aboriginal perspectives 100210

7/24/2019 Aboriginal Perspectives 100210

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Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages

Teaching

Introduction

As well as making links with the languages we teach, for example by comparing

and contrasting Aboriginal languages with other languages, AboriginalPerspectives is about being mindful of relevant aspects of Aboriginal culture as it

aects everything that happens in the classroom. This is a sensitive area and it is

easy to fall into cultural stereotyping, but it is important not to stray in the

direction of Aboriginal people do not like to make direct eye contact!type

generalisations "see

http#$$aboriginalrights.suite%&%.com$article.cfm$falseprotocols' or slide into

sentimental$noble savage discourses about caring and sharing.

(deally, it is advisable to have a whole of school approach to this, so that

everyone in the school is aware of and in contact with the local Aboriginalcommunity, if appropriate. This is a whole school responsibility, but in many

cases a languages teacher has taken the )rst step, for example to )nd out if

there is any interest in initiating an Aboriginal language program in the school or

inviting a local *lder to talk about language and culture. (f your school does not

have an Aboriginal *ducation +cer, there are Aboriginal *ducation consultants

and Aboriginal -iaison +cers in each egional +ce who may be contacted for

advice.

1. How many Aboriginal languages are there?

*stimates about the number of Aboriginal languages vary but theNational

Indigenous Languages Survey Report 2005documents %/0 languages which are

still being spoken "p. 12'. 3ote that there are, in many cases, several dialects of

each language, each with its own name. 3ationally, 14 of these languages have

fewer than ten speakers and only between three and )ve are described as safe

or strong. ecent research indicates that there were approximately 50

languages in 367. Around ten of these are now taught in schools.

Discussion questions for teachers and students.How strong is the

language you are teaching/learning in your local area? In Australia?

Internationally? How any spea!ers does it have? Has it replaced inority

languages in the place/s where it is spo!en?

2. Are they really languages or are they dialects?

This is a tricky 8uestion, much debated by linguists and language speakers. 7e

all speak a dialect, even if our dialect is 6tandard Australian *nglish. (n some

cases, dierent languages may be so closely related that, ob9ectively, we would

de)ne them as dialects of one language but politically they indicate distinct
http://aboriginalrights.suite101.com/article.cfm/falseprotocolshttp://aboriginalrights.suite101.com/article.cfm/falseprotocols


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Teachingsocial groups. 6erbian and :roatian, which are very similar to each other though

they use dierent writing systems, are a well!known example of this.

(n the case of Aboriginal languages, there are many 8uite distinct languages,

some which are related to others and which may share some vocabulary and

grammar. 7ithin each language, there may be a number of dialects, each with

its own name. ;etails about dialects have often been lost in 367 but, for

example, in Arnhemland where there are several languages, we know that each

clan has its own dialect. People typically marry out of their clan so they will

speak several dialects, if not several languages.

A point to be aware of is that non!standard varieties of languages are often

referred to derogatorily as dialects. or example, the sound

systems are fairly similar which is why we recognise place names such as

?irribilli and 7agga 7agga as being of Aboriginal origin. ">or a good collection of

*nglish words derived from Aboriginal languages look at Australian A&original

"ords in %nglish' (heir origin and eaningby ;ixon et al. @nded. @&&1 +P.'=any *nglish sounds do not occur in most Aboriginal languages, such as $s$,

$f$, $B$ and this accounts for the distinctive accent of Aboriginal language

speakers to the *nglish!hearing ear. Cowever, retroDex and laminal sounds are

common, and present a challenge to speakers of *nglish who may not recognise

the dierences between $ny$, $ng $and $n$ or between $l $and $rl$.

Eet most Aboriginal languages are not mutually intelligible. They are part of a

language family, 9ust as *nglish is part of the (ndo!*uropean language family

along with 6panish, ussian, Cindi, Eiddish and Armenian, among many others.

7hile Aboriginal languages share similarities, in contrast to *nglish they are as

varied as the languages that make up the (ndo!*uropean group.

"hat are the characteristic sounds o$ the language you teach/learn? Are they

siilar to other languages? "hat sort o$ di)culties does this present $or

onolingual %nglish spea!ers?

". #hat are they li$e in %orm?

Frammatically they are like -atin, highly inDected, so that nouns have a sux to

indicate their case "nominative, accusative, dative, etc.'. Particularly notable is

the widespread use of the ergative case, the marking of the sub9ect of a


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Teachingtransitive sentence. This contrasts with *nglish in which word order is important

to indicate such information. -ook at this example from Fumbaynggirr.

*u&aalu arlagarl yiiny+ang,


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TeachingCowever, 9ust because Aboriginal languages were not written down, it does not

mean that there were no ways to convey meaning symbolically. According to

Gane 6impson "see Transient -anguages blog

"http#$$blogs.usyd.edu.au$elac$@&&1$%&$sandHtalkHandHhowHtoHrecordHit.htmlImu

nn'

(n :entral Australia, you often see Aboriginal people sitting on the ground,

talking, and simultaneously drawing on the sand, smoothing it over when

theyJve )nished a point, and starting again. They might be recounting

places along a 9ourney, listing family members, drawing maps, or

describing the movement of characters in a story. (Jll call this Jsand talkJ.

As characters move and scenes change, the narrator rubs out the picture

in the sand and starts afresh....there is a clear relationship between the

iconicity of the sand drawings and the visual elements that are now used

in marketable art from the :entral Australian region.

The following diagrams, retrieved on %4 >ebruary @&%& from

http#$$www.robertbartonart.com$default.aspKPage(;L5& , give some idea of how

this works in one region of :entral Australia.

'ampsite

This icon is the symbol for campsite. Eou will

)nd this symbol in common usage in centraldesert art works. This can also mean specialplace, sacred site or home depending on these8uence and relationship "context' to othersymbols in the piece.

(our women sitting around a camp)re

The meaning of this symbol changes dependingon the number of characters placed around thecentral camp)re symbol. +ne to two denotesmen around a camp)re. This may be usedmetaphorically in a work to convey womenJsbusiness.
http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html#munnhttp://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html#munnhttp://www.robertbartonart.com/default.asp?PageID=30http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html#munnhttp://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html#munnhttp://www.robertbartonart.com/default.asp?PageID=30


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Teaching*angaroo trac$s

The ?angaroo is one of a handful of Australiannative animals which easily adapted to theharsh extremes of the outback and could befound from deserts to rainforests. This iconshows the relief pattern left by the ?angaroo asin bounds across the desert sands.

Travelling water

The 9agged lines represent the water sourcealong which travellers would track in movingfrom one camp to another. 7ater along with )reis one of the most important life sustainingresources on the land.

+an,hunter


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TeachingIagine how you ight $eel i$ you were not allowed to spea! your language any

ore,

. #hat is lost when languages are lost?

-osing a language is losing a way of thinking about the world. +ne way tounderstand a little of how people conceptualise is to look at their systems of

classifying things. =urrinh!Patha, widely spoken in the west of the 3orthern

Territory, has ten noun classes, a pre)x is attached to every noun, indicating its

class# !ardu Aboriginal people and spiritsM !unon!Aboriginal people and other

animals and their products such as meatM !urafresh waterM ifood plants and

their products, including faecesM thaulspearsM thuother weapons and things

that strike, like thunder and lightning and playing cards "when they hit the

ground'M thung!u)re, )rewood, matchesM datime and place including seasonsM

urrinhspeech and languageM nanthieverything else. As in languages such as

>rench and Ferman, where you need to indicate grammatical gender "a type ofnoun class', so in =urrinh!Patha you may have to indicate noun class too,

although in this language, gender is not an aspect of the classes. (t is interesting

that a thing can be a member of several classes, depending upon the way it is

viewed at the time. >or example, a boomerang is an oensive weapon so will be

thu !uragadha. Cowever, if it is used 9ust as an ornament on your mantelpiece, it

would be nanthi !uragatha. 6imilarly, anything which is not normally a weapon,

but used as a weapon, would be preceded by thu. 6o, a bottle, !uis in the

nanthiclass but, used as a weapon, would be thu !u. 3ote that if something is

being used or behaving in its most usual way, the noun class marker is often

omitted. ">or more information on =urrinh!Patha see 7alsh @&&0.'

(n some Aboriginal languages the noun classes do include male!female

distinctions. (n ;yirbal, women, )re and dangerous things comprise one noun

classN

.oes your language have noun classes? %nglish does not &ut ost %uropean

languages have graatical gender,

/. Aboriginal languages and ecology

Aboriginal ways for speaking about the material aspects of the modern world

tend to be limited but language for speaking about the natural world is

particularly rich. *cological knowledge is often implicit in the language. The

spangled grunter is a )sh which eats the fallen fruit of the native white apple and

so, in ?unwin9ku, they share the same name, &o!orn. This will help you to

remember that if you want to catch a spangled grunter you must go to where the

white apple tree hangs over the river and thrown your line in there. 6imilarly, the

names for the edible grubs that live in certain bushes are related to the name of


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Teachingthe bush. 6o, in Arrente, spoken around Alice 6prings, the tnyeewitchetty bush

is where you )nd tnyeatye, the witchetty grub "*vans @&&O p. @%'.

*thnopharmacology is the name for the study of medicinal plants known to other

cultures. There is a recent Ph;. thesis on the medicinal plants of Familaraay and

=urawari!speaking areas of 367. 6uch knowledge is lost when languages are

lost.

(hin! a&out how the naes o$ plants and anials in your language ay suggest

in$oration a&out their ualities, %nglish e1aples' ca&&age white &utter6ies

honeyeaters woodpec!ers $ever$ew deadly nightshade,4

(he naes $or soe anials $or in A&original languages even when

incorporated into %nglish reain onoatopoeic e,g, !oo!a&urra currawong,

(he word $or crow in any A&original languages is wa, wak, waganor siilar,

How is onoatopoeia used in your language?

0. Language %or use with particular people or in special situations

Typically there are some people who do not speak to each other in Aboriginal

communities due to traditional habits. *veryone in the community will belong to

a section, or sub!section, known as a skin group. *veryone will belong to one of

the groups and this will determine who you marry. *veryone in the same group is

a brother or sister, whether they are biologically related or not. 6o, for example,

if you look at this diagram#

garritan ngarritj 3eliny balang

4amany

gamarrang

3anginy

bangardi

bulanyan Bulany 4alian gela

wamutan Wamut 4otan gotjok

Able to marry

(n the boxes above, womenare bold, menare bold italic. People in the same

box are brother and sister. The children of the women will be of the skin group ofthe box below "it is your mothers skin group that determines what your skin will

be'. The husbands of the women will be those indicated by reciprocal arrows.

=en do not speak to their mothers!in!law and brothers and sisters do not speak

to each other after puberty. 6o, for example, in the diagram above, which shows

the skin groups in the Gawoyn$3galkbon$embarrnga regions of the 3orthern

Territory, if ( am bulantanand married to balang, my children will be wamut

or wamutan. *ven if ( were married to gela, my children would still be wamut

or wamutan. ( can talk and 9oke with my husband and also all men in the

category of husband, balangor gela, however ( cannot talk to anyone in the


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Teachingcategory of my brothers who are bulany. =y husband cannot talk to anyone in

the category of his mother!in!law who is gamany.

(n some areas there were special languages learned by young men undergoing

initiation. ;uring the time of their initiation they would only be allowed to

communicate using this very restricted language and at ceremonial gatherings

initiated men would speak it to each other "thus ensuring no one else could

understand what they were saying.' uoting from the book Spo!en Hereby =ark

Abley#

QThe languages lexicon was small# 9ust a couple of hundred basic words.


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TeachingAboriginal language, and this spread through Australia with the cattle trains. A

pidgin is not a complete language but it does not need to be, it is spoken by

people who already speak at least one other language. (n some areas of

Australia, children from various language groups were separated from their

parents on missions and communicated with each other in the pidgin *nglishspoken to them by the missionaries. 6ince this was the only language they used,

it became more regular and complex than pidgin, eventually becoming a creole.

Across the north of Australia many people now speak a creole, called ?riol.

?riol is interesting because, while many of the words come from *nglish, many

grammatical features come from Aboriginal languages. >or example, look at the

pronouns#

mi (

yu you "sing.'

im he$she$it

wi we "inclusive' we, including the addressee

mibala we "exclusive' we, but not the addressee

yunmi we two "inclusive' we two, including the addressee

mindubala we two "exclusive' we two, but not the addressee

yundubala dual you two

yumob you "plural'

olabat they

Eou can see that there are far more personal pronouns than in *nglish. =ost of

these occur in all Aboriginal languages. Another aspect of typical Aboriginal

grammar in ?riol is that transitivity has to be marked on verbs. This is done by

the sux, i. 6o, .ei &in giti itranslates as# They got it. The :isux on the

verb git, indicates that git"get' is a transitive verb.

Aboriginal *nglish is a dialect of *nglish that shares some characteristics of

Aboriginal languages, but not to the same extent as ?riol does. Cowever, an

understanding of ?riol and ancestral Aboriginal languages can help explain some

characteristics of Aboriginal *nglish. >or example, in Aboriginal *nglish it is

common for to )nd sentences such as I saw hi that an. (n *nglish, the him

is redundant, but this is a remnant of the Aboriginal pattern of indicating if a verb

is transitive by adding a sux to the verb itself.

In alost all languages it is possi&le to 9nd evidence o$ contact with other

languages, %nglish has evidence o$ the in6uence o$ Latin ;rench and


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Teachinglanguages, How has contact with other languages in6uenced the language you

teach/learn?

12 Aboriginal languages in literature

7ithin a couple of years of the arrival of the >irst >leet, the Aboriginal people and

hence Aboriginal languages of the 6ydney region were decimated by a smallpox

epidemic. =uch of what we now know about the 6ydney language is because of

the notebooks kept by 7illiam ;awes "see http#$$www.williamdawes.org$', the

astronomer who came to Australia on the >irst >leet. (he Lieutenantby ?ate

Frenville is a work of )ction based on the life of ;awes. ooke, the main

protagonist in the book, is portrayed as a man fascinated by language, as this

extract indicates#

;o you know, 6ilk, he exclaimed, hearing his voice a little wild, ( have

found that they use the dual plural, like Freek. ;ual pronouns too, ( think,

though am not sure, but have collected some examples...=ou and e, or

all o$ us, or e and these others &ut not you, all embedded in the

pronounN 7hile *nglish makes only the crudest of distinctionsN (magine,

6ilk, a race of people using a language as supple as that of 6ophocles and

ComerN

"*xtract from (he Lieutenantby ?ate Frenville, p. @/0. 6ilk is based on another

>irst >leeter, 7atkin Tench.'

(n the >oo! Showon Radio Nationalon %O Ganuary @&&O, ?ate Frenville answered

omona ?ovals 8uestion about her reference to a language as supple as

6ophocles or Comer. ?ate Frenville responded#

7hen ( was doing the research...( donJt know anything about languages

really, but a person who does know mentioned to me that ;awes has

actually written down in his notebooks that the language was inDected

and that it used "and ( may not have the right term' the dual plural. (n

other words, they didnJt 9ust say...inDected, )rst of all, like -atin so that in

the one word youJve got all things that the verb might be, but the dual

plural is something that we donJt have in *nglish, though ( think we used

to back in +ld *nglish.

(t means that when you say JweJ you may mean 9ust yourself and the

person standing next to you or by using another word you can say Jmyself

and everybody on this side of the fenceJ sort of thing. (n other words, you

can be very discriminating in 9ust exactly which groups of people you

mean by JweJ. (tJs a very closely calibrated little pronoun which we donJt

have.
http://www.williamdawes.org/http://www.williamdawes.org/


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TeachingAnd apparently, (Jve been told "and ( donJt know if this is true' ancient

Freek has the same incredibly sophisticated thing. As an educated man of

the late %2th century, ooke would certainly have known ancient Freek

and -atin very well, so it gave me a chance to reveal his innocent

excitement, and also to say what in fact linguists do feel about manyAboriginal languages, that they are extraordinarily sophisticated

grammatically.

(he 9ctional wor!The -ieutentantis one way to help us to understand

soething a&out the history and culture o$ Australia and Australia3s languages,

"hat novels or 9ls provide a way to learn ore a&out the language and

culture o$ the language you are teaching/learning?

Annotated 8eading List3oo$s

Australian Aboriginal Words in English: their origin and meaning .=.7.

;ixon et al. @&&1 +P.

This book is a reliable source of information about the origins of Aboriginal

language words in *nglish. (n addition, it provides a very readable short

introduction to Australian languages by


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Teachingthat are currently endangered and often barely documented, we cannot

understand the rich diversity of the human mind and we all lose a part of our

collective humanity. The book is aimed at the general reader and not professional

linguists, but it assumes the reader is not allergic to some discussion of

grammar.

A handbook of Aboriginal languages of $ew %outh Wales and the

Australian &a'ital erritory @&&2 Gim 7afer and Amanda -issarrague @&&2

=uurrbay Aboriginal -anguage and :ulture :ooperative

This is an essential reference book for anyone professionally involved with

Aboriginal language in 367. (t brings together details about, and references to,

all the available published information about 367 languages. (f you want to

know the name of the language of the place where you live or work, this where

you look. (t will tell you where languages are or were spoken and list the various

spelling and tell you where you can )nd out more.

Language and &ulture in Aboriginal Australia "@&&0' =ichael 7alsh and

:olin Eallop "eds' eprinted @&&0 Aboriginal 6tudies Press.

+riginally published in %OO5, this remains one of the best introductions to a

range of topics relating to Aboriginal languages and culture. (ntended as an

introduction to the topic for )rst year university students, it includes discussion

8uestions at the end of each chapter. (t would be the place to direct interested

senior high school students.

he Lieutentant?ate Frenville @&&2 Text Publishing.

This is a novel loosely based on events in the life of 7illiam ;awes, whose

notebooks provide the most comprehensive description of the language$s spoken

in and around 6ydney at the time of the arrival of the >irst >leet. (t is particularly

interesting to read this in con9unction with Gakelin Troys -anguage :ontact in

*arly :olonial 3ew 6outh 7ales %422!%4O% in Language and 8ulture in

A&original Australia"see above'.

6po$en Here9 Travels among threatened Languages=ark Abley @&&0

=ariner


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TeachingThis is a web!based resource designed to support Aboriginal languages at 6tage

/. (t can be found under Aboriginal -anguages on the :urriculum 6upport

website. Parts of it may be useful to support other stages or Aboriginal 6tudies.

>or -anguages teachers, it is a way to )nd out more about Aboriginal languages

in 367.

The noteboo$s o% #illiam ;awes

http9,,www.williamdawes.org,

The notebooks of -ieutenant 7illiam ;awes at the 6+A6 -ibrary 6pecial:ollections are the ma9or source of information about the Aboriginal language of6ydney. They contain information of signi)cance to Aboriginal communities of3ew 6outh 7ales, to linguists, historians, residents of 6ydney, and many others.(t is interesting to look at this in con9unction with reading (he Lieutenant,

Transient Languages and 'ultures

http9,,blogs.usyd.edu.au,elac,

aboriginal perspectives 100210

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