Phone App Helps Save Indigenous Language

Dying indigenous languages could be saved with the help of modern technology – smart phone applications.

Smartphone applications may hold the key to protecting endangered indigenous languages.

A project team on Croker Island in remote northwestern Arnhem Land worked with Bruce Birch, a linguist from the Australian National University, to develop a smartphone dictionary application called Ma! Iwaidja (pronounced “ee-WHY-jah”).

The application includes a 1500-entry English-Iwaidja dictionary with audio, a 450-entry phrase book and an information section about Iwaidja and other endangered languages of Arnhem Land.

Users will be able to upload word entries.

“The app becomes a living, constantly developing repository and capture device for a language that is otherwise losing ground fast,” Mr Birch said.

It had already attracted considerable interest from people trying to preserve endangered languages in other parts of Australia, Africa and the Americas, he said.

The Croker-based team will now look at creating apps for other endangered languages of Western Arnhem Land.