God and languages are in the air. The Australian Federal Government is cross with a radical Islamic sheik who preaches in Arabic (translator spooks required!). The sheik points out, correctly, that many churches advertise services in Korean, Tongan, etc., and this causes no offence (= no drain on the spook translator budget). The NSW State Opposition leader wants immigrants to Australia to learn a subject called “English as a first language”, not “English as a second language”. “Second”, he thinks doesn’t reflect the importance of English. Maybe he wants immigrants to talk to their gods in English. Clearly, what linguists think a first language is is not yet a mainstream thought.
And linguists have been debating our connections with missionary linguists, language work done by missionaries, and linguistic software built by the missionary linguist organisation SIL (Semantic compositions (11/1/07) on the panel at the LSA and Anggarrgoon). On one side there are people saying that missionaries roll Dalek-like through the societies of the speakers of the languages they study and do bad things, and so their work is irredeemably sinful. On the other side people say that linguists are also a Dalek species, and so, what the hell, if the SIL software’s good and the linguistic descriptions are good, use them. (Setting aside Earthlings who say that both species of Dalek are only into extermination).
And there’s the position taken by Heidi Kneebone in a 2005 University of Adelaide doctoral dissertation, The language of the chosen view: the first phase of graphization of Dieri by Hermannsburg Missionaries, Lake Killalpaninna 1867-80. PhD dissertation, Linguistics, University of Adelaide (noted at OzPapersOnline )[1]. Kneebone takes linguists to task for NOT looking at early grammars of the languages they’re working on.
Linguistics
FollowName that spider
Today’s Australia Day, the anniversary of the British invading Australia in 1788. Bang! Plants, animals, birds, land-forms got English common names, and the Indigenous language names were displaced. The exceptions were things which had no obvious look-alikes in England: unfamiliar animals (kangaroos, koalas), birds (currawong), plants (kurrajong, quandong), land-forms (billabong, yakka), fish (ponde), and some man-made things and ideas (boomerang, wurley, corroboree).
Two hundred years later, words from Indigenous languages are gradually coming back as parts of scientific names for species.
Guest blogger John Giacon on the NgaawaGaray summer school
STOP PRESS
SBS news – Tuesday January 23, 2007 – is likely to have an item on NgaawaGaray.
NgaawaGaray was a summer school in Gumbaynggirr and Gamilaraay – two New South Wales languages. [Ngaawa and Garay are the words for ‘language’ in Gumbaynggirr and Gamilaraay]. It was sponsored and organised by Muurrbay and Many Rivers language centres from Nambucca and held at the Koori Centre at the University of Sydney on January 15 – 19. There were 16 students in the Gumbaynggirr course and 11 in Gamilaraay. The Gamilaraay course consisted of part of the ‘Gamilaraay 101’ – taught as ‘Guwaalmiya Gamilaraay’ – a first year subject at University of Sydney, and also taught in TAFE. The Gumbaynggirr course was adapted from the regular course run each year at Muurrbay.
Why not make films in Indigenous languages?
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.
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
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.
Multiple distortions: the story of an Australian place name
Australian Indigenous place names often suffer distortion in form and meaning when they are adopted into English. The distortion can have many different causes: English speakers might not be able to hear the sounds of the source language properly or they might not understand what place the name really refers to. In the case of Tayan Pic (32º58’4″S, 150º12’58″E – picture shown below), a mountain near Kandos in New South Wales, however, the name has suffered further distortion after its adoption into English because of a misreading of the English transcription of the name. We first have to investigate the evolution of the name in English before we can begin to look into its Australian origin.