Langguj Gel

Pitjantjatjara Language Summer School

2009-11-25T09:07:00.002+09:30

Following on from this discussion about opportunities to formally learn Aboriginal languages, anyone interested in learning some Pitjantjatjara this summer will be able to do so at the David Unaipon College of Indigenous Education and Research at USA in Adelaide in January.

Sad News

2009-02-17T13:19:00.002+09:30

One of the youngest Dalabon speakers is currently in a coma in Darwin hospital, and I'm guttered. Thanks to increasing usage of mobile phones in the Katherine region, I am, however, able to stay in touch with his family, and get updates on his status.

More on the use of mobile phones and the use of Dalabon in another post, but for now, I'm a bit distracted.

New Report on Indigenous Language in Schools

2008-12-10T10:29:00.000+09:30

I'm a little short on time (and head-space for proper critical analysis and commentary) at the moment, but I'm still keen to post on the many goings-on in the world of Australian Indigenous languages, and policy relating to them.

So with that as pre-cursory statement, I present the following text copied from Julia Gillard's media release (I haven't read the report yet, but you can download it here):

The Minister for Education, the Hon Julia Gillard, today released the Indigenous Language Programs in Australian Schools — A Way Forward report.

The report was prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER), funded by the Australian Government’s School Languages Program.

The report provides a snapshot of the current situation of Indigenous language education in schools across Australia.

Over 16 000 Indigenous students and 13 000 non-Indigenous students located in 260 Australian schools are involved in an Indigenous language program.

The report reveals that over 80 different Indigenous languages are taught in schools throughout Australia.

The report found that learning an Indigenous language can enhance a range of social and academic outcomes for all students.

The Australian Government is committed to supporting languages education in Australian schools. The School Languages Program provides funding of $112 million from 2005 to 2008 to support the learning of all languages, including Indigenous languages.

The Australian Government has also committed $540 million to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes and close the gap in educational attainment for Indigenous Australians.

The Government firmly believes that all Australian students need to be proficient in English to be able to full participate in the world of work and further study.

This is what it's all about

2008-12-09T23:18:00.002+09:30

Tonight I met a woman from Adelaide, whose mother was taken away/stolen from the communities where I work. Her mother is Dalabon. I was excited to make the connection, as I think she was too.

I was also all too aware that having a whitefella tell you that they're completing a PhD on the language you never got a chance to learn was likely pretty alienating. I'm hoping to meet up with her again on Thursday night at the closing night concert, and hear more from her about her story/ies, and to see what I can offer.

AWAYE! weighs in to the Bilingual debate

2008-12-09T19:46:00.000+09:30

The Radio National Aboriginal arts and culture program AWAYE! most recently did a feature show on the bilingual education issue in the NT. They also took in a wider view of indigenous language maintenance and revitalisation around the country.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the program yet in full, but have downloaded it for closer scrutiny in the near future. So, this post is a heads-up on what promises to be a fairly close look at the situation.

WIPCE on the radio

2008-12-09T14:20:00.002+09:30

On tomorrow's breakfast program, 3CR will be broadcasting interviews with two deadly women from Barunga (Marie Brennan) and Beswick (Miliwanga Sandy), who are attending WIPCE. If you're in Melbourne, it's 855AM, otherwise stream it from their website. No podcasts, only live.

WIPCE invitation

2008-12-09T09:31:00.002+09:30

The World Indigenous Peoples' Conference on Education is on in Melbourne at the moment. I went to the opening festival on Sunday at the Aborigines Advancement League and was duly swept up in the excitement and emotion of such a large gathering of proud indigenous people from all over the world.

It's extra special for me too, cos some of the people I work with from up north are visiting Melbourne to attend the conference. So we've been doing all the tourist things like going to the Queen Victoria Market (good: the food! bad: seeing all the 'Made in China' Aboriginal souvenirs), visiting my family, going up the Eureka Tower. It's great to be able to play host in return for once!

Being at the opening festival was also an amazing lesson in indigenous solidarity: getting commentary from my co-collaborators on their thoughts about all the various performances we witnessed from Māori, Hawai'ians, Canadian First Nations peoples, Ainu, Thursday Islanders, and Saami.

I'm not attending the actual conference, but am planning to attend the closing night this Thursday at the Tennis Centre. It's open to the public and is very affordable at $15. Big names like Archie Roach, Ruby Hunter and Kev Carmody are performing, as well as traditional performances by the delegates. They blew me away on Sunday at the opening festival. Tix are available from Ticketek, and are not allocated seating. Hope to see you there!!

More news on the film The Linguists

2008-12-05T22:36:00.005+09:30

I received the email from Ironbound Films, the production company behind The Linguists. The educational DVD looks like an exciting package, but it's $US300. Gulp.

[Update: in response to an email querying the price I got the following reply, "We do imagine releasing a consumer priced DVD in the future."]

* THE LINGUISTS educational DVD now available
* THE LINGUISTS screens worldwide
* President Bush views Ironbound video aboard the Intrepid
* Ironbound in production on two new feature hits

* * *

* THE LINGUISTS educational DVD now available

Universities, high schools, libraries, cultural centers: the educational DVD of Ironbound Films’ Sundance hit THE LINGUISTS is now available for purchase. Includes 30 minutes of DVD extras and discussion guide. DVDs will not ship until December 23, but preorder now to avoid the holiday rush: http://www.thelinguists.com/dvd.

* THE LINGUISTS screens worldwide

On Thursday, February 26, 2009, at 10 PM, THE LINGUISTS will air nationally on PBS (check local listings).

February 21 has been sanctioned by the UN “International Mother Language Day.” Refresh http://www.thelinguists.com/screenings.html as momentum builds to screen THE LINGUISTS worldwide. Stop by to see it this Sunday, December 7, at 3 PM, at the Peekskill Paramount Theater as part of Free Arts Day; or hop a flight to be part of its upcoming premiere in Mumbai, Paris, or Kathmandu.

If you can’t attend a screening, Google one. THE LINGUISTS was only the fifth film in the Filmmakers@Google series at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Watch 34 minutes of Q&A at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxI1MP3H92M.

* President Bush views Ironbound video aboard the Intrepid

President George W. Bush reopened the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in a ceremony this Veterans Day. He toured past Ironbound’s 50-foot video wall “that makes you feel like you are at sea” and saw our short documentary about takeoff and landing. Mission accomplished! Check out http://wcbstv.com/topstories/intrepid.world.war.2.859600.html to see video of our video.

* Ironbound in production on two new feature hits

In our usual globetrotting, Ironbound returns from a Kenya shoot for “The New Recruits,” a documentary about social entrepreneurship funded by PBS through a grant from the Skoll Foundation; and now departs for exotic New Jersey, where we have secured exclusive access to “The Morton Downey Jr. Show,” not seen by the public in 20 years. Fasten your seatbelts for this yet-to-be titled blockbuster on the pioneer of trash TV.

For more information contact:

Ironbound Films, Inc.
PO Box 441
Garrison, NY 10524
T: 845.424.3700
F: 845.424.3753
http://www.ironboundfilms.com
http://www.thelinguists.com

More on the Intervention

2008-11-19T20:35:00.003+09:30

Background Briefing on Radio National played a story on the Intervention this week. I heard most of it, and found it a *little* one-sided: all about how inconvenient the Intervention is, and not so much about some of the positive changes.

It seemed to parallel the ABC TV's recent show quite a lot, given that it was also recorded in the same communitites, with largely the same people, some of whom were related to the young man who recently shot himself near Bulman.

You win some, you lose some

2008-11-17T18:26:00.003+09:30

News today that meh will be added to the 30th anniversary edition of the Collins Dictionary. It will be defined as "an expression of indifference or boredom, or an adjective meaning mediocre or boring" and is attributed to Bart and Lisa Simpson (of The Simpsons).

The following may be old news to some (admittedly I heard of it a little while ago, but only found a good link today), but better late than never. Which is very appropriate, actually: The Collins Dictionary is trying to revive endangered English words, which are threatened with being culled from the next edition of the dictionary. A sample of words, taken from the Age article:

abstergent: cleansing or scouring;
agrestic: rural, rustic, unpolished, uncouth;
apodeictic: unquestionably true by virtue of demonstration;
caducity: perishableness, senility;
calignosity: dimness, darkness;
embrangle: to confuse or entangle;
exuviate: to shed (a skin or similar outer covering);
fatidical: prophetic;
griseous: streaked or mixed with grey;
somewhat grey;
malison: a curse;
mansuetude: gentleness, mildness;
niddering: cowardly;
nitid: bright, glistening;
olid: foul-smelling;
oppugnant: combative, antagonistic or contrary;
periapt: a charm or amulet;
recrement: waste matter; refuse; dross;
roborant: tending to fortify or increase strength;
vaticinate: to foretell; prophecy;
vilipend: to treat or regard with contempt.

Funnily (and fore-bodingly) enough, each of these words comes up as a 'spelling mistake' in my browser as I compose this!

The Collins people have started a campaign to increase the use of these words, so as to justify not giving them the heave-ho come editing time. Apparently celebrities have been engaged to 'adopt' a word, and start using it as much as possible, so it might catch on. Like fetch in Mean Girls, perhaps...

The Intervention: doco on ABC

2008-10-29T18:14:00.002+09:30

Tomorrow night at 9:30pm, the ABC is screening The Intervention, a doco about the Intervention in the Katherine region.

I know several of the people who feature in this, and remember when it was being shot - as I was in the region at the time. I'm waiting with baited breath to see it.

Cultural maintenance in new media

2008-10-27T12:18:00.003+09:30

John Bradley and Amanda Kearney (at Monash University's Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies) have been working for some time on developing an animation of a traditional Yanyuwa song, which recounts the journey of a tiger shark to Yanyuwa country.

The animation looks great - it was previewed on an Australian Story episode (earlier this year?) about Bradley and his work at Booroloola. Here is a link to an article about the animation project, and you can follow a link from there to a videoed interview with Bradley and Kearney, which also previews snippets of the animation. The article and the video both include some discussion about the adoption of modern technology in cultural maintenance, and some issues which emerged in doing so - to do with access, and literacy in new media.

Aboriginal (languages) in the media

2008-09-25T14:55:00.003+09:30

I haven't had a chance to listen to these yet, but thought I should post the links so others might before the media is no longer available.

Two Radio National shows of late have features stories with Aboriginal (language) content. The first is The Law Report, with a story on the interpreters in the courtroom, and the difficulties of doing their jobs well, especially for Indigenous interpreters.

The second is a discussion on Life Matters featuring Dr. Maggie Brady, dispelling the myths about Aboriginal people and alcohol, e.g. that they biologically can't handle it.

Did anyone catch these? Any comments on them?

Kaiadilt/Kayardild

2008-09-25T14:51:00.002+09:30

BTW, in the previous post, there is a link to an article in Age about the exhibition of art produced by Bentinck Island women.

The journalist makes the very astute (and correctly spelt!) distinction between the Kaiadilt people and the Kayardild language. Kudos.

And the art is *fabulous* and Nick Evans gave a great talk about it. I strongly encourage any readers in Melbourne to make their way there.

Kaiadilt in Melbourne

2008-09-20T10:04:00.002+09:30

Last minute post to any opportunistic Melbourne readers: Prof. Nick Evans will be giving a talk on an art exhibition of Kaiadilt women's paintings in Melbourne today at 3pm.

Age Article.

Alcaston Gallery.

Passing the baton on

2008-09-19T07:25:00.004+09:30

I’ll soon be giving the final lecture for the semester for the Aboriginal Languages unit I’ve been lecturing. All semester the emphasis has been on ‘You can go and work in Aboriginal Australia! It’s not inaccessible (in all senses of the word)’. I’d like to end the final lecture with a discussion on a ‘How to get into this field as a researcher or as a community linguist’. There’s the obvious honours/PhD path for a researcher. There’s also the less-obvious path of a community linguist.

I'd like to know from you:

1. How did you get into working with Aboriginal communities? By what connections?
2. What do you wish you’d known before you started working in Aboriginal Australia?

In relation to the second point, I've been thinking of few things, which are listed below. Some I lacked at the time, others I’m really grateful I knew of in advance. Most of these are specific to working in more remote contexts, any different points of view from less-remote areas are most welcome!

Aboriginal people are people, who have the same motivations and emotions as anyone else. And they're really forgiving of all the cross-cultural blunders you'll make for the first while.
There’s always a reason why people mightn’t choose to work with you, though it may not be personal. If you’re a good listener, a confidant will tell you what is going on such that X won’t work with you, and perhaps even point out which cross-cultural blunders you've made. You may even receive suggestions on how to overcome such an impasse. E.g. change the constellation of the language ‘team’ such that the speaker you seek won’t have to work with their mother-in-law behind the camera.
Humbug can be full on, and only you can work out the best way to respond to it.
The dependency you feel on your Aboriginal colleagues when out in the bush is a nice way to learn how it may feel for them when the roles are reversed.
Linguists have bad reputations in some parts, so be prepared to demonstrate how you’re different from your predecessors. And be prepared to accept that such a demonstration may not be enough for some communities.
There are a lot of really ignorant people in powerful positions. You and the language community you work with need to persevere nonetheless, either by talking the powerful ones around, or by doing things on your own terms.
Grants are there for the taking, so apply for them!
More knowledge about language endangerment issues and practices, such that I could have given better, more assured advice about school language programs.
Technical stuff? Using recording equipment and digital software?
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Take your time to learn what has been attempted before, and why it didn’t work.
The entirety of Nick Evans’ (2001) paper The last speaker is dead - long live the last speaker!
Wamut once made the suggestion that spending a couple of weeks in a community without any recording equipment could be a good way to get to know people, without always having a microphone between you. Can’t say I’d be able to resist the temptation to record every precious Dalabon word uttered by anyone I’d be spending time with in that context, though I do like the idea. Might be hard for community members to work out how to place you if you’re not overtly practising your ‘role’ however.

Evans, Nicholas. 2001. The last speaker is dead - long live the last speaker! In Linguistic Field Work, edited by Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 250-281.

You know you're a linguist when...

2008-09-14T20:14:00.006+09:30

You listen to SBS radio just to see if you can figure out which language program is currently being aired, and listen for cognates with other languages you know.
You are so excited about the Phonemes application on Facebook you call others over to your computer to show them, only to be disappointed that you can't actually listen to the phone(me)s.
When speaking to someone who has a different dialect/first language to your own, you mimic their speech under your breath, trying to work out the place and manner of their articulation.
You overgeneralise the application of newly-acquired discourse markers in a different lect, just because you're so excited to try them out.
You find yourself explaining the difference between the lay and technical definitions of linguist, after being asked 'Oh, how many languages do you speak?'
You have a copy of the IPA stuck to the back of the toilet door.
You watch foreign-language films to see how much vocab you can pick up, and for languages you know better, to see how much discrepancy there is between the subtitles and the dialogue.
You choose your lovers based on their native-speaker status of languages other than your own. Extra points if they speak a language isolate or an endangered language.
You know how to calculate your language footprint.
... what else?

12 canoes

2008-09-08T17:09:00.002+09:30

News today of a new project from people at Ramingining and Rolf de Heer: a website called Twelve Canoes featuring 12 short films which 'cover topics such as the story of creation, first contact with white man, the seasons and plants and animals'. There are also music and image galleries on the site.

The production values are phenomenally high, and there are some other bonusses: the time bar for the videos is represented in a circle (!) and you can choose to listen to the films in either English or Yolngu. Many mak!

The Year of Languages Lecture in Melbourne

2008-08-15T08:36:00.000+09:30

A heads-up for interested types in Melbourne:

On Tuesday 19th August, at Monash University, Emeritus Professor Michael Clyne will be delivering The Year of Languages Lecture: "Australia's unrecognized resources boom -- Languages for Australia's future"

The overview from the webpage:
The number and range of languages employed in the homes of Australians -- and Melburnians -- continues to increase. Nevertheless, Australia must better develop its multilingual potential to promote dynamism and innovation. Professor Clyne will recommend how Australia can become a vital link nation between Europe, Asia and other parts of the world.

David Crystal on SMS text

2008-08-14T08:06:00.002+09:30

UK linguist David Crystal was on the Media Report on ABC Radio National this morning. He was interviewed on the *issue* of SMS text and "declining spelling and literacy".

I've never had much time for this as an *issue*, thinking it to be a beat up. Though, I'm not a school teacher. If I were, I may think differently on the matter. If it *were* an issue...

David Crystal says the criticisms of SMS text are unfounded, as the data do not reveal any link between SMS text and 'poor literacy'. Quite the opposite, in fact. Less than 10% acutally use abbreviations. Also, abbreviations are not new to text messages; they have been around for a long time, in some case for 100 years or more.

We've probably all heard the story of a student submitting a school essay written in SMS text? According to David Crystal, this is a myth. Talking with students and their teachers, he found that they had significant awareness of the difference between standard written English and SMS text abbreviations. For example, British students report they wouldn't use SMS text in school work.

These days, most text messages these days are written by adults, and in standard English text. School age kids writing texts is a good thing, according to Crystal, because they are practising reading and writing and ultimately (and perhaps ironically?) are improving their literacy. For example, they've worked out which part of a word you can leave out such that it is still comprehensible.

Crystal reports that literary uses of texting are also increasing, citing the oft-observed phenomenon that as soon as someone learns a mode of communication, they start playing with it. The UK paper The Guardian started an SMS poetry competition: a poem of no more than 160 characters, to be submitted by text message. Also, text novels are popular in China and Japan. The novelist sends chapters to readers phones. Chapters are 160 characters long, and are sent one by one each day until the novel is complete.

So, thanks to David Crystal, I can now dismiss the SMS text=illiteracy brouhaha, and instead sing the praises of such technologies when used in language revitalisation, e.g. the mobile phone Kaurna dictionary.

International Day of the World's Indigenous People

2008-08-11T17:02:00.002+09:30

August 9th was International Day of the World's Indigenous People. To mark the event, the HREOC Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma issued the following press release:

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“The theme of this year’s International Day of the World's Indigenous People is the protection and promotion of the world’s endangered languages, which is especially relevant to Australia, whose Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are under threat of extinction," Commissioner Calma said.

Speaking from the Garma Festival in Nhulunbuy, where cultural preservation is a major theme, Mr Calma said that the vast majority of Australia’s Indigenous languages have been eroded and some have been lost forever.

“When language is lost, knowledge and wisdom are lost, and so too is identity. It is through language that we interpret our belief systems; our religion, spirituality, knowledge of country and so much more.”

According to UNESCO, at least 3000 of the world’s 6000 languages are endangered, and at least 800 are very close to extinction. Commissioner Calma said that while Australia once had around 300 Indigenous languages, now there are only 20 or so not endangered.

“Indigenous languages can only be preserved through policies that commit governments to language maintenance and language revitalisation programs at all levels of Australia’s educational institutions,” Mr Calma said. “This means employing Indigenous language speakers in schools; supporting bilingual programs where they exist; creating benchmark testing options for Indigenous literacies; funding the development of Indigenous language texts, school books and picture dictionaries; and any other action that supports and strengthens Indigenous language literacy across Australia.

“Unfortunately, the preservation of Indigenous languages is considered a low priority when governments and others look to Indigenous disadvantage. But governments make a mistake if they ignore language and consider it a separate problem from health for example. While Indigenous people may be struggling with high levels of economic distress, poor health and poor education outcomes, it is our culture – transmitted through our languages - that defines us and gives us dignity and a sense of purpose.”

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Hear, hear!

Mythbustin'

2008-07-27T13:51:00.002+09:30

So the lecture has come and gone, and the students handled the 'true or false' statements pretty well. Instead of making them 'fess up their responses to the statements straight up (shame job!), I got them to discuss them in groups, then I gave an introductory lecture which addressed many of the propositions of the 'true or false' statements. Later on, with everyone now *knowing* the answers, we went through the statements again. I asked them to reflect on their initial thought processes, so I could get a sense of how much knowledge they had about Aboriginal languages coming into the class.

Here are the statements I gave them:

Aboriginal languages are primitive, and have no grammar.
Aboriginal languages are really dialects of the one language.
There were about 20 distinct languages in Australia upon first European contact, and now there are 8 which are still spoken.
There are two main groupings, or ‘families’, of Australian languages.
Aboriginal languages are harder to learn than English or Japanese, and that's one reason they have largely disappeared.
Aboriginal languages are still spoken today in every state and territory.
Kriol and Aboriginal English are spoken by more Aboriginal people than any traditional Aboriginal languages.
Aboriginal languages aren’t written languages, (and this has contributed many of them no longer being spoken).
Bilingual education in Aboriginal communities has failed because learning a traditional language prevents Aboriginal children from learning English.
Many Aboriginal languages are no longer spoken because they don’t have the vocabulary to cope with modern-world technology.
Aboriginal languages have no word for money.
Kriol is a ‘bastardised’ form of English, and is easily understood by an English speaker.

As expected, these 2nd/3rd year linguistics students were able to dismiss the 'Aboriginal languages have no grammar/are hard to learn' statements pretty quickly, as well as others for which I gave counter-evidence in the lecture (e.g. Dalabon has two words for money bad 'rock; money (coins)' and marlaworr-no 'leaves, money (notes)').

They found the statements about numbers of languages spoken, and degree and spread of 'still-spoken-ness' difficult before the lecture. We also had some good discussions about some of the double-proposition statements - like the influence of a writing system on language loss, and whether this is more relevant to language revitalisation than language shift/loss.

I also asked them to name as many Aboriginal languages as they could, and despite expecting that this would prove a near-impossible task, I was still surprised that only Pitjantjatjara and Arrernte made the grade.

If you're interested in trying your own hand at some mythbustin', try this site.

Back to (neo-)basics

2008-07-17T11:01:00.002+09:30

I've been struggling with the terms entail, implicate and infer lately. There's good empirical reason for this, and I hope to post on this at some stage. But for now, I'm going to go back to undergraduate semantics briefly, and try to re-learn a few basics. Please feel free to participate in my on-going education!

Despite remembering these terms from earlier study, I realised that my understanding of them was really pretty shaky when it came to actually needing to apply them, and distinguish between them.

With the trusty help of philosopher extraordinaire Bulanjdjan Maïa, I got to the point of:

An implicature is stronger than an inference. An implicature necessarily follows on logical grounds, while an inference can be derived by reasoning.

Which left me wondering, 'well, what's the difference between implicature and entailment?'

And in looking around for some clarity on the matter (= going back to old textbooks), I didn't find much illuminating material. For example, one textbook says:

Sometimes knowing the truth of one sentence entails or necessarily implies the truth of another sentence.

So, entailment = implicature?? Some further thinking on this got me to:

Perhaps implicature operates at the level of pragmatics, while entailment operates at the level of semantics?

Fortunately some good old Gricean know-how kicked in, courtesy of Michael Haugh's paper on The Intuitive Basis of Implicature. According to Grice (1967, 1989), there is conventional implicature, and conversational implicature. Conventional implicature operates at the semantic level, and entailment is a kind of conventional implicature. Conversational implicature operates at the pragmatic level, and can be defeased.

So that is where I rest my investigation of these terms (for my purposes) for now. However, I was struck by the use if the prefix neo- in Haugh's paper:

Most neo-Griceans have essentially retained this definition of implicature in subsequent developments of Gricean theory, so implicature has continued to be defined as what is communicated less what is said. The problem for the Gricean (and neo-Gricean) definition of implicature is that it encompasses far too large and diverse a range of phenomena.

I've never really understood the semantics of neo-, and perhaps because I'm all about semantic reflection at the moment, I gave it some deductive thought. Perhaps many of you are well comfortable with this little prefix and its denotations and connotations. It seems to be used by social commentators a lot, e.g. neo-christians, neo-conservatives etc. I've always had the impression that those particular examples referred to particularly fundamentalist versions of christianity or conservatism.

It seemed to me, from Haugh's use of the term, that it refers to a 'back-to-basics' approach or philosophy, perhaps after some considerable 'straying' over time from the origins of a movement or philosophy.

So I looked it up in the OED, and lo and behold, neo- is used when:

Forming compounds referring to a new, revived, or modified form of some doctrine, belief, practice, language, artistic style, etc., or designating those who advocate, adopt, or use it.

I think the use of revived is key in this definition, and are evident in some of the examples given in the entry:

The extracts we have given serve to show the dogmatic assertiveness of the Neo-Buddhist philosophy.

And just to tie it all back in to liguistics, this derived form was also listed:

neography n. a new system or method of writing or spelling.

Myths about Aboriginal Languages

2008-07-14T10:28:00.004+09:30

*Hypothetical* scenario:

You find yourself thrust in front of an undergraduate class on Aboriginal Languages. It's the first week of semester, so you take some time to go through the introductions and housekeeping, an overview of the course and some introductory content. But this won't cover the full two hours.

You'd like to run a class discussion exercise where the students are presented with a set of 'facts or myths?' on Aboriginal languages, and they have to decide which is true and which is false. What would you include??

"English is way better than Tiwi"

2008-06-17T10:41:00.004+09:30

Did anyone else watch Four Corners last night?

It was about poor English literacy standards and education in remote Indigenous communities, focussing on Nguiu on Bathurst Island. The elders there have decided to set up their own weekly boarding school on the island, to simultaneously address the issues of attendance at the local Two-Way school (which the report paints as a being due to a combination of lack of will on the students' part to attend, and disrupted home-life due to substance abuse and over-crowding) and the drop-out rate for those who go to away to boarding schools in Darwin or further afield. It is an English-only high school which is far away from the community itself, and students are required to sign a contract stating they will not bring drugs or alcohol to the campus.

For me, the saddest and most powerful part of the story was the children themselves saying how they didn't feel safe at home (especially when they weren't being led to such statements by the journalist, Sarah Ferguson), and that going to the boarding school was a welcome break from the chaos at home.

Equally affecting was the news that the boarding school is struggling to maintain attendance. The very mechanism set up to address non-attendance and dropping-out is itself unable to get over the first hurdle.

But, this is a language blog, and there were certainly some important language issues discussed in the story - though they were dealt with fairly lightly, and conclusions drawn fairly quickly, in my view. Bilingual education got this summary (from the transcript, all the teachers are from the local school, not the boarding school):

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LEONARD FREEMAN, BILINGUAL TEACHER: You can’t write a language unless you can speak it. So by learning their first language they understand how to make meanings, how to construct sentences, then they transfer those skills to English.

SARAH FERGUSON: In recent years the whole issue of bilingual teaching has become a contentious debate in the culture wars.

PROFESSOR HELEN HUGHES, CENTRE FOR INDEPENDENT STUDIES: You have to make the children learn something. I mean, drop the separate curriculum. There is a sort of possum hunting curriculum. They’re supposed to be taught in local languages but none of the teachers who can teach can speak the local language, and those who can speak the local language can’t teach.

SARAH FERGUSON: But before the argument about bilingual teaching can be resolved the schools have a more pressing problem: getting the kids through the door.

SARAH FERGUSON (to Rodd Plummer): What is the biggest obstacle you face teaching in that classroom?

RODD PLUMMER: It's attendance. It's really significant. Those kids that actually come every day or, you know, four to five days a week, they’re the kids that are doing really well. And those kids that are not coming to school are the ones that are struggling.

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Now, Jane Simpson has already taken on Helen Hughes, so we'll just take it as given that it is important for children to learn about basic concepts about literacy and numeracy in a language they understand, and leave Helen Hughes to the side. Rodd Plummer says that the good-attenders at the local school are achieving. It is their regular attendance which is the important contributing factor here, in spite of/as well as the bilingual program.

Somehow, the "learning Tiwi = not learning English (literacy)" mantra has taken hold and become the scapegoat for the poor education outcomes for students at Nguiu:

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SARAH FERGUSON: After more than four decades of good intentions and bad outcomes in the schools, the Tiwi elders decided they had to act to save their children.

Their solution was to ask the former Federal government to build a boarding school on the Tiwi islands, but far away from Nguiu.

BERNARD TIPILOURA, TIWI EDUCATION BOARD: Because they would have good sleep, they would have three meals a day, they would have better teachers, qualified teachers to learn, and no bilingual, we said English only.

(and from one of the students at the boarding school:)

KEISHA VIGONA: I like Nguiu but I don’t like the schools. I was there for year seven but I didn’t learn a bit more because there was too much Tiwi. English is way better than Tiwi because you get to communicate to people, to white people, and to apply at job and all that.

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I fear that the attendance issues already attested for the boarding school will mean that it will also struggle to achieve good literacy for its students. Only this time, there won't be a bilingual program to blame. And with attitudes like those of Keisha Vigona's, maybe there won't be much spoken Tiwi either.