Blog Title: Transient Languages & Cultures

The Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS: developing and sharing language materials through archiving - Peter Austin and David Nathan

Peter K. Austin and David Nathan
Linguistics Department, SOAS
6th January 2009

The Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) was established at SOAS in January 2004, with the first deposits accepted in late 2005. Our initial priority was on preservation but recently the ELAR public catalogue was released and it will soon extend to providing access to materials (where permissions allow). To date, ELAR has received over 50 deposits and stores about 4 terabytes of data. Audio recordings make up about 60% of this (both in terms of the total number of files and the total volume of data).

ELAR was established primarily to preserve and disseminate data collected by grantees from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) and by staff and students from the Endangered Languages Academic Programme (ELAP). Because language documentation is an emerging area that relies a lot on new techniques and technologies, ELAR also provides training, advice and support to ELDP grantees, ELAP staff and students, and others through international training workshops (see, for example, the various organised by ELAR and taught by ELAR and ELAP staff and students and additional experts). ELAR staff also manage the research facilities of the Rausing Room, the Linguistics Resources Room, and the pool of fieldwork equipment available to ELAP staff and students.

ELAR now has four staff, with David Nathan and Ed Garrett being card-carrying linguists and IT professionals, and technicians Tom Castle and Bernard Howard having specialist skills in digital and analogue audio techniques and equipment.

With these resources, skills and experience, ELAR is able to help people who want to archive resources for endangered languages, including individual and retired researchers who may not have alternative sources of equipment or advice. Dietrich Schüller, the former Director of the Austrian Phonogrammarchiv, has warned in a recent paper[.pdf] that the great majority of the world's human cultural heritage is sitting unpreserved and uncatalogued on the shelves of individual researchers. We can help these researchers with preparing materials, including digitising and converting audio, as well as providing advice and training in how to create metadata and cataloguing information.

Over the last few years ELAR has collaborated with a number of individual researchers in preparing their materials for deposit:

✝ Geoffrey Noel O'Grady 1928-2008

I was sad to learn that Geoffrey O'Grady [1] has died - on 28th December at home in Victoria, British Columbia. He was a fine linguist, who documented Australian languages (Nyangumarta most extensively), wrote the report with Ken Hale that started bilingual education in the Northern Territory, and loved with a great passion the work of understanding relationships between Australian languages. Above all, he was a generous and kind man. He is survived by Alix O'Grady, his wife and collaborator for over fifty years, and their two daughters.

More about his life and work can be found in: 'Geoffrey O'Grady: pioneer of Australian linguistics' in his aptly titled festschrift Boundary rider: studies in the lexicology and comparative linguistics of Australian languages, edited by Darrell Tryon and Michael Walsh (Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, out of print but available as a .pdf $37.80)

[ Update: an obituary has appeared here.]

[1] BA Hons thesis, 1959, University of Sydney, Significance of the circumcision boundary in Western Australia. PhD thesis, 1963, Indiana University, Nyangumata grammar

Read all about it - Peter K. Austin

Peter K. Austin
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
23rd December 2008

Due to the hard work of Mike Franjieh who is doing a PhD on a language of Ambrym, Vanuatu, the Endangered Languages Project at SOAS now has an on-line catalogue of the more than 300 books and journals we have acquired over the past few years. The materials in our collection come from several sources, including:

• donations by publishers, such as the Atlas of the World's Languages that we launched two years ago
  
• donations by colleagues, including ELDP grantees, of outputs from their research projects, such as Adivinanzas en mixteco a collection of stories in Mixteco, from Mexico. Some of the materials in this part of the collection are otherwise difficult to find in Europe
  
• MA dissertations written by students in the MA in Language Documentation and Description, including original work with native speakers of endangered languages, such as Aromanian, Bajjika, Dolpo, Dulong, Khasi, Khorchin Mongolian and Uighur

Brand new day for the Darkinyung language

Late in the nineteenth century, probably on the left bank of the Hawkesbury River, Tilly Clarke and Annie Barber took the trouble to teach a surveyor, Robert H. Mathews, something of their language, Darkinyung. He wrote down words, sentences and phrases in his No. 7 notebook, and published a little about it. The notebook is preserved among his papers in the National Library of Australia. This is the main surviving written source for the Darkinyung language.

On Monday 15 December, at the Ourimbah campus of Newcastle University, the Darkinyung Language Group launched Darkinyung grammar and dictionary: revitalising a language from historical sources, by Caroline Jones. It's another terrific Muurrbay/Many Rivers product. At the launch, Darkinyung people were centre-stage, but celebrating too were Wiradjuri, Gamilaraay, Gumbaynggirr, non-Aboriginal people, and the staff of Muurrbay and Many Rivers who made the publication possible.

Directions in Oceanic Research Conference (DORC) - Jeremy Hammond

[from Jeremy Hammond, one of our men in Ourimbah]

A conference on Oceanic linguistics has been held over the last three days at the Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle (Australia). The goal was to investigate the current state of research into Oceanic languages and cultures and to highlight their important role in current linguistic science. Participants from a diverse variety of institutions (including Australian, Dutch, Canadian, NZ, Pacific and French universities) converged to display how Oceanic languages are still worthy of attention from all areas of linguistics. Documentation, description, typology and linguistic theory were all addressed over the three days. Languages presented ranged from the West Papua “Birds Head” languages to the Polynesian Niuean with many more in-between.

Language rights and human rights

Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal declaration of human rights (UDHR). On the UN's website you can find translations of UDHR in 337 languages. Given Ethnologue's current claim of 6,912 living languages, there's a long way to go. But they claim it is the "most translated document in the world" (I'd've thought Genesis probably beat that). Recent additions include Seselwa Creole French, Sierra Leone Krio and Cook Islands Maori. And you can hear it read in 60 plus languages [1] on the World Voices site. They're mostly large languages, apart from Chamorro, Gaelic and Icelandic, and there are no Indigenous Australian languages - not surprising, since translating it would not be easy.

According to Amnesty Australia, "Australia is the only Western democracy without a Human Rights Act or similar human rights protection". They are running a campaign for human rights protection. Ditto Get-Up. An Amnesty supporter, Julian Burnside, writes:

"I once shared the formerly popular view that we don't need a Human Rights Act in Australia, but events of the past decade convinced me otherwise. They revealed that we cannot rely on our rights being protected by the common law. In Australia's constitutional democracy, the parliaments are able to set aside the common law if they choose to do so." Human Rights Defender 27,4, Dec. 2008-Feb.2009: p.9.

So, to language rights. These have come to attention recently with the decision by the Northern Territory Government to introduce a standardised curriculum into primary schools which will make it difficult to run properly managed bilingual programs using Indigenous languages as the medium of instruction. "The first four hours in English", a few words uttered by a Minister in Parliament, can change irrevocably how Indigenous children experience school, and the use of their languages in school, and will probably cause the irreversible loss of their first languages.

The Minister could not have made a decision so quickly, if Australia accorded recognition to Indigenous languages officially. She would have had to consider the educational evidence for and against using the Indigenous language as a medium of instruction, and there would have been public debate before the policy could be implemented. This would have been an excellent thing, because there is no magic bullet for improving Indigenous children's knowledge of spoken and written English. It has many many causes, from massive hearing loss, to poverty, to truancy, to lack of good ESL teaching, to failure by Governments to spend equitably on Indigenous communities. But bilingual education isn't one of the causes.

There's a stupid opposition made in the media between 'a rights agenda' and 'basic services'. As if pushing for recognition of human rights somehow gets in the way of providing basic services. In fact, what recognition of human rights does is require governments to reflect a little before forming policies which damage human rights.

UNESCO has a general site on language rights. Here's Australia's position as I see it. Corrections, improvements etc gladly received!

Re-awakening languages: call for contributions

Re-awakening languages: Theory & practice in the revitalisation of Australia’s Indigenous languages

Proposals are invited for an edited volume that will include contributions from a broad range of authors involved in the revitalisation of Australian languages. If you, your colleagues or your students are participants in Indigenous languages revitalisation anywhere in Australia you are strongly encouraged to contribute.

The book will be independently edited by a panel consisting of John Hobson (University of Sydney), Kevin Lowe (NSW Board of Studies), Susan Poetsch (NSW Board of Studies) and Michael Walsh (University of Sydney) and be published by Sydney University Press (SUP). It is intended that the final product will be a significant Australian resource comparable to Hinton & Hale (eds.) (2001) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice.

How to import a basic transcript into ELAN

The problem: you have text files and audio files, but the text files are not aligned to the audio files.

I imagine there are a few readers out there who have transcriptions of audio files that never made it past an utterance per line text file. This is a post for you, if you'd like to know how to import and time-align those files in ELAN.

These things will always be

Darkening clouds are looming over Indigenous languages in the Northern Territory. Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and national Race Discrimination Commissioner, has put up a defiant umbrella - the Eric Johnston lecture which includes a well argued section in support of bilingual education. I was struck by the comment that this year "seven students from five homeland communities in North East Arnhem Land will be the first homeland students to graduate with the Year 12 Certificate." Tremendously good news.

Other umbrellas are going up too - some honourable souls have leaked to AAP the following:

"preliminary results from the Evaluation of Literacy Approach (ELA) report, .., found that for "active reading skills in English" students at bilingual schools achieve better results than non-bilingual schools by the time they reach Grade 5."

[Update: And there's a good letter by Patrick McConvell in the Sydney Morning Herald, along with Wendy Baarda's letter in Crikey. Anggarrggoon has several posts on the topic.]

Gleams of sunlight come from the Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs. They have a travelling exhibition about Darby Jampijinpa Ross of Ngarliyikirlangu, north of Yuendumu. Jampijinpa was an extraordinary man; there's a beautiful book about him, by Liam Campbell Darby : one hundred years of life in a changing culture, Sydney : ABC Books for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ; Alice Springs, N.T. : Warlpiri Media Association, 2006. It comes with a CD of Darby singing in Warlpiri, as well as telling stories about early days, about the Coniston Massacre. For these he uses the language which he learned as a young man, the Aboriginal English/Kriol which has become the spine of the new mixed language Lajamanu Light Warlpiri.

Araluen also have a new exhibition which brings language together with art (including text, sculpture, etchings, installation, and digital media). Intem-antey anem 'These things will always be': Bush medicine at Utopia, is opening at the Araluen Gallery in Alice Springs,on Saturday November 29th at 2 pm, with Lena Pwerl and Josie Douglas speaking and a performance by Utopia women. The exhibitors are students from Utopia (Alyawarr and Anmatyerre) who are studying their own languages, art and craft at the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Education (BIITE), Alice Springs campus.

The exhibition runs until 8th February. A week after the exhibition opens, nine women from Utopia together with some BIITE staff will head to the World Indigenous People's Conference on Education to present on the teaching /learning aspect of the project.

Sunlight through the clouds

[Updated with pictures - 21/11/08, 25/11/08, 30/11/08 ]

Three excellent books were launched yesterday, on a misty rainy day in the area of Nyambaga (Nambucca Heads). Long may they float, and God bless all who read them, buy them and review them.

They are:

• Gumbaynggirr dictionary and learner's grammar = Gumbaynggirr bijaarr jandaygam, ngaawa gugaarrigam, by Steve Morelli, Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-operative, 2008.
  
• Barriyala - Let's work : Gumbaynggirr language student workbook, by Julie Long.
  Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. : Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2007.
  
• and the most significant general reference work on Indigenous intellectual traditions published in a long time, A handbook of Aboriginal languages of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory, by James Wafer, and Amanda Lissarrague with a chapter by Jean Harkins. Nambucca Heads, N.S.W. Muurrbay Aboriginal Language and Culture Co-Operative, 2008.

You can order the books from Muurrbay. More about the books below, but now to the launch.

Photo from Muurrbay: L-R Aunty Vilma Moylan, Aunty Jessie Williams, Uncle Ken Walker

"Thank you for supporting us as a people, and keep the spirit alive eh?" That's how the Master of Ceremonies, and Chairman of Muurrbay, Uncle Ken Walker ended a cheerful, joking, rousing morning's celebration of Gumbaynggirr language survival and revival. When you have 200 people to help launch three books, everything connects.

Black Swan redux - Peter K. Austin

Peter K. Austin
Department of Linguistics, SOAS

Back in August I contributed a post on the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his idea that there can be totally unexpected events or discoveries that have a major impact on beliefs and theories of the world that require post-hoc revisions to accumulated wisdom.

Well, it seems my post has become part of a web of unexpected discoveries that reaches as far as Australia's Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. I was just contacted by David Hirsch, a Sydney barrister, who recently came across my web post and told me the following story.

Sydney Language -mb- ~ -m- and dingo — David Nash

David Nash

Aspects of the Sydney Language are a perennial fascination. Last month recent events prompted me to look into the etymology of boomerang. In recent weeks the gripping SBS documentary First Australians first episode (available as a 227MB MPEG4) took us to the early days of Sydney.  And now I've noticed what I think is an unreported sound correspondence, as I've become more familiar with sources on the Sydney Language.

Duelling languages - Peter K. Austin

Peter K. Austin
Department of Linguistics, SOAS
12 November 2008

I began writing this post, appropriately enough it turns out, in Thessaloniki's Makedonia airport on my way back to London after an international conference on Language documentation and tradition with a special interest in the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush valleys, Himalayas. The conference ran from 7th to 9th November and included five plenary talks, over 30 papers, three workshops, and several ethnographic films made last summer in Pakistan. It was attended from researchers from around the world, including blog contributor Ana Kondic, as well as five Kalashas from north-west Pakistan.

Local and national action for Australia's Indigenous languages

[Update: in Crikey 14/11/08 there's a good story by Samanti de Silva from the Areyonga community NT, on the community's concern about the decision to abandon bilingual education. It links to a letter signed by around 35 community members saying among other things:
"Learning in Pitjantjatjara first helps our children to learn better. It helps them to learn English too. Our children who are good at reading and writing in Pitjantjatjara are also the same ones who are good at reading and writing in English.... The teachers will use Pitjantjatjara when teaching to help the children understand things. How can you tell us the teachers must use only English even if the children don't understand what they are saying?"]

The perilous situation of Australian Indigenous Languages has aroused some action. 'Friends of Bilingual Education Learning' [Thanks Wamut! I was back in FOB (education) support group mode - FOB tried to defend NT bilingual education in the early 1980s] have a Google Group for sharing information on the Northern Territory decision to teach most of the day in English. It contains letters that people have written to the Minister, Marion Scrymgour, explaining the problems with this decision.

Action on this is urgently needed, before the bilingual education programs are silently dismantled over the summer holidays. Before the first hours of the first school day, when next year's excited five-year olds realise they can't understand what the teacher is saying.

On the national level, the need for a National Indigenous Languages policy was discussed in Patrick McConvell's Lingua Franca talk last week. Ngapartji-Ngapartji (see their policy paper here) and FATSIL (Federation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages)are campaigning for this, and the FATSIL website has an online petition to the Federal government. You can click here, and see the petition, which can be printed out or signed online .

TESOL association against scrapping bilingual education

Further on the decision of the NT Government to require schools to teach the first four hours of each day in English.. a media release from Misty Adoniou, President of the Australian Council of TESOL Assocations (ACTA), the peak body for professional associations for Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.