If you want a bit more of a taste of Arrernte, there is a short vocabulary excerpted from Eastern and Central Arrernte to English Dictionary and A Learner’s Wordlist of Eastern and Central Arrernte (IAD Press) online in UsMob‘s Fact Sheet 3 — and the first entry is ampe akweke. And UsMob’s Episode 5 Pmere Amekemeke (Sacred Sites) title contains a variant form of mekemeke.

By the way, in the course of locating the UsMob vocab, I stumbled across this unusual re-purposing of an Arrernte vocabulary — does anyone recognise where it is adapted from?

So it does mean “little children are sacred” and there’s certainly no question that Arrandic languages have nothing to do with Yolngic langauges. Which forces me to ask, why did they choose an excerpt from Yolngu law as the English title, and a further translation of it in Arrente as the ‘language‘ title? Why not have a Yolngu law presented in Yolngu-matha?

Yes, I speak Arrernte. The glosses of the main words in the title are as follows:

ampe ‘child’; akelye ‘small’; rneme ‘plural; meke-meke ‘restricted or out of bounds’ (this is often used to describe places in country); arle ‘focus marker’. The Arrernte dictionary would have more considered definitions.

In fact the use of the suffix ‘rneme’ and the word ‘akelye’ makes this more northern Arandic or even Alyawarr – a closely related language. (Central and Eastern Arrernte people would be more inclined to say ‘akweke mape’ rather than ‘akelyerneme’.

Nothing to do with Yolngu.

Cheers
jenny