Hear this episode and find out more information about it at theallusionist.org/custodians
This is the Allusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, tap language’s knees with a little hammer.
In this episode we’re talking about the First Nations languages of Australia, of which there were a lot. Then there were not. English language, the problematic fave, strikes again. Some have been wiped out, some have only a handful of speakers left, but some are in a healthier state.
Content note: violence and genocide.
On with the show.
RUDI BREMER: Yaama, Rudi Bremer ngaya. Gamilaraay ngaya yingarr. Hi, I'm Rudi Bremer. I'm a Gamilaraay woman.
I'm Rudi Bremer. I am a Gamilaraay woman. I'm a Murri woman from Gamilaraay country. I grew up in Sydney. I speak a little bit of Gamilaraay, which is my language, although not as much as I'd like. And a lot of my words are things I learned as a kid, so they're kind of not for polite company.
HZ: Interesting. Tell me more.
RUDI BREMER: My mum has these stories about, when my brother and I were really small, if people outside of our family babysat us, they would be really confused when we would ask for "ngamu" because we're meaning breastmilk - "ngamu" means boob - and so it's, you know, I'm hungry and they'd be like, "Um, I don't know what that is, I don't know what this child is saying at me." We'd also maybe flag that we needed to go to the jillawa”. You know, because we needed to "giili" or to "guna"?
HZ: I'm understanding these from context.
RUDI BREMER: Yeah. So you get it from context - although this is an adult providing some context; the kid is just saying it at you. You're just like, "Hmm, I don't really know what you want to do."
HZ: And then about 30 seconds later you might realise, and yeah, whoops.
RUDI BREMER: Missed it. Yep.
HZ: And how much do you use the language now as an adult?
RUDI BREMER: Not a whole lot. I guess a big part of that would be the fact that I don't know many other people that speak my language that I see on kind of a day to day basis. Yeah, I might use some of those sort of those words about going to the jillawa but that's around other Aboriginal people who... it's a word that sort of spread across a good chunk of Australia, like it's it's a word that you can just kind of use.
HZ: "Jillawa"?
RUDI BREMER: Yeah. And a lot of Aboriginal people will know, it doesn't matter whether they're New South Wales or Victoria - they're with you on it.
HZ: Right. And that's useful because that is a bodily function that everyone has to do.
RUDI BREMER: Yes. Eventually everyone's going to go to the toilet, they're going to go the jillawa.
I've mentioned I'm a Gamilaraay person. There's areas on my country, which is northwest New South Wales, and there's sites that are very definitely known as massacre sites for my people. There's a - it's not the only cliff in Australia that would have this name, but there is a cliff on my country called Gin's Leap, and "gin" is a derogatory term that was used for Aboriginal women, and so that cliff is actually a site where Aboriginal people, but predominantly the women and children, were driven kind of to the point where their choice was to be killed where they stood, or to jump and die.
HZ: With place names like that, is there some controversy about them still being called that? Or is the thought that you should keep that name to recognise this terrible thing that was done?
RUDI BREMER: Yeah there's definitely controversy in the fact that, like... I mean I mentioned that ‘gin’ is a derogatory term for Aboriginal women, but it's also such an archaic term that there is a good chunk of Australia that wouldn't actually know that that's a term in and of itself. Which is really bizarre, because there was a certain amount of reclamation that happened around that term. And so you will hear Aboriginal women, and I'll admit I'm one of them, who will occasionally refer to themselves and their friends as gins. And that's fine. But people don't necessarily understand what it's in reference to, and that it's a reclamation, and that it was a bad term, and it would definitely would continue to be a bad term if it was someone not Aboriginal saying it.
KARINA LESTER: My name's Karina Lester. I'm a Yankunytjatjara woman, from the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, but I also work at the University of Adelaide and I work for a team called the Mobile Language Team as a co-manager and senior Aboriginal language worker, working on supporting our Aboriginal languages across the state of South Australia, whether it's language revival, language reclamation or language maintenance.
HZ: English is currently the most commonly spoken language in Australia, but before Europeans got to Australia - the Dutch arriving in 1606, then the British claiming land in 1770 - a lot of different languages existed in the lands.
KARINA LESTER: Many. Thousands. They are languages that are from those lands, and you look at a Horton map or an AIATSIS map, you see an interpretation - again by a non-Aboriginal person - but you see this very colourful map that has colours for every language group. And that gives you some indication visually of the number of languages that was spoken prior to contact. So there were thousands of languages. Dialects are what linguists have put in to our thinking, our indigenous thinking, because dialects are languages that have similarity in grammar structure and similarities in the way language is used, so they call them as dialects, but they are languages to speakers, to oral speakers, they are languages because they associate with that particular language.
RUDI BREMER: And then yeah, and so a lot of languages have typically around six to eight distinct dialects. One of the things about colonisation is that there are certain language groups where that is either, those dialects have either been kind of homogenized and pulled in to just one sort of large language group, or maybe a few of the dialects have kind of been lost.
KARINA LESTER: Today we're looking at a very low, low number of languages in Australia. So that's a worry that we have. We say probably around 50 languages, strong and fluent and spoken and passed on. Another 50 semi-fluent, impacted, at risk, endangered. And then you've got languages that are just going through a revival process.
HZ: Colonisation is kind of a polite term for what happened. So... what happened?
RUDI BREMER: Yes. OK. Australia was invaded by the British. Australia was declared terra nullius, which means that it was declared as having no people. So Aboriginal people who were very definitely here - I don’t know, there's this idea that they were very definitely considered not people, which kind of only puts them in the category of animal, and that's a really... like, at its heart, that's an awful kind of thing to have to think about.
HZ: So the options were essentially assimilate or be killed.
RUDI BREMER: Yes, and in a lot of cases, it's not necessarily an option so much as 'be killed'. The decision is made for you.
KARINA LESTER: White policy came in, you know, stolen generation things, you know, we got mustered into missions and disciplined to not speak our languages. That happened right across the nation, where many could not speak their languages. And, you know, the impacts that colonisation brought in and the diseases and so forth, the impact it had on our people as well, as First Nations people; people were massacred and people died from diseases and things, and you lost so much of that knowledge and that information, and language went with those who died and were impacted.
RUDI BREMER: One aspect of of what happened in Australia, as far as colonisation, is the assimilation policy. And in broad strokes, the way that that worked was people - Aboriginal people were rounded up, and taken from their land and placed on missions. And from there you were just forced to only speak English. You couldn't teach your children your language, you couldn't teach them your culture. And as you kind of get further and further from that, the people that knew things started to die.
KARINA LESTER: When colonisation came in, they were one of the first things that we lost, was our language. And that disciplined us, too, under white policy, to not allow us to speak our language.
HZ: What kind of punishments were they delivering?
KARINA LESTER: Well, you hear from people who were from Stolen Generation now where they were physically abused, where people were caned for speaking their language, and told verbally not to speak their language, and there's a lot of hurt and pain, because that was taken away. And I see that within my own family. You know, I've had aunties of mine that were taken away from my grandmother and they could not speak with their mother, my grandmother. And the pain in their eyes. And I am privileged because I still speak my language, so I often was used as an interpreter between their own relationship - mother and daughter, and a granddaughter being an interpreter in the middle.
HZ: So you can just smash the intergenerational bonds by making language impossible.
KARINA LESTER: Shatter it, absolutely. And just disconnect it. And that is pain. That's a lot of pain and a lot of pain, you know, that generation carries. How does the next generation find the positive from those horrific stories?
RUDI BREMER: And, it's an oral culture. Our Aboriginal culture is oral culture, and so we don't have our own written records. We kind of are relying on what whitefullas decided was worth preserving. I think it's complicated by the fact that if you don't consider somebody a person, do you care to to really record that? There were missionaries that did think that it was worth recording languages. There was two German missionaries in south Australia who did this, and they recorded something like 2000 words and 200 phrases. And what's a little bit weird and sort of upsetting is when the Kaurna people started to reawaken their language from their archival material, there are people that will say to you how lucky you are that these German missionaries decided to... It's not luck! I'm not particularly grateful that someone thought my culture was worth writing down. You don't get cookies for that, considering my people people. It's sort of the basic level of how you treat someone else, you respect their culture and their language.
So what's written down is predominantly written down by white people, by white fullas, and so it's sort of as close an approximation as they can get. It's also why there's a lot of discussions and contention around spelling of Aboriginal languages, right down to the name of your people. So you'll come across multiple spellings of the same language group. Mine for instance, it's a very recent thing to have to have Gamilaraay spelt with a G at the start. Most of my childhood we spelt with a K, so it was Kamilaroi. It's one of those things that we are still uncovering aspects of our language as we kind of delve into finding that sort of ground of what was recorded versus what was, and where is the truth.
HZ: And also trying to work out what's happening when it has been made to fit English language alphabet and phonemes.
RUDI BREMER: Yes. So there's a lot of there's a lot of "ng" sounds right at the start of words, and it's like "ng" as in "sing". We put that "ng" sound right at the start. So you've got, like, "ngamilay", which is "see you later" in Gamilaraay.
KARINA LESTER: That's where a lot of traditional owner groups need to sit down and work with linguists and work out a written form. So sounds: how sounds are being made and what's the, what's the best? So with Pitjanjantjatjara Yankuntjatjara, we have two-letter sounds and we've got little rules that one has a trill, like with Rs, the letter R, so without a, what they call, what linguists call a retroflex, it's a trill sound. And if they are retroflex, then it's like a silent "R". And there are retroflexes on letters like the "L" and the "N", the "R". And so if you've got a retroflex under there, you've got a silent "R" at the beginning of that letter. So there are those little rules, and those linguists have sat down and been able to - because that's the role of linguists, is to dissect our language and break it all down. And so they've worked out and said, "OK, let's try and work with the English alphabet. But is that sound a ‘ja’ sound? Is it a ‘ch’ sound?" And then combining letters to make that sound. So we have two-letter sounds, that is one sound, like the /tj/s and the /ny/s and the /ng/s and the /ly/s, are sounds that we make in our language that, using English, we've been able to sort of say, "OK, that's the closest sound that you're making," use the English alphabet, and we've worked out a written form. That's new generation. That's a great work that had been done by my mother and her generation, mum and dad's generation; and my generation is learning to read and write in that in our language. And it's the next generation that needs to continue on the reading and writing of our language and understanding the grammar of our language, because as speakers, we don't necessarily know why we say it the way that we say it, and why there are those endings, and why we use suffixes and prefixes.
The next phase now is learning to be able to explain the grammar to our mob, from our mob. Our own mob, our own Pitjanjantjara Yankuntjatjara educators in the classroom teaching our Pitjantjatjara Yakunytjatjara students in the classroom to know grammar and structure of language, because language is slightly shifting - and typically, this is teenagers or kids getting together, creating words, which is now becoming everyday language. And that's what we're starting to see shift.
HZ: It does mean it's alive, so that's exciting.
KARINA LESTER: Yes, it means that it's alive. How do we map a positive future for our next generation? How do we say to the kids that we're struggling, and why are we fighting the fights of our parents and grandparents? Because that's what I'm doing right now, fighting the fight that my grandparents and parents did. How do we stop that for the next generation and say, let's just, crikey, get our shit together and move forward with a shared future and direction. And that's the story of our life as First Nations people, we're just constantly hitting brick walls and trying to sit down and work out how to either knock it down or find an alternative route. So it is a huge challenge to try and change people's perception and understanding and their ways.
HZ: You are listening to Karina Lester and Rudi Bremer, and coming up, they talk about keeping the languages alive and evolving by inventing new terms. And also about how English can’t handle it.
HZ: Have any languages been revived from extinction?
RUDI BREMER: Yeah. So, Kaurna language. My understanding is that no one was speaking Kaurna a few decades ago, and then a community of Kaurna people began pulling archival material and they started going through research... Well, they started applying research practices, and there's now a community of speakers, and that's incredibly impressive, to actually make that commitment. I think a lot of people are recognising the importance that language has on cultural identity. And so there has been a big push that's coming from a grassroots kind of position. Because top-down policies kind of will only get you so far. But when people are passionate, and when people are interested, things start to move.
KARINA LESTER: We’re starting to see signs. Around in Adelaide, you've got parks and reserves that are co-named or named in Kaurna language. And they've set up an organisation, KWK, as well, which sort of does the business side of language and people pay a certain fee to use a Kaurna word for a building space or a parkland or reserve or something, so that you're starting to see presence. I came to school down here, Helen, goodness me, back in the early 1990s; and the early 1990s, I saw very little Kaurna language spoken, or even in parklands and reserves. Living down here now, there's presence everywhere, which is amazing.
RUDI BREMER: Because they decided they're not just going to preserve the language as it was, they're going to actually make it something that's practical in a contemporary Australia.
KARINA LESTER: KWP, which is Kaurna Warra Pintyanthi, is the organization that works very closely with their languages. So it's really important to the work that they're doing in keeping their language, breathing oxygen into their language and really then moving it to this next level, which is the forming of a lexicon committee who will say, "OK, this is the word that we will use, the Kaurna word that we will use for a computer." So an example is that computer, and they think, "Pretty smart, maybe it's like a lightning bolt to the brain." And so they've come up with a Kaurna word for "lightning bolt to the brain", and that's the word that they used for "computer". So that's the role of this organisation, KWP, and they, that's where language is shifting now for for the Kaurna language. And so they're really at this other journey now, apart from looking at the old records, old missionary documentation, going through that translation process, to now going, "Right, this is what we have. How do we bring in new words now as things change around us?" Technology around social issues, cultural issues - how do we take that to the next level? So the committee is really playing a crucial role in keeping that Kaurna language alive.
HZ: And every language had to come up with a word for "computer".
KARINA LESTER: Yes, definitely.
RUDI BREMER: Generally speaking, a lot of our languages are only a few thousand words. As far as vocabulary goes, a lot of our words have multiple meanings. So in Bundjalung, which is a central coast of New South Wales language, the word for shoulder and tree branch and wing, like for a bird, is all the same word, because they all kind of mean the same join point..
HZ: Makes sense.
RUDI BREMER: Yeah.
HZ: But also you're likely to know from context which one you're talking about.
RUDI BREMER: Yeah. A lot of languages have poetry to them because of that. Like there's a really lovely aesthetic to our languages. And I think it's why a lot of Aboriginal writers and poets are sort of the ones that are doing a huge amount of the work in maintaining the languages.
HZ: And even though English was imposed on the people, they’re going to use it their own way.
RUDI BREMER: We use English terms for our family, like to denote family structure, but we use them in a really non-English way. In my family, and this is like, I'd say like most Aboriginal families, most Aboriginal girls, are called "sis" until around about 10, and then after that you kind of start getting called your real name.
HZ: Oh, so you level up in terms of individual identity.
RUDI BREMER: Yeah. I never levelled up. It's now, that's my name, and I've got cousins that don't realise that I have a real name. And it's because I'm named after somebody in my family, and it was too confusing to have two of us. So instead, there's "Adult Sis", or "Big Sis" is what they all say. So there's Big Sis and then there's like 15 other Sises that are under 10. That's less confusing than two Rudis.
HZ: Sure.
RUDI BREMER: Yeah, I know. Normally - I'm going to use my hands a lot, so I don't know how well this'll translate, but you'll have, let's say for instance, a grandmother, and then she's got her daughter, which is your mother, and then you, and then the next thing down would be - let me see how to remember it.
HZ: You need a diagram really.
RUDI BREMER: You really do. Your mother's sisters are your mothers. Your father's brothers are your fathers. Your father's sisters are your aunts, and your mother's brothers are your uncles. So your mother's mothers are your grandmothers, and so all of those women are your grandmothers. And then your father's father, and all of his brothers, are your grandfathers. The niece and nephew thing I think comes in at that point. So someone referring to her two older nieces, in a white context, she was talking about her father's father's sisters. So they would be her great-aunts, except she doesn't call them that. And there's - one of the reasons that those family structures existed was because because you've got a small group of people that are intermarrying and you kind of have to have very particular rules about who can marry who, and it also really strongly defines what your relationship to that person is: are you a caregiver or a caretaker?
HZ: Right. So it's not like an absolute thing, it's more situational.
RUDI BREMER: So you can have very young children being the grandparent of somebody older. And it is their responsibility to look after their grandchildren as much as it is the responsibility of the grandchild to look after their grandparent. There are some, like, really definitive - I'm going to get this, like, all mucked up. There's some definitive ways of viewing gender and gender roles. But you very definitely can be a woman who has a female husband; because of the way that the family line works, she'd be considered your husband. Not that you can marry her, so much as she's got to treat you as a wife, and you treat her as a husband, in the way that you take care of each other. So like, it'd be the same words, even if there's no actual marriage that's happened. The responsibilities are the same.
HZ: And is it referring to a romantic relationship?
RUDI BREMER: No. And that's where it gets, yeah, so you might be in a romantic relationship with one of her, one of her brothers, but because of who she is in sort of the structure - it's so, it really doesn't work without diagrams.
HZ: Like so many interpersonal things.
RUDI BREMER: But yeah, so there's this idea of like, we've probably got one of the most complicated interpersonal relationships I've ever encountered. I don't know, maybe I just don't know enough about other cultures, though.
HZ: I don't know, maybe you really did win on the complicated family structures.
RUDI BREMER: But in and of that we've got, like, words that refer, that denote those relationships. If we didn't have to use English to explain these, it would be so much easier. You'd actually follow a little bit more. Theoretically.
HZ: Your randomly selected word from the dictionary today is…
haplology, noun: the omission of one occurrence of a sound or syllable which is repeated within a word (eg. in February pronounced ‘/’fɛbri/’).
Try using haplology in a email today. One for you, Ologies podcast?
Today you heard from Rudi Bremer and Karina Lester.
Karina Lester is a linguist at the University of Adelaide, and co-manager and senior Aboriginal language worker of the university’s Mobile Language Team, find out more about their work with communities to maintain languages and culture at mobilelanguageteam.com.au.
Rudi Bremer is a radio broadcaster and producer with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Her work includes Radio National’s Awaye! featuring Aboriginal arts and culture across Australia; the show Word Up, capturing words from Indigenous languages, and Little Yarns, an award-winning show for kids and parents to learn about Australia’s many Indigenous languages. And her latest project is the show Thin Black Line, an investigation into the death of an Aboriginal teenager in police custody. All these shows are available in the podcast apps, so get in there.
This episode was produced by me, Helen Zaltzman, with help from Ian Steadman and Rudi Bremer. The Allusionist music is by Martin Austwick of palebirdmusic.com.
Find the show on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @allusionistshow, and become a supporter at patreon.com/allusionist if you’d like extra content such as me melting down. And to hear or read every episode of the Allusionist, see the full dictionary entries for the randomly selected words, find links to all the guests and further information about each topic, browse the lexicon of all the words covered in the show, visit the show’s forever home theallusionist.org.
RUDI BREMER: In my experience, Indigenous languages in Australia don't really have a word for that finite idea of goodbye. We tend to have - our words tend to mean, sort of, "I'll see you again", or "we'll see you later". Depending on the language, there might be a bit of a tonal kind of influence about whether you're flagging that you're not sure when you'll see somebody again. But there is always this sort of feeling that we will. So, in Dharawal, which is where we are recording, in Dharawal country, they say "wellama". In my country we say "namilay". So yeah, I'll end with namilay.
