Languages to live longer (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Languages to live longer

August 20, 2007
Aboriginal culture is turning to technology, writes Lia Timson.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/aboriginal-culture-turns-to-technology/2007/08/18/1186857828354.html#

In a true marriage of old and new, the internet is set to perpetuate, if
not, revive dozens of Aboriginal languages facing extinction. The Miromaa
software project - miromaa means "saved" in Arwarbukarl language - was
developed by two Aboriginal men in Newcastle despite assurances from
linguists that lay community members were ill-equipped to save languages.

Daryn McKenny, general manager of the not-for-profit Arwarbukarl Cultural
Resource Association (www.arwarbukarl.com.au) led the development of the
program. It will be used in a yet-to-be-launched website that aims to take
the linguistic salvaging effort worldwide.

It is estimated that from the 250 known Australian Aboriginal languages,
only 15 to 20 are fluently spoken today. The top five indigenous languages
are spoken at home by between 2500 and 5800 people only, according to the
2006 census.

"What culture is left is disappearing every day with each elder who passes
away," McKenny says. "We need not just linguists but an army of people and
technology to slow down the loss."

Arwarbukarl, originally spoken by the people of what is now Newcastle, Lake
Macquarie and the lower Hunter Valley, is among those languages in danger
of disappearing.

"We were doing song and dance to educate the community and our own kids, we
wanted to teach them the culture, but without the language there was
something missing. Here we are teaching and talking about our language but
in English. It's not the same," McKenny says.

The project was almost killed four years ago when the now-defunct ATSIC
conducted a review that recommended funding be cut because "two fellas
without a linguist could not revive a language", he says.

"It was a big kick up the butt but it meant we had to change our ways and
work smarter."

With a background in computing, he started a search for language software
around the world but settled for developing one from scratch when he
realised existing programs were aimed at professionals studying threatened
languages, not those practising them.

Miromaa allows community users of different language groups to post text,
images, sound and video of words and phrases in a sort of communal
multimedia dictionary effort and in the process create a resource others
can use. It has a separate section for linguists.

It has been licensed to cultural centres in Victoria, Western Australia and
north Queensland.

But it is the Our Languages website that will allow the wider community to
learn indigenous languages when it launches later this year. It will cater
for multiple dialects, so that an online search for the word "emu", for
example, will elicit several regional results, including audio of the
correct pronunciations. The site (www.ourlanguages.com.au) is still under
development and inaccessible but will be open to all when finished.

"Everyone in Australia talks Aboriginal and they don't even know it - it's
in the street names, the places, everywhere," McKenny says.

Our Languages will be launched with significant pro-bono help from Microsoft
under its Unlimited Potential program and technology-enabling company,
Dimension Data. It received partial funding from the Federal Department of
Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) but additional
funds will be needed to add more languages.

The first dedicated national Aboriginal TV channel was launched last month.
National Indigenous Television (nitv.org.au) carries 24-hour programming
and can be seen by Optus Aurora satellite subscribers and Imparja's Channel
31 viewers in remote Australia. The $50 million venture, backed by the
federal department, will be available nationally via Foxtel and Austar from
October.

The channel is calling for program submissions from the community, including
language-preservation ideas