"1,000+ (Australian) aboriginal languages...??"No joke Milum - just poor reporting for which I apologise. The actual number IS (I've LIU!!) more than 200. And we're not talking dialects, we're talking languages. It's a big place, there were heaps of small tribes, they've been here for 60,000 years and the harsh environment over much of the country ensured different languages were hatched and incubated.
I'll toddle off and do some research - but I do remember a mention of this some time ago.
(I was referring back then to a stand up routine that used to be performed by a popular aboriginal guy, Ernie Dingo. He used to get his (inevitably) white comedy club audiences to show off their foreign language skills - then ask if anybody in the room could say 'yes', 'no' or anything for that matter in any one of the more than 200 aboriginal languages. You could hear a pin drop in the embarassed silence).(EDIT - found the folowing at
http://www.uws.edu.au/vip/listerp/langu.htm)
"Surprisingly some 110 languages/dialects are still spoken fluently in Australia, which is
about one third my emphasis of the original number spoken. In the past, traditional names for plants and animals were poorly recorded and often, no specimens were collected. Aboriginal languages were not written and there is still some difficulties with spelling conventions. Several Aboriginal sounds don’t have English equivalents, and so a combination of these factors has led to misnaming, misidentification and much confusion about the particular plant or animal concerned. This has implications for potential bushfood and medicinal plants where misidentification may be dangerous. Acacia georginae, for example, has naturally occurring sodium fluoroacetate in the seed, the same active constituent as the rodenticide, '1080'. Here is small example (and here is a larger one) of Acacia nomenclature in central Australia, demonstrating how such confusion may arise, both from the variety of names used across language groups and the difference is spelling conventions over the last 20 years.
Repeating my point above and previously...Australians are particularly ignorant of their indigenous languages and there are relatively very few non-Aboriginal speakers of Aboriginal languages. The media make a concerted effort to pronouce non-English names for various multicultural events and significant individuals, but they still fail to correctly pronounce Aboriginal words. Yothu Yindi
(a well known band) have been in the public’s eye for a decade now, yet most of us can’t pronounce the band’s name, let alone names such as Manduwuy Yunupingu
(the lead singer) or his brother Galarrwuy or Gatjil Djerrkura, all of whom hold prominent cultural and professional positions, including the title 'Australian of the Year'."
Doncha love colonialism?
stales
