Endangered Languages and Cultures

Sunlight through the clouds

5 February 201119 November 2008 by Jane Simpson

[Updated with pictures – 21/11/08, 25/11/08, 30/11/08 ]

Three excellent books were launched yesterday, on a misty rainy day in the area of Nyambaga (Nambucca Heads). Long may they float, and God bless all who read them, buy them and review them.
They are:

Gumbaynggirr dictionary and learner’s grammar = Gumbaynggirr bijaarr jandaygam, ngaawa gugaarrigam, by Steve Morelli, Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, 2008.
Barriyala – Let’s work : Gumbaynggirr language student workbook, by Julie Long.
Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2007.
and the most significant general reference work on Indigenous intellectual traditions published in a long time, A handbook of Aboriginal languages of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, by James Wafer, and Amanda Lissarrague with a chapter by Jean Harkins. Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2008.

You can order the books from Muurrbay. More about the books below, but now to the launch.

Photo from Muurrbay: L-R Aunty Vilma Moylan, Aunty Jessie Williams, Uncle Ken Walker
“Thank you for supporting us as a people, and keep the spirit alive eh?” That’s how the Master of Ceremonies, and Chairman of Muurrbay, Uncle Ken Walker ended a cheerful, joking, rousing morning’s celebration of Gumbaynggirr language survival and revival. When you have 200 people to help launch three books, everything connects.

Black Swan redux

5 February 201115 November 2008 by admin

Back in August I contributed a post on the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his idea that there can be totally unexpected events or discoveries that have a major impact on beliefs and theories of the world that require post-hoc revisions to accumulated wisdom.
Well, it seems my post has become part of a web of unexpected discoveries that reaches as far as Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. I was just contacted by David Hirsch, a Sydney barrister, who recently came across my web post and told me the following story.

Sydney Language –mb– ~ –m– and dingo

29 August 201214 November 2008 by David Nash

Update: The contents of this post have been incorporated in the paper ‘Dawes’ Law generalised: cluster simplification in the coastal dialect of the Sydney Language’, published in 2011 in Indigenous languages and social identity: Papers in honour of Michael Walsh. Pacific Linguistics 626, pp.159-178.

Aspects of the Sydney Language are a perennial fascination. Last month recent events prompted me to look into the etymology of boomerang. In recent weeks the gripping SBS documentary First Australians first episode (available as a 227MB MPEG4) took us to the early days of Sydney. And now I’ve noticed what I think is an unreported sound correspondence, as I’ve become more familiar with sources on the Sydney Language.

Duelling languages

5 February 201113 November 2008 by admin

I began writing this post, appropriately enough it turns out, in Thessaloniki’s Makedonia airport on my way back to London after an international conference on Language documentation and tradition with a special interest in the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush valleys, Himalayas. The conference ran from 7th to 9th November and included five plenary talks, over 30 papers, three workshops, and several ethnographic films made last summer in Pakistan. It was attended from researchers from around the world, including blog contributor Ana Kondic, as well as five Kalashas from north-west Pakistan.

Local and national action for Australia’s Indigenous languages

5 February 201112 November 2008 by Jane Simpson

[Update: in Crikey 14/11/08 there’s a good story by Samanti de Silva from the Areyonga community NT, on the community’s concern about the decision to abandon bilingual education. It links to a letter signed by around 35 community members saying among other things: “Learning in Pitjantjatjara first helps our children to learn better. It helps … Read more

TESOL association against scrapping bilingual education

5 February 201111 November 2008 by Jane Simpson

Further on the decision of the NT Government to require schools to teach the first four hours of each day in English.. a media release from Misty Adoniou, President of the Australian Council of TESOL Assocations (ACTA), the peak body for professional associations for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

Ignorant decisions exacerbate declining outcomes for Indigenous learners

Broadcasts about speakers of Australian Indigenous language

5 February 20118 November 2008 by Jane Simpson

Today on ABC Radio National there were two broadcasts of interest to TLC readers: Lingua Franca had Patrick McConvell talking about the need for a National Indigenous Languages policy, (MP3 here, transcript here). It’s a clear summary of the perilous state of Australian Indigenous languages and of the way present government policy is imperilling them … Read more

Clarification needed on clarification

5 February 201131 October 2008 by Jane Simpson

[ Update: David Wilkins has just published an article W(h)ither language, culture and education in remote Indigenous communities of the Northern Territory? in the Australian Review of Public Affairs (October 2008) on the topic which is well worth the read as it covers some of the research into bilingualism, bilingual education and the cognitive advantages. … Read more

Cold dead media

5 February 201127 October 2008 by Jane Simpson

PARADISEC’s director Linda Barwick has been raising the alarm for years about the way media are becoming obsolete because the machines to read them are dying. So it was very sad to hear the death-rattle on the CHILDES list in this message from Brian MacWhinney Dear Colleagues, It appears that we are now just about … Read more

Communication dreams

5 February 201123 October 2008 by Jane Simpson

Richard Trudgen of the Aboriginal Resource Development Service Inc (ARDS, working with Yolngu people of north-eastern Arnhem Land) has an interesting discussion paper on the Federal Intervention in the Northern Territory.
It’s called ‘Are We Heading in the Right Direction? “Closing the Gap” or “Making it Bigger”?[.pdf] [Thanks Greg for pointing it out!] He gave the paper [1] just before the NT Minister for Education, Marion Scrymgour, announced the plan to make all schools teach in English for the first four hours every day (see posts by Inge Kral and Felicity Meakins), but much of what he says is directly relevant to that policy.
One of his basic arguments is that in places like Arnhem Land much of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in areas such as education, health, etc stems from a failure of communication. Yolngu often don’t understand what non-Indigenous people are telling them, and vice versa. But the consequences are much worse for the Yolngu who, so Trudgen says, are living in nightmarish confusion. Bureaucrats/teachers/police etc. are irritated by communication breakdown, but it doesn’t affect their day-to-day lives so much.
The Minister’s response to this breakdown is to tell Indigenous people “Learn English”. That’s what Governor George Gawler told the Indigenous inhabitants of Adelaide in 1840. Trudgen’s response is to tell the non-Indigenous people who go to work in Arnhem Land “Learn Yolngu Matha” [or the relevant local language].

“All teachers, police officers, health personnel, administrators, miners, and contractors entering Aboriginal lands, should attempt to learn the language of the people, as does the Australian Army before sending soldiers into East Timor, Afghanistan and other non-English speaking places”. [2]

Learning a language is difficult, hard work and takes time, so that it is unlikely that many non-Indigenous people will adopt Trudgen’s approach. The Minister’s approach,has behind it a kind of realism (for access to information the Yolngu must learn English), and above all the weight of the mass media (predominantly English-speaking) and the concerned but ill-informed opinionati (such as Helen Hughes). Unfortunately they mostly fail to recognise that the same reasons why the average Darwin journalist/NT teacher/bureaucrat doesn’t bother learning Indigenous languages (difficult, hard work and takes time) apply to Indigenous people.