mutually intelligible with each other or Italian. Over the past 50 years they have been retreating in the face of the expansion of standard Italian.
On 28th July, Lega Nord issued a proposal that all would-be school teachers should be tested on:

“la conoscenze della lingua, della tradizione e della storia delle regioni dove si intende insegnare” knowledge of the language, traditions and history of the regions where they plan to teach

and this test might include knowledge of the local “dialect”. The next day, the Minister for Public Instruction, Mariastella Gelmini, backed away from this position a little by saying that there would not be dialect exams (no doubt realising the impossibility of setting them up or carrying them out), but repeated that teachers, especially those from the “South” wanting to teach in the northern homeland of the Lega, should be tested on their knowledge of “padanian” language, culture and history. By mid-August, Umberto Bossi was claiming that a law to introduce these tests was ready.

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Kioloa Papuanists’ Workshop

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kp͡w (KIOLOA PAPUANISTS’ WORKSHOP)
Now calling for papers and for registration of participants.
Following the successful recent Papuanists’ Workshops in Sydney, the ANU Papuanists will be hosting a weekend of Papuanist talks at the Kioloa coast campus (c. 3 hours from Canberra and 3.5 hours from Sydney) from 2 pm Friday 30th October to early afternoon Sunday 1st November, with a bushwalk up Pigeon House planned for the Saturday afternoon.
Anyone who has an interest in Papuan languages and linguistics is invited to come and present a paper or just listen to other people’s papers and join in the discussion.

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LDLT2 conference

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The programme is now available for the second biannual Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory conference to be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies on 13th and 14th November 2009. The conference aims to bring together researchers working on linguistic theory and language documentation and description, with a particular focus on innovative work … Read more

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FEL publication special offer ending 15th September

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Just a reminder to blog readers that the special offer for Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) publications is ending soon. The proceedings of the FEL unique annual conferences are currently available through the Endangered Languages Project at SOAS for 12 pounds, a saving of 40% off the normal retail price (usually 20 pounds). This offer … Read more

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