The Wednesday linguists’ lunch at the CHATS cafe, ANU is a free-wheeling discussion of language, Indigenous Studies, and life in our various institutions – this week it ranged from the reconstructions of the pronunciation of place-names (is Ulladulla really Nguladarla?), to language revival programs, especially John Giacon’s experience with Gamilaraay, and what works and what doesn’t.
Australian Linguistics
FollowPublishing dictionaries and a recent grammar of an Australian language
On the way back from the interesting Australian Linguistics Institute in Brisbane, we stopped in Newcastle to talk with Christine Bruderlin and Mark MacLean, who produce very well laid-out dictionaries and learners’ grammars of Australian languages. The latest is Amanda Lissarrague’s 2006 A salvage grammar and wordlist of the language from the Hunter River … Read more
Recognition for indigenous linguist
I just caught up with the excellent news that Raymattja Marika is the winner of the 2006 Territory Day Award. For many years she has been one of the mainstays of language maintenance and the use of Indigenous languages in Arnhem Land schools, and of trying to craft a way of teaching and learning in … Read more
Extinction of Australian languages and bilingual education
Nick Thieberger has just drawn attention to an article today from “The Australian” about the impending extinction of Australian languages, based on a Worldwatch report. “It is estimated that 90 per cent of the languages spoken by Australia’s Aboriginal peoples will perish within the current generation”. This is timely, as over the last few months … Read more
Notes from the launch of the AIATSIS Digitisation Project
On Thursday 29 June 2006 I joined heaps of overcoated people in the large, airy Reading Room of the Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) in Canberra. We were celebrating the launch of “Indigitisation” – a three year funded digitisation program for sound, text, film, and photographs. The view of lake, sky and trees and some determined ducks was a distraction from the speeches, but some things stuck – 40,000 hours of sound recordings of Indigenous languages to digitise, lots of expensive machines, some enthusiastic staff, and as yet no off-site backup. Storage problems mean they’re not digitising everything at 24-bit, 96 kHz. They’re planning to deliver some sound files through the web, where communities have given permission. So in future you should be able to click on some on-line catalogue entries and download sound files.
The AIATSIS Library staff showed “Collectors of words” – a web presentation of the nineteenth century word-lists of Australian languages from E. M. Curr and Victorian and Tasmanian languages from R. B. Brough Smyth . They’re available as pdfs, organised alphabetically according to the place the words were attributed to, and linked to maps. A nice feature is the linking to the AIATSIS catalogue, so that you can find other materials referring to the same language group. Unfortunately the pdfs are only images – you can’t search for text in them. If you want text copies of Curr, go for the transcribed copies in AIATSIS’s electronic text archive ASEDA. These aren’t yet linked to the scanned images – a job for the future!