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, Aboriginal Perspectives is about being mindful of
relevant aspects of Aboriginal culture as it affects 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.suite101.com/article.cfm/falseprotocols) or slide into sentimental/noble
savage discourses about caring and sharing.
Ideally, 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 Aboriginal community, if appropriate. This is a whole school
responsibility, but in many cases a languages teacher has taken the first step, for example to find out
if there is any interest in initiating an Aboriginal language program in the school or inviting a local
Elder to talk about language and culture. If your school does not have an Aboriginal Education
Officer, there are Aboriginal Education consultants and Aboriginal Liaison Officers in each Regional
Office who may be contacted for advice.
1. How many Aboriginal languages are there?
Estimates about the number of Aboriginal languages vary but the National Indigenous Languages
Survey Report 2005 documents 145 languages which are still being spoken (p. 68). Note that there
are, in many cases, several dialects of each language, each with its own name. Nationally, 67 of
these languages have fewer than ten speakers and only between three and five are described as
‘safe’ or ‘strong’. Recent research indicates that there were approximately 35 languages in NSW.
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 many speakers does it have?
Has it replaced minority languages in the place/s where it is spoken?
2. Are they really languages, or are they dialects?
This is a tricky question, much debated by linguists and language speakers. We all speak a dialect,
even if our dialect is Standard Australian English. In some cases, different languages may be so
closely related that, objectively, we would define them as dialects of one language but politically
they indicate distinct social groups. Serbian and Croatian, which are very similar to each other
though they use different writing systems, are a well-known example of this.
In the case of Aboriginal languages, there are many quite distinct languages, some which are related
to others and which may share some vocabulary and grammar. Within each language, there may be
a number of dialects, each with its own name. Details about dialects have often been lost in NSW
but, for example, in Arnhemland where there are several languages, we know that each clan has its
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
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’. Because of this, uneducated people often say that Aboriginal people speak dialects, in
the mistaken belief that what they speak is not really language at all but something primitive.
What different dialects of English are you aware of? What about dialects in the language/s you
teach/learn?
3. Are Aboriginal languages all similar to each other?
Most Aboriginal languages share some superficial characteristic similarities which enable us to
recognise them as distinctively Aboriginal. For example, the sound systems are fairly similar which is
why we recognise place names such as Kirribilli and Wagga Wagga as being of Aboriginal origin. (For
a good collection of English words derived from Aboriginal languages look at Australian Aboriginal
Words in English: Their origin and meaning by Dixon et al. 2nd ed. 2006 OUP.) Many English sounds
do not occur in most Aboriginal languages, such as /s/, /f/, /z/ and this accounts for the distinctive
‘accent’ of Aboriginal language speakers to the English-hearing ear. However, retroflex and laminal
sounds are common, and present a challenge to speakers of English who may not recognise the
differences between /ny/, /ng /and /n/ or between /l /and /rl/.
Yet most Aboriginal languages are not mutually intelligible. They are part of a language family, just
as English is part of the Indo-European language family along with Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Yiddish
and Armenian, among many others. While Aboriginal languages share similarities, in contrast to
English they are as varied as the languages that make up the Indo-European group.
What are the characteristic sounds of the language you teach/learn? Are they similar to other
languages? What sort of difficulties does this present for monolingual English speakers?
4. What are they like in form?
Grammatically they are like Latin, highly inflected, so that nouns have a suffix to indicate their case
(nominative, accusative, dative, etc.). Particularly notable is the widespread use of the ergative case,
the marking of the subject of a transitive sentence. This contrasts with English in which word order is
important to indicate such information. Look at this example from Gumbaynggirr.
Jumbaalu marlamgarl yiinyjang.
B. The python bit the dingo.
Jumbaal marlamgarlu yiinyjang.
A. The dingo bit the python.
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
Here we can see that one word has an ergative suffix, /u/, indicating which one is the subject of the
transitive sentence, and so word order is not so important. Look at the following sentences. You can
easily now work out who is doing the action.
Marlamgarl jumbaalu yiinyjang.
Jumbaal marlamgarlu yiinyjang.
Marlamgarl yiinyjang jumbaalu.
Marlamgarlu jumbaal yiinyjang.
How important is word order in the language you are teaching/learning?
5. Are they written down?
Aboriginal languages have only been written down since settlement. This is not unusual. Of the 7000
or so languages in the world only 108, have spontaneously developed writing systems. Many
Aboriginal languages now have a standard spelling system based on the Roman alphabet.
However, just because Aboriginal languages were not written down, it does not mean that there
were no ways to convey meaning symbolically. According to Jane Simpson (see Transient Languages
blog (http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/2006/10/sand_talk_and_how_to_record_it.html#munn)
‘In Central Australia, you often see Aboriginal people sitting on the ground, talking, and
simultaneously drawing on the sand, smoothing it over when they've finished a point, and
starting again. They might be recounting places along a journey, listing family members,
drawing maps, or describing the movement of characters in a story. I'll call this 'sand talk'. 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 Central Australian region.’
The following diagrams, retrieved on 17 February 2010 from
http://www.robertbartonart.com/default.asp?PageID=30, give some idea of how this works in one
region of Central Australia.
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
Campsite
This icon is the symbol for campsite. You will find this
symbol in common usage in central desert art works. This
can also mean special place, sacred site or home
depending on the sequence and relationship (context) to
other symbols in the piece.
Four women sitting around a campfire
The meaning of this symbol changes depending on the
number of characters placed around the central campfire
symbol. One to two denotes men around a campfire. This
may be used metaphorically in a work to convey women's
business.
Kangaroo tracks
The Kangaroo is one of a handful of Australian native
animals which easily adapted to the harsh extremes of the
outback and could be found from deserts to
rainforests. This icon shows the relief pattern left by the
Kangaroo as in bounds across the desert sands.
Travelling water
The jagged lines represent the water source along which
travellers would track in moving from one camp to
another. Water along with fire is one of the most
important life sustaining resources on the land.
Man/hunter
By and of itself this symbols represents a man or hunter.
In numbers greater than two it can also mean women.
Often this symbol is combined with other symbols in
clusters of meaning such as the spear, boomerang or
family symbol.
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
Does your language use the Roman alphabet? If so, think about the ways in which symbols represent
different sounds from those they represent in English (for example, in Welsh ‘dd’ is pronounced like
the voiced th as in ‘there’, ‘th’ is pronounce as an unvoiced th, as in ‘thin’.) If you do not use an
alphabet, does your writing system show evidence of being iconic?
6. Why are so many Aboriginal languages no longer spoken?
Many Aboriginal languages are no longer spoken, or are spoken rarely by a few older people. Those
that are strongest are those spoken in the remotest areas of Australia such as the Central Desert and
North East Arnhemland. The languages of the Sydney region were decimated within a year or two of
the arrival of the First Fleet because of the smallpox epidemic which wiped out most of the people.
Elsewhere, over time, languages have been and continue to be lost because of educational policies
prohibiting or discouraging the use of any language other than English, the forcible removal of
children from their parents (Stolen Generation) and the relocation of people from their land. Each
language is intimately connected with a particular place and when people are moved from their land
they can no longer speak the language.
Imagine how you might feel if you were not allowed to speak your language any more.
7. What is lost when languages are lost?
Losing a language is losing a way of thinking about the world. One way to understand a little of how
people conceptualise is to look at their systems of classifying things. Murrinh-Patha, widely spoken
in the west of the Northern Territory, has ten noun classes, a prefix is attached to every noun,
indicating its class: kardu Aboriginal people and spirits; ku non-Aboriginal people and other animals
and their products such as meat; kura fresh water; mi food plants and their products, including
faeces; thamul spears; thu other weapons and things that strike, like thunder and lightning and
playing cards (when they hit the ground); thungku fire, firewood, matches; da time and place
including seasons; murrinh speech and language; nanthi everything else. As in languages such as
French and German, where you need to indicate grammatical gender (a type of noun class), so in
Murrinh-Patha you may have to indicate noun class too, although in this language, gender is not an
aspect of the classes. It is interesting that a thing can be a member of several classes, depending
upon the way it is viewed at the time. For example, a boomerang is an offensive weapon so will be
thu kuragadha. However, if it is used just as an ornament on your mantelpiece, it would be nanthi
kuragatha. Similarly, anything which is not normally a weapon, but used as a weapon, would be
preceded by thu. So, a bottle, kum, is in the nanthi class but, used as a weapon, would be thu kum.
Note that if something is being used or behaving in its most usual way, the noun class marker is
often omitted. (For more information on Murrinh-Patha see Walsh 2005.)
In some Aboriginal languages the noun classes do include male-female distinctions. In Dyirbal,
women, fire and dangerous things comprise one noun class!
Does your language have noun classes? English does not, but most European languages have
grammatical gender.
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
8. 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. Ecological knowledge is often
implicit in the language. The spangled grunter is a fish which eats the fallen fruit of the native white
apple and so, in Kunwinjku, they share the same name, bokorn. 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. Similarly, the names for the edible grubs that live in certain
bushes are related to the name of the bush. So, in Arrente, spoken around Alice Springs, the tnyeme
witchetty bush is where you find tnyematye, the witchetty grub (Evans 2009 p. 21).
Ethnopharmacology is the name for the study of medicinal plants known to other cultures. There is a
recent PhD. thesis on the medicinal plants of Gamilaraay and Murawari-speaking areas of NSW. Such
knowledge is lost when languages are lost.
Think about how the names of plants and animals in your language may suggest information about
their qualities. (English examples: cabbage white butterflies, honeyeaters, woodpeckers, feverfew,
deadly nightshade.)
The names for some animals for in Aboriginal languages, even when incorporated into English,
remain onomatopoeic, e.g. kookaburra, currawong. The word for crow in many Aboriginal languages
is wa, wak, wagan or similar. How is onomatopoeia used in your language?
9. Language for 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. Everyone in the community will belong to a section, or sub-section, known as a
‘skin group’. Everyone will belong to one of the groups and this will determine who you marry.
Everyone in the same group is a brother or sister, whether they are biologically related or not. So,
for example, if you look at this diagram:
Ngarritjan
Beliny
balang
gamarrang
Banginy
bangardi
bulanyjan
Bulany
Galijan
gela
wamutjan
Wamut
Gotjan
gotjok
Gamany
ngarritj
Able to marry
In the boxes above, women are bold, men are bold italic. People in the same box are brother and
sister. The children of the women will be of the skin group of the box below (it is your mother’s skin
group that determines what your skin will be). The husbands of the women will be those indicated
by reciprocal arrows. Men do not speak to their mothers-in-law and brothers and sisters do not
speak to each other after puberty. So, for example, in the diagram above, which shows the skin
groups in the Jawoyn/Ngalkbon/Rembarrnga regions of the Northern Territory, if I am bulantjan and
married to balang, my children will be wamut or wamutjan. Even if I were married to gela, my
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
children would still be wamut or wamutjan. I can talk and joke with my husband and also all men in
the category of husband, balang or gela, however I cannot talk to anyone in the category of my
brothers who are bulany. My husband cannot talk to anyone in the category of his mother-in-law
who is gamany.
In some areas there were special languages learned by young men undergoing initiation. During 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.) Quoting from the book Spoken Here by Mark
Abley:
“The language’s lexicon was small: just a couple of hundred basic words. But by ingeniously
manipulating those words, initiated men could express almost anything they needed to say.
Suppose a Damin speaker saw a sandpiper in flight. ‘Sandpiper’ was not in Damin’s lexicon.
But the watcher could evoke the bird by saying ngaajpu wiiwi-n wuujpu: literally, ‘personburning creature.’ The phrase harks back to a creation story in which Sandpiper starts a
lethal fire – a familiar tale to all speakers of Damin. Likewise an axe was ‘honey-affecting
wood’: a wooden object used to obtain wild honey. Because it imposed this rigorous, semiabstract vocabulary on the familiar syntax of Lardil, Damin could be learned in a few days.
Initiated men would speak it at ceremonial gatherings, but also while searching for food or
just sitting around gossiping. Extreme suffering had brought a gift of sacred knowledge.”
Does your language have restrictions on who speaks to whom, or how certain people must speak to
each other? Are these permanent restrictions or do they change with time?
10. Spirituality and identity
According to Nick Evans, in Dying Words, in Australian Aboriginal languages, using the appropriate
local language is like a passport marking you to locals and spirits, as someone known and familiar.
This is evidently the case in NSW, even now. When Poppy Harry, a Bundjalung Elder, was filmed for
the Campfire resource, he spoke in Bundjalung to the large kangaroo who came to look when he and
the interviewer entered the significant site where the recording took place. He also addressed the
nearby grave sites. Later, on film, he reiterated and translated his remarks (see Poppy Harry clip,
Respect, in Campfire).
How important is your language to your sense of who you are? Do you speak the language of your
parents and grandparents?
11. Aboriginal English and Creoles
Since the early days of settlement, speakers of English and speakers of Aboriginal languages have
had to find ways to communicate with each other. Gradually a pidgin English developed, a simplified
version of English mixed with Aboriginal 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. In some areas of Australia, children from various language
groups were separated from their parents on missions and communicated with each other in the
pidgin English spoken to them by the missionaries. Since this was the only language they used, it
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
became more regular and complex than pidgin, eventually becoming a creole. Across the north of
Australia many people now speak a creole, called Kriol.
Kriol is interesting because, while many of the words come from English, many grammatical features
come from Aboriginal languages. For example, look at the pronouns:
mi
I
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
You can see that there are far more personal pronouns than in English. Most of these occur in all
Aboriginal languages. Another aspect of typical Aboriginal grammar in Kriol is that transitivity has to
be marked on verbs. This is done by the suffix, im. So, Dei bin gitim im translates as: They got it. The
–im suffix on the verb git, indicates that git (get) is a transitive verb.
Aboriginal English is a dialect of English that shares some characteristics of Aboriginal languages, but
not to the same extent as Kriol does. However, an understanding of Kriol and ancestral Aboriginal
languages can help explain some characteristics of Aboriginal English. For example, in Aboriginal
English it is common for to find sentences such as I saw him, that man. In English, the ‘him’ is
redundant, but this is a remnant of the Aboriginal pattern of indicating if a verb is transitive by
adding a suffix to the verb itself.
In almost all languages it is possible to find evidence of contact with other languages. English has
evidence of the influence of Latin, French and Germanic languages. How has contact with other
languages influenced the language you teach/learn?
12 Aboriginal languages in literature
Within a couple of years of the arrival of the First Fleet, the Aboriginal people and hence Aboriginal
languages of the Sydney region were decimated by a smallpox epidemic. Much of what we now
know about the Sydney language is because of the notebooks kept by William Dawes (see
http://www.williamdawes.org/), the astronomer who came to Australia on the First Fleet. The
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
Lieutenant by Kate Grenville is a work of fiction based on the life of Dawes. Rooke, the main
protagonist in the book, is portrayed as a man fascinated by language, as this extract indicates:
‘Do you know, Silk,’ he exclaimed, hearing his voice a little wild, ‘I have found that they use
the dual plural, like Greek. Dual pronouns too, I think, though am not sure, but have
collected some examples...You and me, or all of us, or me and these others but not you, all
embedded in the pronoun! While English makes only the crudest of distinctions! Imagine,
Silk, a race of people using a language as supple as that of Sophocles and Homer!’
(Extract from The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville, p. 245. ‘Silk’ is based on another First Fleeter, Watkin
Tench.)
In the Book Show on Radio National on 19 January 2009, Kate Grenville answered Romona Koval’s
question about her reference to ‘a language as supple as Sophocles or Homer’. Kate Grenville
responded:
When I was doing the research...I don't know anything about languages really, but a person
who does know mentioned to me that Dawes has actually written down in his notebooks
that the language was inflected and that it used (and I may not have the right term) the dual
plural. In other words, they didn't just say...inflected, first of all, like Latin so that in the one
word you've got all things that the verb might be, but the dual plural is something that we
don't have in English, though I think we used to back in Old English.
It means that when you say 'we' you may mean just yourself and the person standing next to
you or by using another word you can say 'myself and everybody on this side of the fence'
sort of thing. In other words, you can be very discriminating in just exactly which groups of
people you mean by 'we'. It's a very closely calibrated little pronoun which we don't have.
And apparently, I've been told (and I don't know if this is true) ancient Greek has the same
incredibly sophisticated thing. As an educated man of the late 18th century, Rooke would
certainly have known ancient Greek and Latin very well, so it gave me a chance to reveal his
innocent excitement, and also to say what in fact linguists do feel about many Aboriginal
languages, that they are extraordinarily sophisticated grammatically.
The fictional work The Lieutentant is one way to help us to understand something about the history
and culture of Australia and Australia’s languages. What novels or films provide a way to learn more
about the language and culture of the language you are teaching/learning?
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
Annotated Reading List
Books
Australian Aboriginal Words in English: their origin and meaning R.M.W. Dixon et al. 2006 OUP.
This book is a reliable source of information about the origins of Aboriginal language words in
English. In addition, it provides a very readable short introduction to Australian languages by Bob
Dixon, formerly professor of Linguistics at the Australian National University and author of the most
comprehensive general book on Aboriginal languages, The Languages of Australia 1980 CUP.
Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us Nicholas Evans 2010 WileyBlackwell
This book is an eloquent explanation of why languages are important to us as a species. The
American-born author is a professor at the Australian National University and has worked with
Aboriginal languages continuously for almost thirty years. This book draws heavily on examples from
Aboriginal languages to show how extraordinarily limited our knowledge of language is. The author
shows that Kayardild, a severely endangered Queensland language spoken by only eight people, is so
different from other languages that it challenges many of the theories of what human languages are
like. Nick Evans is able to show that, without understanding the complexity of the thousands of the
world’s languages that 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 New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory
2008 Jim Wafer and Amanda Lissarrague 2008 Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture
Cooperative
This is an essential reference book for anyone professionally involved with Aboriginal language in
NSW. It brings together details about, and references to, all the available published information
about NSW languages. If you want to know the name of the language of the place where you live or
work, this where you look. It will tell you where languages are or were spoken and list the various
spelling and tell you where you can find out more.
Language and Culture in Aboriginal Australia (2005) Michael Walsh and Colin Yallop (eds)
Reprinted 2005 Aboriginal Studies Press.
Originally published in 1993, this remains one of the best introductions to a range of topics relating
to Aboriginal languages and culture. Intended as an introduction to the topic for first year university
students, it includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter. It would be the place to direct
interested senior high school students.
The Lieutentant Kate Grenville 2008 Text Publishing.
This is a novel loosely based on events in the life of William Dawes, whose notebooks provide the
most comprehensive description of the language/s spoken in and around Sydney at the time of the
arrival of the First Fleet. It is particularly interesting to read this in conjunction with Jakelin Troy’s
Aboriginal Perspectives in Languages Teaching
‘Language Contact in Early Colonial New South Wales 1788-1791’ in Language and Culture in
Aboriginal Australia (see above).
Spoken Here: Travels among threatened Languages Mark Abley 2005 Mariner Books
Spoken Here is a mixture of travel book and book about languages, a vicarious voyage around the
areas of the world where small languages are still spoken. Like Dying Words, this is not solely about
Aboriginal languages but it does start with them.
Websites
Campfire
http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/secondary/languages/languages/aboriginal
/campfire/index.htm
This is a web-based resource designed to support Aboriginal languages at Stage 4. It can be found
under Aboriginal Languages on the Curriculum Support website. Parts of it may be useful to support
other stages or Aboriginal Studies. For Languages teachers, it is a way to find out more about
Aboriginal languages in NSW.
The notebooks of William Dawes
http://www.williamdawes.org/
The notebooks of Lieutenant William Dawes at the SOAS Library Special Collections are the major
source of information about the Aboriginal language of Sydney. They contain information of
significance to Aboriginal communities of New South Wales, to linguists, historians, residents of
Sydney, and many others. It is interesting to look at this in conjunction with reading The Lieutenant.
Transient Languages and Cultures
http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/elac/
Based at the Linguistics Department at Sydney University, this is a good place to find the latest
reliable news and opinion on Aboriginal languages.
National Indigenous Languages Survey Report
http://www.arts.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/35637/nils-report-2005.pdf
You can read or download the most recent national survey of Australia’s Indigenous Languages here.
This is where you can find comprehensive facts and figures.
8 Aboriginal Ways of Learning
http://8ways.wikispaces.com/
This Wiki, is a wonderful resource developed by Tyson Yunkaporta, one of our Aboriginal Education
consultants who currently runs the Aboriginal Knowledge Centre in Dubbo. There is a wealth of
material here, developed by Tyson and other Aboriginal people involved in education. Tyson is
currently working on his PhD on Aboriginal pedagogy.