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In Italy over the last couple of months the right-wing Lega Nord (“Northern League”), led by the indefatigable Umberto Bossi, who is also Minister for Institutional Reforms in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, has been engaged in a series of rather polemical discussions about Italy’s dialetti. Although this translates literally as “dialects”, many of the multitude of local speech forms covered by the term are in fact separate Romance languages, not mutually intelligible with each other or Italian. Over the past 50 years they have been retreating in the face of the expansion of standard Italian.
On 28th July, Lega Nord issued a proposal that all would-be school teachers should be tested on:

“la conoscenze della lingua, della tradizione e della storia delle regioni dove si intende insegnare” knowledge of the language, traditions and history of the regions where they plan to teach

and this test might include knowledge of the local “dialect”. The next day, the Minister for Public Instruction, Mariastella Gelmini, backed away from this position a little by saying that there would not be dialect exams (no doubt realising the impossibility of setting them up or carrying them out), but repeated that teachers, especially those from the “South” wanting to teach in the northern homeland of the Lega, should be tested on their knowledge of “padanian” language, culture and history. By mid-August, Umberto Bossi was claiming that a law to introduce these tests was ready.

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[from Sally Dixon]
I was privileged to attend the WA Language Centres conference in Perth last week. Delegates from 5 regional language centres and several language programs spent three days swapping stories at the wonderful Kaditj internet café and conference facility, and probably could have talked for at least another week.
We were warmly welcomed by Noongar elders Dorothy Winmar and Gloria Nora Dann, and Justina Smith who shared her beautiful blend of contemporary and traditional Noongar dance. The progress of the Noongar language program has been breathtaking. Since presenting their very first book at the last conference only two years ago, the team (in partnership with Batchelor Press) has developed a great pile of resources with several different Noongar clans. There are also twelve short language lessons in development for NITV so stay tuned in for those. We also got to hear how language has been incorporated into the Djidi Djidi Aboriginal School in Bunbury. Moorditj!

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[from Jeremy Hammond, one of our men in Ourimbah]
A conference on Oceanic linguistics has been held over the last three days at the Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle (Australia). The goal was to investigate the current state of research into Oceanic languages and cultures and to highlight their important role in current linguistic science. Participants from a diverse variety of institutions (including Australian, Dutch, Canadian, NZ, Pacific and French universities) converged to display how Oceanic languages are still worthy of attention from all areas of linguistics. Documentation, description, typology and linguistic theory were all addressed over the three days. Languages presented ranged from the West Papua ‘Birds Head’ languages to the Polynesian Niuean with many more in-between.

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Darkening clouds are looming over Indigenous languages in the Northern Territory. Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and national Race Discrimination Commissioner, has put up a defiant umbrella – the Eric Johnston lecture which includes a well argued section in support of bilingual education. I was struck by the comment that this year “seven students from five homeland communities in North East Arnhem Land will be the first homeland students to graduate with the Year 12 Certificate.” Tremendously good news.
Other umbrellas are going up too – some honourable souls have leaked to AAP the following:

“preliminary results from the Evaluation of Literacy Approach (ELA) report, .., found that for “active reading skills in English” students at bilingual schools achieve better results than non-bilingual schools by the time they reach Grade 5.”

[Update: And there’s a good letter by Patrick McConvell in the Sydney Morning Herald, along with Wendy Baarda’s letter in Crikey. Anggarrggoon has several posts on the topic.]
Gleams of sunlight come from the Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs. They have a travelling exhibition about Darby Jampijinpa Ross of Ngarliyikirlangu, north of Yuendumu. Jampijinpa was an extraordinary man; there’s a beautiful book about him, by Liam Campbell Darby : one hundred years of life in a changing culture, Sydney : ABC Books for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ; Alice Springs, N.T. : Warlpiri Media Association, 2006. It comes with a CD of Darby singing in Warlpiri, as well as telling stories about early days, about the Coniston Massacre. For these he uses the language which he learned as a young man, the Aboriginal English/Kriol which has become the spine of the new mixed language Lajamanu Light Warlpiri.
Araluen also have a new exhibition which brings language together with art (including text, sculpture, etchings, installation, and digital media). Intem-antey anem ‘These things will always be’: Bush medicine at Utopia, is opening at the Araluen Gallery in Alice Springs,on Saturday November 29th at 2 pm, with Lena Pwerl and Josie Douglas speaking and a performance by Utopia women. The exhibitors are students from Utopia (Alyawarr and Anmatyerre) who are studying their own languages, art and craft at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education (BIITE), Alice Springs campus.
The exhibition runs until 8th February. A week after the exhibition opens, nine women from Utopia together with some BIITE staff will head to the World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education to present on the teaching /learning aspect of the project.

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Back in August I contributed a post on the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his idea that there can be totally unexpected events or discoveries that have a major impact on beliefs and theories of the world that require post-hoc revisions to accumulated wisdom.
Well, it seems my post has become part of a web of unexpected discoveries that reaches as far as Australia’s Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. I was just contacted by David Hirsch, a Sydney barrister, who recently came across my web post and told me the following story.

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[from John Avery]
It’s inevitably guesswork, but I reckon munanga is one of those spirit-connected words – not far off devil or ghost. It is used widely in the central NT Gulf of Carpentaria and Tablelands.
Another word for white people is mandaji – the feminine is mandanga. You can hear these words at Elliott, especially from Gudanji, Wambaya or Nanka (Ngarnji). Aji/anga (also f. -ana) are personal suffixes. So -anga also could be a personal suffix attached to mun-.
Mun by itself means to curse or place a deadly curse on someone. The usual motive is jealousy. For example, a long time ago a devil from Manda waterhole on Beetaloo went up to Tanumbrini station which was the home of another devil. The Manda traveller was turfed out by the Tanumbrini devil who was jealous for the country. The Tanumbrini bloke ‘bin mun’ the Munda fella, so old Tanumbrini station is called Mun-min. The mun bit is more like muyin in Muyinmin, but by itself my informants say mun (i.e. shortway).

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