2006 saw the release of several films with actors speaking endangered languages – Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto (Mayan) and Rolf de Heer’s film Ten Canoes, set in Arnhem Land, and with actors speaking mostly in Ganalbingu (and see Anggarrgoon on it).
Leaving aside the pleasure of hearing actors speak in Indigenous Australian languages, I liked Ten Canoes – it was funny, it gave an idea of the good and the bad about small societies – you’re looked after, but you have reciprocal responsibility, and NO privacy – everyone knows what you’re thinking. The filming was beautiful – both the recreation of early photos, and the shots of the light on the water and the tangled trees in the swamp. And the authors worked hard to “make a film that would not only satisfy local tastes and requirements but would also satisfy Western audiences used to Western storytelling conventions.” [1]
Ten Canoes won awards, it had some box-office success, and it has resulted in several spin-off projects which benefit the Ramingining community e.g. recording traditional songs, publishing Donald Thomson’s photographs of Arnhem Land in 1937, training older teenagers (with help from Save the Children and Create Australia) in film-making.
Good eh? But oddly, some people have found it offensive that the Australian Catholic Film Office and the Australian Film Institute would vote Ten Canoes Best Film of the year.
FollowLaughing at the powerful
Summer brings out stories about humour in the media. A right wing commentator complained that Australian cartoonists only lampooned rightwing politicians (ignoring the fact that we have a conservative far-right Government). “How the hell did we get here?” ABC TV 6/1/07 presented the Australian baby-boomers’ top 20 TV comedy shows – mostly Australian but including some British (Yes Minister, Monty Python and Fawlty Towers) and American. Number 1 was M.A.S.H., and the show host said, reflecting an irritatingly widespread attitude, that it was surprising to find an American show with such an Australian sense of humour. Look out, however, for the start of a new claim – that the Australian sense of humour (whatever that is) may actually be an Aboriginal sense of humour. I saw it last week in an article, The joke’s on us by Shane Brady in the Sydney Morning Herald (2/1/07).
Artefacts, labels and linguists
What can a linguist do on a hot summer’s day on North Terrace in Adelaide? Once upon a time I loved the SA State Library &mdash they had a very good collection of books looked after by helpful specialist librarians who knew the collections inside out, and the Friends of the State Library of South Australia did an excellent facsimile publishing service which ensured that nineteenth century materials on South Australian languages were available. Now, while the Friends are still doing good things ..there’s an enormous Christmas tree and fake-looking presents in the new energy-inefficient glass foyer, a closed Circulating Library (“You can hire this book-lined room for a party!”), a billboard for the Bradman collection merchandise, and the historic Mortlock reading room has been converted into a low-lux display room (oh yes, and you can hire this room for functions too!). OK – so the library needs to raise money, and maybe someone who buys a Bradman t-shirt will browse a book. But when the rumour spreads that the State Liibrary is going to evict the Royal Geographical Society library and its superb Australian collection, you have to wonder if some people think of books as Christmas trees, temporary decorations for a convention centre. Please tell us the rumour is false!
The Art Gallery of South Australia? Sure &mdash there’s a Tiwi art exhibition Yingarti Jilamara (glossed as ‘lots of art’), and there are some interesting early colonial portraits of encounters between Aborigines and Europeans.
But the must-see is the Pacific Cultures Gallery in the South Australian Museum. It’s free, it’s cool, and it has the largest collection of Pacific artefacts in Australia. This will attract people working on languages of Papua New Guinea (including Bougainville), the Solomon and Santa Cruz Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, as well as Fijian and Maori.
Three Australian Indigenous Language events in 2007
16-18 March 2007 Workshop on Australian Indigenous languages at the Crommelin Field Station, Pearl Beach. This is organised by the Departments of Linguistics of the Universities of Sydney and Newcastle. There’s a call for papers out. 24 -26 April 2007: Puliima National Indigenous Languages Information Communication Technology Forum “Modern ways for ancient words” at Newcastle. … Read more
Power, open access and language rights
Whether languages can be property has generated further discussion, on Language Log, and on several anthropology blogs (thanks Kimberly!). Two themes emerged: power, and the potential conflict with open access.
Click here – new grammar of a Papuan language
Hilário de Sousa’ s doctoral thesis is now available in the University of Sydney thesis repository. It’s a grammar of Menggwa Dla, an endangered Papuan language of the Senagi family spoken in Papua New Guinea and West Irian. The language has complex cross-referencing and is undergoing an amazing change in how switch reference works – … Read more
Are your chopsticks fast?
Chinese Pidgin English is most certainly a transient language — it arose from contact between English and Chinese traders in the late 17th century and ceased to be spoken by the early 20th century. During its short life Chinese Pidgin English donated several expressions to standard varieties of English, where they live on. Among these donated expressions is chop-chop, meaning ‘hurry up’. Most etymologies of the English word chopsticks (e.g. those in the the Oxford English Dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and the Hobson-Jobson Anglo-Indian dictionary) claim that it is also derived from Pidgin English. Chopsticks is taken to be a semi-calque on the word 筷子 kuàizi (Mandarin pronunciation), which is the usual word for chopsticks in many Chinese dialects.1 The 筷 kuài in kuàizi is homophonous in many dialects with the word for ‘fast’, 快 kuài. The theory is that the English word chopsticks comes from the Pidgin word chop ‘fast’ plus the English word stick. The true story may not be that simple, however.
Barking up the same tree: the need for digital archives
The surprise for me from the Sustainable Data from Digital Fieldwork workshop (aka Suzzy Data..) was how much plant taxonomists and field linguists have in common. And how much we need to work together with librarians and archivists. We both have to look after records – the decaying recordings of the languages, and the dried specimens in the herbariums. We both work with the living communities, the trees that will get logged and the communities that live with the trees, and the families and children who will switch to speaking another language.
Suzzy Data Workshop – Guest blogger Bruce Birch
Dear ELAN Workshop attendees, and anyone who might find this of interest,
There were a few loose ends left at the end of the ELAN workshop last week. I’d particularly like to address one, the question as to whether we should aim for a standard set of ELAN templates which everyone uses.
Suzzy Data Workshop – Guest blogger Simon Musgrave
Several of the regular bloggers here are associated with PARADISEC, and they are modest folk. We cannot therefore expect them to tell you that the conference which they held this week (Sustainable data from Digital Fieldwork) was a huge success and a really wonderful event.
But this is a message which should be broadcast, so I felt that a guest post was appropriate.