Skip to main content

more languages!

I'm starting to get ready for next week's week of teaching which involves students from Timber Creek area who speak Ngarinyman and Jaminjung - two languages I know very little about! (Which is fine - I have a tutor and as long as I know the alphabet of those languages, I can put together a workshop).

Yesterday when my tutor was telling me a bit about Ngarinyman I freaked out. It's all Pama-Nyungan and weird. Give me pronominal prefixes anyday. heheheheheh.

Comments

bulanjdjan said…
"Give me pronominal prefixes anyday."

You're a freak! :) Wanna tackle the Dalabon set of 100+ distinct forms, and counting?

I think you'll find there's a lot to love about PN lgs...
Anonymous said…
Many years ago Michael Walsh had the same reaction when he worked on a South Australian PN language for the first time - I remember him saying "you really gotta listen to the ends of words, amazing".
Unknown said…
Hey Greg!
It's John, "from" Iceland. I re-stumbled onto your blog from a link on the SOAS Endangered Languages project page. I'm in Iceland again; I got a grant to study linguistics here for a year and am hoping to apply for a PhD next year. I don't have your email address; send me a note if you get a chance. ratcliffej@gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

The Oscar-winning Coda and its (mis)representation of interpreting (or, why I almost walked out of the cinema)

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 -...

Stirring quotes from Aboriginal educators

Today I've been working on my submission for the Federal Government's Inquiry into Language Learning in Indigenous Communities.  As part of my research for my submission, I was searching for quotes from Aboriginal educators in support of bilingual education and Indigenous language education.  When I assembled the quotes, I found it pretty much heartbreaking to see the passion that is there when at the same time Indigenous language education is being denied because of the NT Government's ridiculous Compulsory Teaching in English for the First Four Hours policy.  Here's what I found today: What we want is both-way teaching in the school – not only for two hours a week but everyday there should be both-way teaching… That policy of speaking English only at the school is the wrong thing – it is not good for our children … they will forget their language  - Rembarrnga speaker Miliwanga Sandy (Beswick Community) (in Gosford 2009). I am a qualified bilingual teache...

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...