A school teacher and a linguist in Adelaide have teamed up to resurrect an Aboriginal language once thought to be ‘extinct’.
The last fluent speaker of Kaurna language died in the 1900s, but now there’s more than 100 people, including non-Indigenous Australians, in the process of learning it.
Teacher Jack Buckskin and linguist Dr Robert Amery reintroduced Kaurna to the locals, and many are picking it up quite well.
“There’s kids choosing the language over Italian and stuff, so that’s a good start,” Mr Buckskin told NITV. “And they’re even speaking it around the schools, which is cool.”
Around 3,500 Kaurna words were catalogued during the 1800s by German missionaries, but new ones have been added for more modern words like “keyboard” and “computer”.
To watch the video for this clip, click the link below.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/video/2285948904/teacher-reviving-indigenous-language
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