[ From Carmel O’Shannessy, who’s worked in the NT Department of Education for many years, and has recently finished a PhD on children’s Warlpiri]
Mal Brough shows how much he doesn’t know about Australian Indigenous children’s schooling when he suggests in today’s Australian that compulsory learning of English would be something new. All children in Australian schools compulsorily learn English. Children in bilingual schools in the NT, of which the school in Wadeye community is one, also learn an Indigenous language at school. By the end of their primary years, if the school is well run and good programs and teaching methodologies are in place, the children in bilingual schools perform slightly better in English than the children in similar communities who attend English only schools. And they can also read and write in the Indigenous language, so they have learned twice as much.
Follow!Khwa ttu: San culture and education centre
We just heard from a Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL) member about their recent follow-up visit to !Khwa ttu: San culture and education centre, 70 km north of Cape Town. The San (sometimes called ‘Bushmen’) are the indigenous people of Southern Africa, and, like indigenous peoples in many countries, they have suffered dispossession and loss … Read more
More on fieldwork
I have been thinking a bit about fieldwork methodologies (see my post on CDFM and the places where we can do fieldwork, such as London). It turns out I am not alone in this. In a recent discussion with David Nathan, Geoff Haig made the following points (thanks Geoff for allowing me to quote from your email exchange):
The dominant paradigm for field-work / documentation still seems to be based on something like an “exotic village”-setting, where the fieldworker comes from outside into a very different culture, adapts, observes as much as possible “in situ” what is going on, and then leaves. But there is a vast potential for documentation among diaspora communities, that is, communities who have more or less permanently left (or been forced to leave) their traditional settlements for (mostly) urban environments in the west; such communities may well attempt to preserve their language/culture in the new environment. This kind of context actually demands a rather different approach from the investigator, because the respective roles of the investigator and the community are quite different – but it also opens up a host of quite interesting perspectives on how documentation can be done. One can of course bemoan the lack of “pristine authenticity” of such contexts, but with migration on a global scale increasing steadily, it seems to me that much language/cultural documentation in the future is simply going to have to take such mixed contexts seriously, and develop its methodology accordingly.
Some commentators are dead opposed to this view. Perhaps the most vocal is Sasha Aikhenvald.
Open access or open slather? Nick Thieberger
[ from Nick Thieberger, PARADISEC, Melbourne University branch ]
I am a firm believer in open access to information, especially research information that has been created by taxpayers’ funds. Thus it came as something of a surprise to find myself likened to the main man of the dark forces of corporate information ownership on a site formerly known as the ‘Stolen Grammars’ site.
Constructed by a linguist in Stockholm, the site offered downloadable versions of many grammars which had been copied from various locations (“Browse my collection of stolen .pdf reference grammars if you’d rather not pay.”)
‘Baking Tapes’ or Analogue Audio Restoration
Last Friday was a bit of a milestone for me, since, in the 6 or so months that I have been involved in the audio preservation side of things at PARADISEC, I hadn’t yet actually cleaned a damaged audio tape. Unfortunately for me, the process isn’t quite as straight-forward as it is for a CD – warm soapy water, a non-abrasive cloth, wipe across the grain – rather, the entire process can take weeks, depending on how badly affected the tapes are.
Languages and dialects
As an Australian living and working in London (coming up for 4.5 years now) I have gradually come to realise how similar yet different British and Australian English are. I don’t mean the obvious differences like ‘lorry’ instead of ‘truck’, or avoiding terms like ‘mozzie’ and ‘salvo’ (see this helpful list), or turning off intervocalic alveolar stop flapping in favour of glottal stop. What I mean are more subtle things like ‘ambit claim’.
There must be dozens
I have been asked on a number of occasions to talk to general audiences in England about linguistic diversity and the threat to smaller languages. I usually begin my talks by asking which languages are spoken by members of the audience (the largest number I recall was around 15) and then how many languages are spoken in London. Everyone is aware that London is a linguistically diverse place (during my morning bus commute I frequently hear various European languages spoken, especially Polish, Russian and Portuguese, along with Yoruba, Bangla, and Kurdish, plus other languages I am unable to identify). Few members of the general public however have any idea just how linguistically diverse London is – “there must be dozens” or “a hundred at least” are common responses.
And the correct answer is?
Ngapartji Ngapartji curriculum review
I posted a while back about the very interesting Ngapartji Ngapartji Pitjantjatjara course. Here’s their call for some feedback. WANTED: Linguist, teacher, linguistics student or curriculum expert to review, critique and provide constructive feedback on structure, content and flow of Ngapartji Ngapartji online Pitjantjatjara language and culture site. http://ninti.ngapartji.org Please contact alex AT ngapartji.org for … Read more
Paradisec’s PNG Music recordings and the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies
Several PNG newspapers have recently been reporting on the exchange of PNG music recordings between Paradisec and the Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies. One article in the National Weekender is already available online, and we’ll put a copy of the other one up on our website when we get a hold of it. “Institute … Read more