ADNYAMATHANHA MEETING FOR LANGUAGE SUSTAINABILITY
May 31, 2016
On the weekend of the 7th and 8th of May, the Mobile Language Team held a 2-day meeting in Port Augusta for the Adnyamathanha community, to talk about possible project ideas for the Adnyamathanha language. The meeting was attended by different family groups within the Adnyamathanha community, with all expressing an interest in projects aimed at both increasing the numbers of speakers of the language, as well as projects developed to be sustainable. The project ideas discussed included:
- Active Listeners Project
- Online language database
- Bilingual Education project
- Children’s Books
- Master/Apprentice Project
As well as discussions around these project ideas, the MLTs expert linguist Professor Peter Muhlhausler, delivered presentations focussed on orthography and financial planning and sustainability for language revival projects.
MLT Aboriginal Co-Manager and Language Worker Ms Karina Lester talked to the group about the Master/Apprentice language training program, and how this could work in conjunction with the Active Listeners project. Upon completion of the 2-day meeting, the group confirmed its intentions for the MLT to apply for a 2016/17 Indigenous Language & Arts funding grant to develop and run the Active Listeners project for the Adnyamathanha community, which is solely focused on creating more fluent speakers of the language in a shorter timeframe.