Dear Foxy,

Labas. Yes, it's really not that difficult to pick up basic communicative terms in other languages, like 'g'day' and 'how are you going ?' and 'see you later' in other languages. I worked with a lot of Greek blokes back in the days, and picked up enough Greek to follow very basic conversations. Of course, they got me to learn some pretty choice phrases and, one time, one bloke asked me to say to another bloke 'Tha sevalo to boutso sto gollo sas' before I knew what it meant. Much laughter.

I've used my rudimentary French to try to chat up African ladies who spoke it a lot better than me, but perhaps something got lost in translation.

It doesn't hurt anybody's tongue muscles to try to learn and use basic phrases in another language. But it pretty much always brings a smile and a nod on the bus. Of course, many people are happy to continue the dialogue, usually in English, since of course they may need practice in English if only they had the opportunity. Fine with me.

I'm in a singing group and a Croatian friend asked me to look at a Russian song that he had to learn as a kid back in Yugoslavia (1945-1948): Vo Kuznitse - at the blacksmiths, about a young lad offering to make a dress for Dunya if she would come into the forest with him. I don't know the last verse, whether she said 'yes' or 'no', but my friend was thrilled when I sang a couple of verses to him. I'm sure there were many more verses as well, unpublished, but it was great fun.

Actually language is a fascinating subject, so probably much more later.

Love,

Joe

Cossomby,

It has been reported that over 250 languages are spoken in Sydney.

40 per cent of Sydneysiders speak a non-English language at home.

Arabic dominates in the western suburbs as the most widely spoken non-English language and Mandarin and Cantonese in the north shore.

Of course Daruk/Eora should be added to the mix, even if indigenous have demonstrated no interest themselves. It should add to the dodgy secret business of getting more guvvy sinecures and grants.

Someone asked why the budget of the Attorney Generals Dept cannot provide heaps more judges for the Family Law Court to speed things up a bit.
Because there is so much of the federal budget being leeched off elsewhere that is why.

Cossomby,

On re-reading my post above it was more a general comment, not a reply. Yours was a wry reply to another poster and you were not suggesting anything more. Sorry.

leoj

Thanks Leoj, for your second post.

Yes I was being ironic. When we English speakers arrived in 1788, we didn't think we should learn the local language and try to integrate.

And I do know that there were and still are many indigenous languages in Australia; but in 1788 British might have at least tried to learn the one spoken where they landed. A parallel to-day might be immigrants to Europe, they might be expected to learn the language of the area (country) they settle in, regardless of the fact that there are many languages spoken elsewhere in Europe.

Hi Cossomby,

It's interesting that you make that comment: at least later, around Australia, missionaries especially tried (and often succeeded) to learn local languages - Threlkeld (Awabakal) on the Central Coast of NSW in the 1820s and 1830s, the early German missionaries in South Australia (Kaurna, Nauo, Ngarrindjeri), Lutheran missionaries at Killalpaninna 1860s-1916, and at Hermannsburg, etc.

Their strong belief was that people could not be brought to the god of the Christians except through a full understanding, and therefore in their own languages.

Of course, later, when missions took in much more mixed populations, which language did they have to focus on ? The one which they had in common - i.e. English. Even Rev. Taplin at Pt McLeay found that some of the kids he was teaching couldn't speak Ngarrindjeri but did, like all of the kids, speak English: for some, by 1860, it was their only language. At Pt Pearce (1868) and Koonibba (1904), missions started up later, the mixed origins of the population meant that they had to teach and work in English from the outset. Hence, I suppose, the myth that missionaries wouldn't teach in local languages.

The Adelaide missionaries learnt and taught in Kaurna from the outset. But when people flocked in to the Adelaide honey pot from the Riverland, to keep the peace, Governor Grey set up another school - and since it needed a teacher immediately, one had to be appointed who couldn't speak any of the Riverland languages, since almost nobody could. After all, one doesn't just take a pill to learn a language, it takes years. But needs must.

The Maori were lucky, they had only the one language: so any new term was 'Maorified' and incorporated. Amongst Aboriginal groups, as far as I can tell, borrowing from one language to another was very uncommon (back then - maybe not so now), groups worked through a few people who spoke neighbouring languages. So when the new society was introduced, people tended to learn basic English terms for all the new bits and pieces and processes and rarely 'Indigenised' them.

[TBC]

[continued]

So Aboriginal people in 'settled' Australia learnt their own language, of course, AND English, with little borrowing at all. As time passed, and some people became more embedded in an 'English' economic life, so their local language would be put on the back-burner, except for specific situations in which it was relevant.

Of course, people have kept a 'kitchen' language, all of the most common and basic words, as they do everywhere, but if they didn't live much of a traditional life, the words associated with it faded away: mouse-trapping, axe-making, muturuki-digging, etc.; and English, the language relating more and more to so much of their daily lives, prevailed.

Of course, integration means much more than language: common values and social relationships, legal rights, etc. The English language is the medium of common life in most of Australia, and perhaps it is more imperative and urgent for newcomers to learn it than for Australians to learn one of theirs, although of course that is desirable for better social cohesion.

Joe