that munanga linguist

I am really scared about what the government's doing with their 'National emergency response'. So much so, that I really just want to put my head in the sand because thinking about what might happen is terrifying, but putting my head in the sand is not going to be very helpful. I've started reading the 'Little children are sacred' report (from the inquiry into child protection from sexual abuse) and the government's response and I'll comment as I go along. One very important point stands out in the very first recommendation of the report - a point that Howard's government seems to have missed totally. "It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities." Let me repeat that: "It is critical that both governments commit to genuine consultation with Aboriginal people in designing initiatives for Aboriginal communities." That recommendation h...

Hey I'm in another article. Look here . And I don't even think I sound too silly!

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!

Last week we had a big week in town (Katherine). We had two days with Batchelor and then three days with the Education Department for a Language Revitalisation Workshop. One of the highlights was working with Batchelor's linguistics students. They were in Katherine for a week-long workshop on Pidgins and Creoles. Their lecturer approached us to present something about the creole spoken at Ngukurr so we did a three hour session with them which was enjoyed by everyone. Usmob really enjoyed meeting the linguistics students and finding out where they’re from. They came from all over: Torres Strait, Desert, Western NSW, Victoria, Palm Island and came from different backgrounds (but all Indigenous). And they really enjoyed meeting the guys from Ngukurr and learning a bit about Kriol. It was just one of those lovely sharing experiences, but also included lots of discussion, opining and more. I was reflecting on why I enjoyed the session with them so much. One reason was that being ...

The Marra team I work with here is just getting stronger and stronger. Their latest achievement is learning some basic skills on elan - which is a program linguists use where you can link sound to text - it helps a lot when you're transcribing and translating texts and it's good for listening to audio and reading along with it. So JJ, AJ and AD who are all on CDEP and the language centre have all learned to use elan a little bit - selecting and playing the sound files while reading the annotated text, as well as entering in the text so that it then attaches itself to the soundfile. And the wonderful FR has been helping us with the transcriptions and translations because the rest of us are all still learning Marra. So in the past two weeks we've transcribed and translated a 9-minute story in Marra spoken by an old lady a couple of years ago. It's been a good learning experience for me too. Here's a little bit of the story: ... wala-yurranyi na-warlja. Guwarda-niw...