Karratha Kids Learn Yindjibarndi

You may have seen some Peg’s Creek students in their excellent “BUMP!” 110% film for ABC Open. Great job making this everyone!

Students at the school have also been busy learning the Yindjibarndi language.

Lynda Ryder (aka Mrs Ryder), a local Yindjibarndi Elder, teaches LOTE classes throughout the week with primary students of all ages.

Peg’s Creek students are currently learning some new vocabulary (this week words describe the local Pilbara environment), family relationship words, sentences, prefixes and much more.

So how about some Yindjibarndi counting?

1 – Gunjirri
2 – Gulharra
3 – Jarrwurdi
4 – Gulharraulhamba
5 – Maru
Many more – Marnuwarra

Once I heard about the language lessons I had to find out more. After speaking with some teachers and students I shot a few clips featuring pupils in class, Mrs Ryder teaching and even some singing. This footage has been sent off for a Behind the News story airing on TV tomorrow.

I’m hoping we can create a whole ABC Open project video next year entirely in the Yindjibarndi language (with some subtitles for people like me!) which could be lots of fun.

A great place to look for more aboriginal language stories is right here on the ABC Open site. There are plenty of stories in there.

I particularly like this one, Our Mother Tongue: Woiwurrung created by Suzi Taylor and Joy Wandin Murphy, a Wurundjeri Elder and Woiwurrung language teacher. Like Lynda here in Karratha, Joy is teaching her language to local school children 4,500km away in Healesville, Victoria.

Here’s another great video from Suzi, this one features lots of primary school students who, like Peg’s Creek kids, have been learning their local indigenous language.

Tune in to ABC 1 from 10am tomorrow (Tuesday November 13th) to find out more about this story. You’ll get to see local classes with some Yindjibarndi spoken by Karratha kids on Behind the News.