that munanga linguist

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...