that munanga linguist

2016 sign at Rapid Creek (Source: Facebook) When I shared th is Kriol sign on Facebook as an example of a bad Kriol translation, a first language Kriol speaker commented: Im nomo Kriol garjinga, bambai aibina sabi.   Which means:   It’s not Kriol for goodness sake, otherwise I would’ve understood it. My thoughts exactly. And also the thoughts of every other Kriol speaker I know who has s e en it. Poorly translated signage isn’t uncommon. Everyone is familiar with the hilarity of Engrish . But when translation is just a commercial novelty, it doesn’t matter too much. However, when government departments seek out translation services, you can assume that it is for an important reason. And when that goes wrong, it is more serious and more embarrassing. My favourite example of this is an English sign emailed off to be translated into Welsh. The resultant sign features an ‘Out Of Office’ auto-reply message in Welsh! Out of office messa...

So many weeks, so many communities, so many interviews but no updates on this blog since I got all excited about the start of my Kriol Proujek ! Oops! In case you're new here, I'm working on a research project trying to figure out dialects of Kriol. The plan is to visit all the communities east of Katherine where Kriol is spoken, interview people (asking the same questions each time) and work out what differs linguistically (and what doesn't) between communities. It's old fashioned dialectology  basically - not very different from what people in England or America did when they went from state to state or village to village to lookout for different dialects. Except it's with Kriol. Well, two and a half months in and the project is going really well. I've visited seven communities: Bulman, Beswick, Barunga, Jilkminggan, Minyerri, Urapunga and Borroloola and done twenty interviews involving 42 people. That means I now have about 40 hours of Kriol recordings to...

I don't often blog about what I get up to anymore. Too busy ranting about what other people are doing it seems! I never even blogged about finishing my thesis or getting a new job at the University of Queensland (as a Postdoc with the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language ). That was all last year though and I'm not going to go into that now. Instead, why not just pick up from where I am today, which is in Beswick community, listening to a raging wet season storm going on outside. It's night-time now but here's the view from my awesome accommodation  this afternoon: Today was the first day in which I started my new research project proper (that is, actually getting out and about and making recordings, rather than doing preliminary office-based stuff). My current project (which I'm just calling Kriol Proujek for now, for simplicity's sake) is an attempt to find out how Kriol is different in all the communities it is spoken in, east of Katherine...

Good ol' Australia Day. We all deal with it (or don't) in our own way. Typically, I lay low and don't give myself a holiday. I keep working and apply myself to some task pertaining to Aboriginal languages which relieves my coloniser complex somewhat. I completely see how it is seen as a day of survival. Being exposed to endangered Aboriginal languages, sometimes I reflect on how remarkable it is that the languages have survived this far into colonisation at all. But that's just language survival. There are so many inspiring stories of Aboriginal people surviving particular events, discrimination and hardship. All Aussies value a good against-the-odds story. So this Australia Day, I thought I'd share a few survival stories that I find very moving: Croker Island Exodus I was just talking about this documentary yesterday when I caught up with a friend in Katherine - her mum was one of the kids who went on this walk. During the 2nd World War, the mission on...

If anyone's on Twitter and interested in learning something about Kriol, you're welcome to follow me there ( https://twitter.com/KriolKantri ), as I trial Kriol Kwiz. I'm trialling #KriolKwiz - regular Kriol Qs to help Twitterers learn more about the NT's 2nd most widely spoken language. Keep an eye out! — Kriol Kantri (@KriolKantri) December 22, 2015 After Twitter added a poll function, I realised it could be a neat way to instantly transmit some little Qs about Kriol to a few hundred people. For a language like Kriol, this can be especially useful because there really are very few avenues for non-Kriol speaking people to learn (or learn about) Kriol. Yet there are hundreds of such people living and working with and around Kriol speakers across a large part of Northern Australia. I regularly get requests or hear concerns about the lack of opportunities out there for people to learn Kriol. The Twitter questions are, of course, not going to fill that gap but he...