Skip to main content

hooray for Timber Creek

In the tradition of the Simpsons episode that featured the "hooray for everything" group, I'm saying "hooray for Timber Creek".

I've been here in Timber Creek for 2 days for an Indigenous Language and Culture workshop organised by the Education Department. (There's still a few of them there who still care about Indigenous Language and Culture!). The best part is that it's lots of new stuff for me. Being in Timber Creek is new for me. Being around people from places west of Katherine is new for me. And at the workshop, I've met people from Kalkarindji, Yarralin, Bulla, Pigeon Hole and Lajamanu - some places I've never been to. And there were people who speak languages that I've never really heard before or much of which was new and exciting for a language nerd like me - Jaminjung and Ngarinyman I've heard a little bit, but I've heard lots more the past two days and there was a Bilinarra speaker, Gurindji and Warlpiri speakers and then when this mob speak their creole there's a lot of language mixed in and it's really different from the creole the mob from Ngukurr speak.

All very exciting for a language nerd like me.

Hooray for Timber Creek! Ngaliwurru country. (I think!)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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!

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...