Indigenous teachers, storytellers and musicians record radio documentaries about why they love their languages.
Lou Bennett is a Yorta Yorta/Dja Dja Wurrung songwoman and currently works as the artistic director for The Black Arm Band. In the radio doco made for ABC Goulburn Murray, Lou sings a Yorta Yorta lullaby, Waka nini yana and talks about the meanings behind local place names. ‘The truth is, we speak Yorta Yorta every day without realising it,’ she said. The town of ‘Moama’ for instance, translates in Yorta Yorta as ‘place of the dead’ – not a description you’ll find on the local tourism website!
Lou explains that many Yorta Yorta words simply can’t be translated into English. ‘We have a dozen words for ‘sister’ and the type of sister: maternal, paternal, sister-in-law, younger sister, older sister.’ It makes sense that the solitary English word, ‘sister’ could never encapsulate the complex roles and kin relationships that exist in many Indigenous communities.
Conversely, Lou explains that the Yorta Yorta language also incorporates many English adjectives into the one word.
‘For happy, sweet, honest, loyal, beautiful, good – we have one word: galnya.’
It’s revealing that the Yorta Yorta make no distinction between truth, beauty and joy.
Our next story takes us from big river country of north-east Victoria to the tropics of Townsville. In the radio documentary broadcast on ABC North Queensland, Warrgamay educator Bridget Priman shares with listeners the thrill of learning how to read and write in her ancestral language. ‘We come from an oral tradition, so to actually read and write brought a whole new meaning to our language,’ she said.
Bridget shares some of her favourite Warrgamay words and their meanings in English. She loves the musicality and playfulness of words like gunggaga (kookaburra) which sounds exactly like a kookaburra laughing and bawuru (rock wallaby) which mimics the sound of the animal hopping along. Then there’s djumuburu (bullocks) which, when you say it over and over, captures the rhythm of a galloping herd.
In our final podcast from the Newcastle area, teacher Jacqui Allen sings to her young students in Awabakal language and shares the Dreaming story behind ‘Mulangbula’, a site at the entrance of Lake Macquarie. Her colleague, Terri-Lee Darcy, reflects on what it means to her to speak the language spoken fluently by her great grandfather, who was one of the last full-blood descendents of the Awabakal people.
View the first three Mother Tongue films on Wiradjuri, Woiwurrung and Gunaikurnai languages and stay tuned for more stories soon.
- This article originally appears at:
- https://open.abc.net.au/posts/taking-to-the-airwaves-10me2sn
- Article taken from the following publication:
- ABC Open
- Article submitted by:
- Author:
- Suzi Taylor
