that munanga linguist

Linguists aren't supposed to play favourites, but I love Aboriginal English. Maybe because it's what the love of my life speaks and separating language from people and society isn't a realistic prospect. I'm lucky to regularly be around Aboriginal people speaking English in all sorts of ways and privileged to have insights into some of the more subtle ways in which Aboriginal ways of using English differ from the suburban white English I grew up speaking.  I want to share some of these more subtle features. Not just because I am fond of them but also because they seem to be features that escape the attention of most academic discussions of Aboriginal English / Aboriginal ways of using English. I'm going to skip over the complexities of what Aboriginal English is (and isn't) and also if/why that label is worth using at all (a chapter I wrote on Aboriginal English(es) dips into some of that discussion - email me if you want a copy). For brevity's sake, let...

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...

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...

If you've spent any time on the Stuart Highway north of Mataranka in the last couple of months, you've probably passed some distinctive looking road trains carting iron ore towards Darwin. For the past six weeks, they have been steadily coming out of Northern Territory Iron Ore 's mine which is part of something called the Roper Valley Iron Ore Project . What travellers on the Stuart Highway won't see is what those trucks are starting to do to country 150km east of the main highway. I travel along this road - the Roper Highway - usually twice a week. The reddening of the area near the mine is noticeable. A week ago, I stopped to look at just how much dust was coating the roadside vegetation and the pics I tweeted caught the attention of ABC's Country Hour and the Environment Centre NT.  Took a closer look at what iron ore trucking is doing to this section of the Roper Highway. This is after trucks have only been running for six weeks. See sub-tweets for video @Envi...

Ok so I'm a linguist not a movie critic but I am an avid movie-goer - part of the generation of Australians raised by Margaret and David to appreciate cinema and think critically about it. (I've even reviewed a few things on this blog: Short-doco Queen of the Desert , short film Lärr and some discussion of the brilliant Croker Island Exodus here ).  At this years Oscars, the film Coda surprised many by taking out Best Picture. It seems like few people have even had a chance to see it. Here in little ol' Katherine, we have a brilliant film society at our local Katherine 3 cinema, where each fortnight we get to watch something a bit different. In late 2021, I had the chance to see Coda there, long before it was thought of as an Oscar contender. Now that Coda is being talked about more than ever before, I wanted to share my experience of watching the film - especially because in one scene in particular, I was so angry that I genuinely considered walking out of the cinema -...

In late 2019, Zachary Rolfe entered a Yuendumu home and not long after, a teenager now known as Kumanjayi Walker had been shot three times and died soon after.  The body-worn footage captured the moments of the shooting and what the two police officers, Rolfe and Eberl, said at the time.  Pragmatics is a part of linguistics that lets you analyse the intentions of what people say. This definition works well: Pragmatics is a field of linguistics concerned with what a speaker implies and a listener infers based on contributing factors like the situational context, the individuals’ mental states, the preceding dialogue, and other elements. ( source ) However, it doesn't really require a linguistics degree to get insights into what was happening when Walker was shot, based on what the two officers said (as reported here ). Immediately after shooting Walker three times, Eberl, who was the officer in physical contact with Walker (rather than Rolfe who had shot Walker), said: “Did you...

Shorts films about endangered languages and culture form a small niche genre but there are quite a few out there. I've never seen one as gentle and beautiful as L ärr. Films in this micro-genre tend to do a few familiar things. They may be pedagogical videos, focusing on cultural practices that aren't being maintained well enough, and explicitly ask audiences to watch, learn and remember. There might be expressions of serious concern for the language and cultural shifts taking place and we see rhetoric from elders and cultural champions urging for action. Then there are ethnographic films - more 'fly on the wall' views of everyday life where constructing narrative or organising scenes to shoot are not primary concerns. L ärr is a 16-minute look at life with some of the last few speakers of Wägilak in the world, on their country, doing very Wägilak things. But the beauty of L ärr is its softness. The four men in the film let you gently into their world, on the remote out...

Bible translators translated the bible into Kriol because they thought it would be the best way for Kriol speakers to learn about Christianity. When Barunga School started a Kriol literacy program, it was because people thought Kriol speakers would learn to read and write faster if they learned literacy in their first language. When Kriol interpreters interpret in court, it's so Kriol speakers can get (marginally more) equal access to the justice system. I could go on... All the reasons I could cite for choosing Kriol over English tend to have foundations of social justice, communicative efficiency, or other social/cultural reasons related to education, spirituality and more. One domain that is absent is economy and business. English remains the language of wealth and business; Kriol is for 'not-for-profit' purposes. Well so I thought until I saw these work vehicles around Ngukurr recently. A plumbing and gas fitting company in Ngukurr helping with the new housing developme...

Kwementyaye Briscoe, 27, died in police custody in Alice Springs in 2012. The Coroner found that some police were immature and utterly derelict in their duties. He said the death was preventable and should not have occurred. Briscoe had committed no crime. He was taken into custody for being intoxicated and was dead 5 hours later. No police officer was sacked and no criminal charges were laid. More info on the case: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/aboriginal-death-custody-inquest-begins-kwementyaye-briscoe 432 Indigenous people have died in custody since the 1991 Australian Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. “This should never happen” - Trisha Morton-Thomas , Australian Actor (Radiance, Redfern Now, 8MMM) and Kwementyate Briscoe’s aunty.              Source video: ABC - https://youtu.be/mVAzY5Bqn_o

Like many I have spent much of the Coronavirus situation working from home, with all of its highs and lows. One highlight of my Covid experience is being stuck at home with a housemate who grew up in Côte d'Ivoire and speaks French. Not only that, but he's been quite open and willing to teach me some French and use it patiently with me as I struggle to move beyond beginner's level. (in case you're wondering: my French is still not great, but I am amazed how much I have learned in a few weeks and how much I can actually use it with my housemate now. So cool!). I am often asking questions of him to improve my knowledge. The other day when he sneezed and I asked (as any good linguist would) 'what do you say in French when someone sneezes?'. À tes souhaits he said, pronouncing it as something like /ˈatɛˌswɛ/. Immediately a lightbulb went off! That's the word 'atishoo' from that song we did in Kindy! I started raving: Ohmygodtheresthiskidssongthatw...

I have read phrases such as "so'n'so speaks English as a third, fourth even fifth language" enough times that it has started to strike me as rather odd: For many on the desert, like elder Reggie Uluru, English is a foreign language, or used as a third, fourth or even fifth language .  Source: Sydney Morning Herald "The end of Uluru's long quiet conflict which baffled both sides" (November 1, 2019) [ link ] While this expression is not particularly common it seems to be a minor trope. It comes in different guises; it can be used with cardinal instead of ordinal numbers: However Chaoke noted more than a decade later that the usage rate of Evenki remained quite high, and that it was still common to find Evenki speakers who were proficient in three, four or even five languages . Source: Wikipedia "Evenki language" [ link ] Or with a different series of numbers: The main language groups living in these communities are Jawoyn, Mi...

My recollection of being first taught the Kriol word wangulu was that it means 'orphan'. It's an interesting word in that it is a very common word (in Ngukurr at least) but part of the relatively smaller set of Kriol words that come from Indigenous languages rather than English. But it's the semantics of it that I find more interesting, particularly when faced with trying to translate it into English. The basic definition I learned - orphan - is a quick, shorthand definition. What linguists call a gloss. But, like all words, there's a fuller and more subtle range of English translations if you delve deeper... I started thinking about the word wangulu again recently because of fortnightly 'advanced beginner' Kriol lessons I've started running for munanga in Ngukurr. At each session, I ask students for a 'word of the week' - a Kriol word they like or want to know more about. One of the words was wangulu but the person who 'brought' ...