{"id":3547,"date":"2007-03-10T15:02:30","date_gmt":"2007-03-10T15:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/03\/noel-pearson-on-saving-indigenous-languages\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","slug":"noel-pearson-on-saving-indigenous-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/03\/noel-pearson-on-saving-indigenous-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Noel Pearson on saving Indigenous languages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Check out Noel Pearson’s opinion piece<\/a> in The Australian<\/em> 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<\/a>). He gently makes the point that linguists’ grammars are often inaccessible to speakers. We should listen; we can do better.<\/p>\n


\nPearson’s a Queenslander. Queensland hasn’t had the bilingual education programmes which have given recognition and support to some of the languages which are still spoken by children – Pitjantjatjara, Warlpiri, Yolngu Matha. Nor has Queensland had long-term effective language centres such as Wangka Maya<\/a> or the Katherine Region Language Centre<\/a>. That’s probably why he doesn’t mention these as sources of support for language maintenance.
\nAmidst the glow created by Pearson’s support for what we do, one of his recommendations needs discussion. Again, his Queensland background is probably the source. While he argues that speakers of Indigenous languages need to be literate in their own languages for the survival of their languages, he buys the line that initial literacy in traditional languages compromises attaining English literacy. Of course bilingual transfer literacy programmes are not appropriate if the children do not have a strong command of the traditional languages. And that’s the case in most of Queensland.
\nChildren should have access to both languages from the start – but that doesn’t mean that they have to learn to be literate in English from the start – give them time to learn the language – THEN start the English literacy. In the meantime, if there are resources to do this effectively, introduce the concept of literacy through the mother tongue with a more transparent spelling system. English spelling is horrible, and if you don’t know English, it is just another barrier in the way of learning to read.
\nThe onus is on purveyors of the English-only literacy line to provide the evidence that learning a second language and learning the concept of literacy through that second language is an easier task than learning the concept of literacy through one’s first language. Where to find the evidence is obvious – comparing adult speakers of strong languages (e.g. Alyawarr) who have gone through English-only literacy schools with speakers who of strong languages who have gone through transfer literacy programmes (e.g. Warlpiri). Is there any significant difference in how good their literacy is? And how important are other factors such as mobility, quality of teaching, health, hope for the future?
\nWhy hasn’t this testing been done?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-australian-linguistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4369,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions\/4369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}