that munanga linguist

Somehow I dug myself out of a mini PhD-writing slump this week and finally tabulated the last results of some research I did at Ngukurr a couple of months ago where I interviewed 14 young Kriol speakers about bush medicine and also a bit about lizards. The people I interviewed taught me lots of interesting stuff, but analysing what they told me is doing my head in. I've basically been writing about the same stuff for six months and I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my thesis in general. I mean, I'm still *kind of* interested in what I'm doing and learning but I'm at the stage where I've flogged the topics I'm focusing on to death so much so that I barely care anymore and I just can't see how anyone else might care. (Yes, I'm at *that* stage. It's known as the Valley Of Shit ). What I will look like if I have to write about lizards for much longer But here's your chance to restore some faith that what I'm devoting all my time to mig...

I recently wrote a detailed post that was critical of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation 's use of a statistic that falsely claimed that 80% of Indigenous kids in remote communities can't read. It was a post that had been festering in my mind for six months and I was so relieved to finally get my gripes off my chest. But writing that blogpost was just the start. Initially, I wasn't confident about publishing it on Fully (sic) but after running it by a few people I decided to publish a version there too, knowing it would get a lot more readers and attention. So it went up on Crikey and I immediately noticed it getting read, Facebooked and tweeted, including by reasonably well-known people like Helen Razer and economist Rory Robertson . I got some good feedback - in particular I was totally chuffed to get a personal email from one of the country's top Indigenous academics thanking me for the piece(!) - but I got a few negative comments too. The attention...

I'm not too far away from finishing my PhD (I hope!) and my plan for afterwards is to come back to Katherine and see what comes my way. I'm pretty confident that I'll find interesting work that utilises my skills and experience like the other day when I was asked to help Djilpin Arts with a Kriol translation of a picture book they're creating. It was only a little job, but very interesting for me because I had to translate it into Beswick Kriol, rather than Roper Kriol which I'm much more familiar with. There was a surprising number of little adjustments I had to make to ensure the translation sounded okay to a Beswick audience and Evangeline at Djilpin Arts was invaluable in providing assistance. There were a few things I already knew to avoid - for instance, Beswick mob say idim  instead of dagat for 'eat', they say deya  instead of ja  for 'there' and my favourite - they say eberrijing  instead of enijing  for 'things/belongings ...

Here's a shocking statistic: It's courtesy of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, or ALNF, a Sydney-based charity that promotes literacy development among under-privileged groups, in particular Aboriginal people in remote Australia. To garner support for their cause, the ALNF has fantastic marketing and PR, with a seemingly endless line of celebrities who ' raise their hands ' and successfully appeal to concerned public to part with their cash and fund their programs. Statistics like the one above are a great hook. They appeal to the guilt that many non-Indigenous people feel about Indigenous disadvantage and it gives them a way to feel like they are part of the "solution" without have to leave their urban locales. Here's another example from a couple of years back of just how impressive (and lucrative) their strategy - and that statistic - can be: Someone like me who's worked in remote communities for years and is passion...

While many of my PhD days down south are lonely days , I did have an opportunity to spend a wonderful 24 hours in Sydney last week. The occasion was to visit one of my dearest oldest friends who now lives in New York but was on a rare visit to Australia. I jumped at the opportunity to catch up with her and booked myself on to the Murray's Canberra-Sydney express. (Which by the way, I love dearly, if only for the wonderfully ambiguous pre-recorded post-boarding message that says "We thank you for travelling with Murries/Murray's"). Aside from a great and soul-rejuvenating catch-up with the lovely Ms. Iacovella (continuing a friendship that goes back to being 20 and working at World4Kids Aspley), we spent a few hours wandering through the Art Gallery of New South Wales. One of our common interests is art - she's worked for various galleries for years and I've spent years in Ngukurr where many great artists come from, many of whom I've done language work w...

At the moment, all I'm doing with my time is trying to get this PhD thesis written. About 60,000 words down, about 40,000 to go. I've pretty much eliminated all other tasks from my agenda so my to-do-list basically looks like: Write thesis This can lead to some pretty lonely days. Like today. Basically I got up. I went to my office. I pored over data, I wrote a few hundred words, I procrastinated with some emailing and internet surfing. I ate lunch at my computer and by the time I left at the end of the day, I'd barely had contact with any other humans.  It kinda sucks. But I just want to finish the damn thing. Sigh. But I probably shouldn't write a completely dreary blogpost. So here's a neat video I saw today in Murrinh-Patha (the language of Wadeye) and English with a guy tricking people into thinking he's eating dogfood. :-)

I just noticed how odd this string of syllables looks: ... baba ba im, im ...  But it's not odd at all. It's a perfect little string of Kriol words that means: ... his/her sibling is ...  And who said Kriol words were hard to pronounce? In other Kriol language learning news, the first of three Roper Kriol verbs videos is done and up on the Ngukurr Language Centre YouTube page . I mentioned on a previous post that while at Ngukurr recently, an audio recording session with two of the young guys who've been a great help to me with my Kriol research turned into an impromptu video recording session with them demonstrating some of the substrate verbs that are common in Roper Kriol. The first video shows three of the verbs: moi , gubarl and ngum . Kamahl's acting is suberb! You might notice the camera wobbling noticeably when he's scavenging ( gubarl ) cigarette butts. That's me trying not to laugh too much! Hope you like the vid. Parts 2 and 3 will be done so...