ebribodi bin wek gudwei tudei

ebribodi bin make me proud tudei. ebribodi bin dum rili gud job tudei.

laik, main barn-ga R, im onli yanggel, bat imin yusimbat kompyuta tudei en imin lisin langa wan olgomen talking garra Rembarrnga la thet kompyuta. Ai bin dalim im ba trai raitimdan thet langgwij, en imin dum... onli slobala dumaji imin had job bla im, bat ai bin hepi bla tharran.

en aftathet, mela bin dum skul program, bat mela bin dum nyuwei tudei... tudei bin onli blanga ola big children. ola boys first, then ola gel bin kaman. en imin rait... thei bin ol jidan en lisin gudwei, nomo ranaroun ebrijeya like usual.

yuwai, imin gud dei tudei.

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The time Kriol went viral

Early in 2022, while doing my daily doomscroll on Twitter, I noticed Kriol becoming a topic of conversation. Excuse me, what? When part of my day job is trying to get non-Kriol speakers to pay attention to the fact that Kriol exists, I never expected Kriol to organically go viral! But it happened. And it wasn't cute. Kriol goes viral The story starts with Covid. In late 2021, the Aboriginal Health Council of WA (AHCWA) created a few short Covid vaccination videos in some of WA's main Indigenous languages, nobly wanting to make sure remote Aboriginal residents were as safe from Covid as urban Westralians. Made in collaboration with AIWA (Aboriginal Interpreting WA), five short videos appear on AHCWA's website - one with Mark McGowan on his own where he says: Hello, my name is Mark McGowan. I am the Premier of Western Australia. This is an important message to keep Aboriginal people safe. You can die from the Corona, or get really sick. It's time to get the Corona nee...

Luk mowa >>

no-no

Occasionally, I get asked if there's any meaning behind the names of the languages we work with here, like, if a similar thing happens here that you get on the east coast where language names are sometimes derived for the word for 'no, nothing' in that language (e.g. Gooreng gooreng (from Bundaberg area) is the word for 'no' reduplicated). That doesn't happen here but I like to think what the languages would be called if that *did* happen here: Marluy marluy Mandi mandi Gatjja gatjja Waba waba Waari waari hehe... sounds funny. But then the other day I realised that it *does* happen for one of the languages here, although only informally and in casual speech... I realised that I've regularly ppl talking about Yolŋu or Ritharrŋu / Wägilak mob and referring to them as 'yaka bayaŋu mob'. Neat!

Luk mowa >>

The pitiful state of Recommendation 11.6 of the NT Fracking (Pepper) Inquiry

Today the NT Government announced that it's ok to start fracking the Beetaloo Basin, claiming that all 135 recommendations from the 2018 Pepper Inquiry report have been met and, therefore, fracking can proceed. Most of the recommendations - and you can go through them all here: Action items | Hydraulic Fracturing in the Northern Territory - are outside my field of expertise as a linguist. There's a lot of regulatory stuff, things about the mining industry, stuff about land and water management that others know much more about than me. However, as a linguist working in the Katherine Region for 20 years, there is one recommendation that sits in my wheelhouse so, after today's announcement, I wanted to take a look at it. It's Recommendation 11.6, which says: That in collaboration with the Government, Land Councils and AAPA, an independent, third-party designs and implements an information program to ensure that reliable, accessible, trusted and accurate information...

Luk mowa >>

that munanga linguist

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