This is all getting a bit off track, but my point is that given an either-or situation, which, Gagu, Bulanjdjan, I agree completely, doesn’t/shouldn’t have to be the case, I would primarily throw resources at the most severe situation. Would that be a waste of money? I don’t know, depends on your opinion. Is it an economic or cost/benefit issue in the first place? I don’t think it should be.

And Wamut, similarly, do not underestimate the comparative benefit of attempting to record as much as one can of a language with only one speaker. You may provide the only surviving record of such a language. Such data is absolutely invaluable. Also, thanks for the info on DCITA.

And yes Claire, I was going to bring that up, but I thought it was obvious. I don’t know what the numbers would have been, but I’d take a stab in the dark and say that it would have been uncommon for an Australian language, pre-contact, to have more than, say, 200 speakers? Any better more educated guesses, people?

Also, don’t underestimate the value and importance of a language that is on the verge of being lost or isn’t spoken anymore… they are held dear to many people who have lost or are losing their language. If ‘the muslims’ arrived tomorrow and our language became arabic, wouldn’t we be a bit resentful and wouldn’t english always hold a special place in our collective psyche? that’s probably something like what people feel like who are from the over 200 different Indigenous cultural/language groups who have pretty much lost their language.

but back to the budget and current politics.. when the government is bringing back assimilationist policies, black people have fuck all chance that there’ll be any improvement in something that white people don’t understand.

oh, and the deparment that looks after Indigenous Languages is DCITA.

But still, from the way you have explained it, this is a finite proces, right? I.E if a dictionary and grammar are all that’s required to keep a language ‘alive’, then once it’s written, that’s it…right?
And then the overhead costs of tutoring people in the language would, in theory, be substantially lower than the costs required to research the language.

In that case extra funding should be a no-brainer.

The Latin analogy doesn’t hold up, though, as people learn that to read all of the works written in Latin throughout history, of which there are many.

No one is arguing against the critical mass point, no-one is arguing that English isn’t important. But why should we refuse speakers of Indigenous languages resources to document and revitalise their languages simply because we don’t think they’re going to shift back to using them full time, or because we’ve bought into the ill-founded view that such a process would ‘interfere’ with their learning English?

After all, no one *speaks* Latin anymore, but a lot of people put effort into learning it still, and most of us would agree there is cultural and intellectual merit in doing so. So it is with Aboriginal languages. Not everything comes down to economic rationalism, nor is economic rationalism the movitating factor behind all our actions.

The opposing point of view, that whatever resources are available should be pumped into those languages where positive results are more certain, to the detriment of those with the odds most certainly not in their favour, is defeatist in my opinion. I think there is a real imperative to record and document as much of the highly endangered and moribund languages as is physically possible. The more data there is collected, the more chance that a grammar and dictionary can be reconstructed later, and it has been done before. To simply give up on a language because the outlook ain’t so good is just not fair on its speakers and other members of the linguistic community.

I agree that money should be spent ensuring aboriginal people are competent in English, but that should not detract from the retention of indigenous languages.

From a less interpersonal point of view, linguistic and cultural diversity is intrinsically valuable in my opinion, and should be protected.