Endangered Languages and Cultures

Piranha Dandy

5 February 201115 April 2007 by Jane Simpson

Chronologically and perhaps otherwise connected with Peter Austin’s post on CDFM are discussions of Dan Everett’s claims about the Pirahã, a Brazilian group, which have hit the news recently (thanks Jeremy). The good thing is that Everett’s claims can be tested. The hyperbole surrounding them is probably bad – for the people, and for the … Read more

There’s fieldwork and there’s fieldwork

5 February 201110 April 2007 by admin

As someone who is currently supervising PhD students undertaking fieldwork in various locations around the world, the health and safety of my students is a fundamental concern. This was especially brought home a week ago when an 8.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami devastated coastal villages in the western Solomon Islands, including the village on Ranongga Island where one of our PhD students is working. Fortunately she was in a boat at sea when the earthquake hit and was OK; the same cannot be said for Ranongga Island however. Communications with the area are difficult but it appears that several people died, many were injured, and the village and everything in it (including her fieldnotes and equipment) may have been destroyed.

On Patois

5 February 20116 April 2007 by admin

I spent last week in Lyon working on plans for collaborative teaching and research with Colette Grinevald and her colleagues at Lyon-2 University and the CNRS DDL research laboratory. This will include a summer school on language documentation planned for June-July 2008 (we will announce more details soon), joint workshops and conferences, and development of a European Masters programme.
On Saturday (31st March) Michel Bert, who also teaches at Lyon-2 and is a researcher in the CNRS ICAR research laboratory, invited Colette and me to accompany him south from Lyon along the Rhône River to visit the field sites where he has been collecting data on the Franco-Provençal language over the past 10 years. Michel’s PhD dissertation is a detailed study of this language based on data he collected from over 150 consultants.

Toolbox on a Mac

5 February 20114 April 2007 by admin

My nightmare with Windows is finally over.
Yay! Crossover! It rules!
Late last year my G4 ibook came to a premature demise, probably a victim of all the dust and the ruts on the road to Wadeye from Daly River, which I did enough times to make me and my car age. Can’t have done the laptop much good.
So I bought an Intel mac thinking ‘great now I can run Toolbox‘. I really wasted a lot of time. I didn’t lose any data. But when I discovered what Windows was going to cost me, plus the emulator Parallels, in order to run Windows, it was the best part of A$300. I also spent a lot of time, trying just about anything to avoid paying for Windows after forking out for a new computer (for the second time in my PhD candidature). All that just to run Toolbox which is a freely downloadable application.

Victorian state government language policy

5 February 201127 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

Last week the Victorian government announced its first step towards a policy on Indigenous languages. So, Noel Pearson was onto something..
I wonder what’s on their wishlist? Dual naming of places (that’ll be slow after the Grampians fiasco)? More ceremonial language used on ceremonial occasions and in official publications? Some Indigenous languages to be taught in schools (that will require a big investment in preparing teaching materials and training teachers, to avoid alienating kids)?

A week of Indigenous Australian languages

5 February 201125 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

It’s been a week for Indigenous Australian languages here in the Sydney area – the annual Australian languages workshop at Pearl Beach brilliantly directed by Joe Blythe, a new film on teaching NSW languages in schools, and finally the launch of Jennifer Biddle’s new book Breasts, Bodies, Canvas: Central Desert Art as Experience (UNSW Press).

New Māori and NZSL curricula

5 February 201122 March 2007 by hilariodesousa

In the last seven days, the New Zealand Ministry of Education Te Tāhuhu o te Mātauranga introduced new national curricula of Māori and NZ Sign Language for mainstream English-medium schools (better late than never).

Noel Pearson on saving Indigenous languages

5 February 201110 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

Check out Noel Pearson’s opinion piece in The Australian 10/3/07. He suggests that the two most important pieces of work in “saving” Indigenous languages so far have been the language documentation work undertaken by linguists (yes!) sponsored by AIATSIS, and the translations of the Bible done mostly by Summer Institute of Linguistics linguists. (And to this let’s add the importance of gospel song writing mentioned by Bulanjdjan and Wamut). He gently makes the point that linguists’ grammars are often inaccessible to speakers. We should listen; we can do better.

Notes from a field methods class (1)

5 February 20118 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

This week was the start of the Field Methods class. There are about ten of us, undergraduates and postgrads, with a range of interests, from about-to-head-off-to-the-field, to thinking-about-maybe-heading-off, to love-hearing-language-sounds, to love-language-and-technology, to I-think-I’ll-change-to-theory. I ‘m hoping that our class can keep up a weekly commentary on what’s been happening. I’m also hoping that together with the local PARADISEC people, Tom Honeyman, Aidan Wilson, Amanda Harris and Vi King Lim, we can create a space on the PARADISEC links web-site to put up final versions of useful information we create, and links to other people’s useful information. And of course, I’m hoping that we get suggestions for improving all of this!

Can’t get the words outta my head

5 February 20117 March 2007 by Jane Simpson

Several Indigenous Australian music stories.
Last year’s Stanner Award went to Allan Marett for his ethnomusicological study, Songs, dreamings, and ghosts: The Wangga of North Australia: Wesleyan University Press (2005). This is an award for “the best published contribution to Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Studies that is considered by Council to be a significant work of scholarship in Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Studies and which reflects the dynamic nature of Professor Stanner’s life and work.”
And the award ceremony was moving. Yes there were speeches. And then Allan explained how the wangga songs link the living and the dead (and check out also the radio program Ghost songs). He showed three short clips of performances of wangga. Then Joe Gumbula, a Yolngu scholar and musician, and the first Indigenous Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, sat down on the floor with his didgeridoo. Allan sat down next to him with clap sticks, and they performed two songs, Allan singing. Many traditional Indigenous Australian songs are HARD, hard to learn the words of, and hard to sing, but he made it seem effortless. Two scholars and musicians, Yolngu and non-Indigenous-Australian, performing traditional songs together. A future for us all.
And then the other way around. Indigenous Australians have been writing and performing modern Anglo-Australian songs in traditional languages for a while now.