Alan B

'Given my ancestry, my native tongue ought to be galic!'

Well, that's your loss. (And the spelling is 'Gaelic') I've been learning Gaelic for ten years, and have used it proudly in Ireland with native speakers.

Believe it or not, there is a huge Gaelic language culture in Australia, and in other migrant-based cultures, especially the US. People in Sydney and Melbourne attend classes at least once a week and people from all over Australia participate in Gaelic residency courses a couple of times a year.

What do they get out of it? Who knows. A link to their heritage, perhaps? The love of an ancient and beautiful language?

Whatever the reason, it goes beyond cynical practicality.

This is why the preservation of what's left of Aboriginal languages has huge symbolic value. Damn the expense. We need to keep them.

Isn't any white heritage just disguised Racism??

//What do they get out of it?//

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/10126883/Why-learn-a-foreign-language-Benefits-of-bilingualism.html

NT is home to most of the language speaking tribes and residents of most remote communities do speak language fluently, however the introduction of technology and communication into those remote areas will eventually erode the strength of the skill. I have lived in the top end for nearly 50 years now and noticed that the language has been lost in those areas closest to urban centres with easy access to digital entertainment.
However, also in the NT is a very large home grown Greek population, all of whom speak fluent Greek and maintain the most important of their cultural habits.
They are a perfect example of how culture and language can be preserved, even in a foreign land, several generations removed from their cultural roots.
Greek parents ensure their children are fluent in Greek in the home before they start school, whilst also enabling their children to learn English. Once children actually commence school the parents keep speaking Greek in the home so that children become fluent in both languages whilst achieving well at school.
It is the responsibility of aboriginal people to preserve both language and culture, not the taxpayer, however, from observation, they have been committing cultural suicide for decades, with little thought to preserving what minimal culture remains and small interest in teaching the current generation those ancient skills that enabled them to survive on this land

I'm all in favour of preserving languages, all languages, and if it costs a bit to do so then it's money well spent.
Money doesn't need to be spent to preserve our then heavily represented Gaelic (early settlement) as, as has been noted, it is doing well in Australia; under Gov. Macquarie it almost became an Official Language in the settlement.

My paternal grand-father was a native speaker and didn't learn English until he was 12, like most of his generation he didn't pass on his language skills to his children, my father understood Irish but could not speak it fluently.
I learned it as a second language, my children learned English as a first language and Irish in school in Ireland..

Second son is now studying and learning to speak Welsh at Uni in Ireland, which'll make him tri-lingual as Welsh is sufficiently different to the other branches of the Gaelic tongues to be another language.

The native tongues of Scotland Ireland and Wales, is a different proposition as outlawed by the land annexing English conqueror!

And they used transportation under the most cruel and inhumane conditions in recorded history, with a better than a fifty percent kill rate. With survivors arriving horribly emaciated and barely alive! Most illiterate and completely bereft of reading and writing skills!

The colonising by transportation, English however, had no official position on Australia's diverse native tongues! None of which have ever been officially outlawed!

How lucky for you Killarney that you can afford to go to uni? I one of four kids raised by a single mum, when there was no social safety net, was lucky, given the sheer number of schools I attended, to learn to read or write; let alone gain tertiary qualifications in three separate largely self taught disciples!

Even so, I never had any mother tongue added to me by any of my forbears! So, never learned to spell gaelic correctly! Being partially sighted and recovering from a hemorrhagic stroke hasn't helped!

So clever to critique and focus so myopically on my spelling! Your IQ must be astronomical? And given you are so brilliant as a native speaker! Perhaps you could correct my gaelic spelling of pogue ma hone!
A.B.