Greg Dickson writes:

Talking about language in Australia isn’t all about discussing Australianisms, etymologies and bitching about prescriptivists and linguisticians. There’s a small movement led by a bunch of Aboriginal and Islander Australians, a handful of committed linguists and a few sundries who work quietly and tirelessly to support the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders languages of Australia.

These are the original Australian languages and they are suffering under constant pressure from mainstream Australia. Three weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure of tutoring two women from Barunga community, south east of Katherine, NT, who are attempting to complete a course called Certificate One in Own Language Work, delivered by Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education. I’ve known Marie and Queenie for a few years now and they are clever, experienced women. Between them, their talents and experiences include radio broadcasting, interpreting in the Supreme Court, primary school teaching and short-film direction. They are expert speakers of Mayali and Kriol and have few hassles with English. But, their own language is a language called Dalabon which is now critically endangered with only a few elderly speakers left. Queenie speaks Dalabon well and Marie not too badly, but they enrolled in the language course to help them develop their ‘language work’ skills – reading and writing Dalabon, making resources, teaching kids, working with researchers and learning a bit more Dalabon for themselves – all things that will support their language and help develop their own skills.

Marie transcribing Dalabon

Knowing these two are pretty clever, I spent my week with them showing them a special program called ELAN, made by other clever people over in the Netherlands. ELAN lets you take a digital recording – audio or video – and chunk it up into sound bites to make is easy to transcribe and then add a translation or two plus whatever other analysis you might want. A researcher friend who was stuck in Paris (thanks to Eyjafjallajökull!) happened to have a short recording in Dalabon she wanted transcribed and translated and it all came together nicely: 1 French linguist (Paris) + 2 clever Dalabon students (Barunga, NT) + 1 old lady speaking Dalabon on the recording (Weemol, NT) + 1 nifty computer program (Nijmegen, Netherlands) + 1 excited tutor (Canberra/Katherine, NT) + 1 innovative adult education provider (Batchelor, NT) = Good times and good work supporting a very endangered language and a couple of the people who are most affected by its decline. The recording was a short discussion about a term in Dalabon, kangu wokarrun, which the ladies decribed as having something to do with deep reflection or feeling something strongly, like deep down in your heart. Interestingly, kangu actually means ‘belly’ in Dalabon and wokarrun literally means something like ‘telling yourself a story’. But kangu wokarrun means much more than ‘telling yourself a story in your belly’. We are still trying to work it out so Marie and Queenie’s work is really useful in telling us more about the depth of meaning and metaphor found in Dalabon words. I think it’s great that this sort of work is achievable on a language so endangered and the work can be done with Dalabon people taking such an active role.

Working on a Dalabon recording in Elan

Using the ELAN program takes a little bit of practice, but if you can use a computer, a mouse, can double-click, can spell words in the language/s of the recording and someone can show you what to do, then you’ll be fine. I was really excited that Marie and Queenie picked up ELAN quickly and that they enjoyed using it and learning it. One funny thing about the Dalabon language is that there’s actually quite a few linguists doing research on it at the moment. Most of them are based in major cities and so participation by Dalabon people themselves in this research is proportionately low. Various researchers have recorded a fair amount of Dalabon over the years and current researchers are slowly transcribing and analysing the recordings. How wonderful if Queenie and Marie could be joining in and processing some of the recordings themselves from their home community? With a bit more training and support, they can be set up as research assistants and help process some of the untranscribed recordings. The biggest advantage with this is that with their cultural and linguistic insights, they’ll pick up on nuances that non-indigenous researchers may miss. There are even a couple of elderly Dalabon experts right there in Barunga for extra help if they need. Many factors are involved in setting up something like this — finding a workspace, funding, further training, a bit of ongoing support plus battling all the general pressures that make life in remote communities tough (poor health, overcrowded housing, family pressures, income management etc.). But isn’t this the community and social development that mainstream Australia wants to see occurring in remote communities?

Queenie, becoming a deadly Dalabon research assistant

It’s a big idea but you gotta think big and think positive, right? Optimism is absolutely necessary when trying to support some of the world’s most endangered and embattled languages. But the rewards are great too: intellectually, because you get to learn about rare and interesting languages but also socially: because you can make a real and positive contribution to life in remote Aboriginal Australia in a way that values and relies upon indigenous knowledge.