Singer-Songwriter Maanyung: Singing Songs of Language and Country

 

 

https://youtu.be/l5ukf29-9RQ?si=wAMDEqU2eHx_4G9N

Proud Gumbaynggir and Yaegl man, Maanyung (Michael Laurie), singing a Michael Laurie-Thom Mak composition, Bilawali (Home), in the Yaygirr language of the Yaegl People of the Lower Clarence Valley, NSW.

Released on the Sibling label in 2024.

A reminder of why "Enshrining A First Nations Voice In The Australian Constitution" is important

 

Why is the Uluru Statement from the Heart and, what it asks of all Australia, so important?

It is a matter of historical record and of a continuous culture enduring from time immemorial on this continent down to the present day. A matter of connection with and care of Country — an understanding of responsibility towards and belonging to a place which has existed since long before the British-European notion of sovereignty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8sYLZk5QeM

KIMBERLEY ROCK ART: A World Treasure. 2020. Kimberley rock art is one the largest figurative bodies of art to survive anywhere on the planet.... and yet so little is known about it. The Kimberley Foundation Australia is about to change that. The Foundation is sponsoring a world-class team of scientists to date the rock art.

IMAGE: The Blackfulla Perspective (2018)
@theblackfullaperspective2186
Click on image to enlarge

The languages of Aboriginal Australia
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
(1994)
Click on image to enlarge

In Australia today est. 812,000 people formally identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. This figure is believed to probably be an undercount of the Indigenous population, in part due to the voluntary nature of the question in the national census and the difficulty in census teams visiting some parts of the country due to the physical remoteness of some Aboriginal communities.

A national referendum is expected to take place sometime in the 2023-24 financial year asking all citizens registered to vote to express their view on including a new provision in the Australian Constitution which establishes a First Nations Voice. 

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan gets annoyed by a university handbook for lecturers and tutors

 

Nationals MP for Page Kevin Hogan (left) took to Facebook, media releases and an email to certain constituents this month, after getting his undies in a knot over Australian National University (ANU) Gender Institute and Centre for Learning and Teaching co-releasing the "Gender-Inclusive Handbook" for tertiary education lecturers and tutors. 

I guess you can take the failed investment officer/financial adviser off Sky News & the business studies teacher out of the classroom and send him into federal politics, but perhaps his electorate shouldn't have expected him to actually exercise his brain once he arrived in Canberra. 

Sometime in the last seven years he has apparently joined the 'It's political correctness gone mad!' brigade. 

Hogan's voting record already shows us that he is not exactly a friend to the university system. He was for raising undergraduate and post-graduate course fees, as well as against increasing government funding for university education and definitely for political interference in how research grants are awarded.

This is how one Murdoch daily metropolitan and one local Murdoch rag pumped up Hogan's media release:

And this was an NBN News snapshot of part of his Facebook rant:

As usual he is missing the main thrust of the issues outlined in the handbook - which is how to support all students in their learning experience.

The handbook can be found at: 

https://genderinstitute.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/2021_docs/Gender_inclusive_handbook.pdf

*Image of Kevin Hogan found at news.com.au

Pauline Hanson gets a well-deserved "FAIL" from the grammar and punctuation police

@JohnJohnsonson obviously had a lot of fun with his red pen on 4 February 2017 J

Oxford Dictionary of English: "Shouldn't the usage examples in this dictionary reflect that understanding of sexism in language?"

Excerpt from Sexism in the Oxford Dictionary of English by Michael Oman-Reagan at SPACE + ANTHROPOLOGY, 22 January 2016:

The Oxford Dictionary of English is the default dictionary on Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Anyone using a Mac, an iPad, or iPhone will get definitions

from this dictionary. So why is it filled with explicitly sexist usage examples?  Here are those I’ve found so far.

“a rabid feminist”

“the rising shrill of women’s voices”

a mysterious “female psyche”

When it comes to a high degree like a PhD, then the example is a man.

Research? That’s also done by men.

A PhD and research might be men’s work, but women can do “all the housework.”

As the Oxford dictionary says in the usage example for “sexism”:

“sexism in language is an offensive reminder of the way the culture sees women.”

Shouldn’t the usage examples in this dictionary reflect that understanding of sexism in language?

“Dear JUSTICE VICKERY”: When bankruptcy goes all shouty and lands you in the Big Boys' Court

R v Vasiliou [2012] VSC 216 (25 May 2012)

Click on image to enlarge

NSWLC Government Whip Phelps parades his ignorance

Ever since the Hon. Dr. Peter Phelps MLC came to the notice of the Twitterati I have been finding him a hitherto untapped source of amusement.

This is vintage Phelps in Hansard on 2^nd June 2011:

The Hon. Dr Peter Phelps: Point of order: This is now the fourth time Mr David Shoebridge has referred to draconian legislation. He would, or should, be aware that "draconian" is the adjectival form of "dragon". There are no dragons involved in this legislation, and there are no dragons involved in the industrial relations situation of New South Wales. There may well be an argument for dracona-centric global warming, but that is something we will leave for another time. I ask that Mr David Shoebridge cease and desist from bringing the good name of dragons into disrepute by describing this as draconian legislation. [my bolding]

Sounds fair doesn’t it? A doctor of philosophy in history giving 'helpfu'l linguistic advice to a fellow member of the Legislative Council.

However, all is not what it seems. The “adjectival form of dragon” is in fact “draconic” – using a lowercase d.

A quick use of his Blackberry would have displayed the fact that the adjective “Draconian” or “draconian” refers to of, like, or pertaining to Draco or his laws and alternatively harsh, rigorous, severe as any good dictionary will tell you.

Although English is a dynamic language constantly changing over time, it is yet to catch up to Mr. Phelps’ fanciful interpretation – except perhaps in the realm of science fiction.

Best Oz flavoured subtitle of the week

 

Cork me kangaroo’s bot, Scott

from
Wallabies battle cattle farts
The Register
1st July 2011

What language is that?

One thing growing older teaches is that change is inevitable and that the language one grew up amongst is no exception to this change.

I’ve accepted that British, Australian and American spelling is now interchangeable and am amused by new words which spread with the speed of lightening thanks to the Internet.

I wince at changes in emphasis which make certain words clumsy on the lip or almost unrecognisable to an aging ear, but which become verbal favourites of news readers everywhere in spite of the guidance contained within the covers of reputable dictionaries.

I am annoyed by the fact that “un” is frequently replacing the “in” of words such as indefensible, indiscoverable and indiscernible.

However, this is not the end of our ability to murder the mother tongue.

This week’s example of written gymnastics at the expense of the English language is “disencouraged”.

Now one can disentangle, disembowel, disenchant, or even disestablish but one can only “discourage” if the writer wants to express disapproval of or dissuade rather than encourage.

Even Microsoft’s Word spelling check rejects “disencouraged”.

Language foibles

We have some refugees from the floods that have been camping in the local area - a mob of Angus cattle also colloquially known as black polls.

I have been referring to them as Japanese cattle since they move as a herd in one tight group. Even with the hundreds of acres they have available to them, you never see them more than 20 metres apart from one another. They are a tight knit group used to confined spaces.

This leads me to the meaning of the title for this little piece.

City friends who I had not seen for years rang and asked if they could stay for a night to break their journey north, and since their arrival would be at night I gave them all the usual warnings about the road into our farm house. Go slow: the bumps and ditches have been made worse during the rains, don’t be tempted to leave the track since you will get bogged and the new one watch out for - black polls on the road.

On the night of their arrival the wine was chilled, dinner was ready and the visitors arrived more or less on time.

When asked how their trip was their reply amused me; the number of cattle on our track had surprised and slowed them, but they never saw any timber on the road and wondered why I would warn them about ‘black poles’. They thought that the recent floods must have dumped burnt fence posts on the road into our place and were quite at a loss as to why we hadn’t removed the obstacles from the road.

It seems common language is not so common after all.

For all those retired teachers out there.....

....especially those who put their hearts and souls into teaching English as a subject in high school.



The original written review was apparently deleted but could still be seen on Google cache last Monday.

Surely Teh Rabbit didn't say that?

Sue Neales writing in The Mercury on 7 November 2010 :

FEDERAL Coalition leader Tony Abbott has told the Tasmanian branch of the Liberal Party it must woo women, plumbers, blue-collar workers and students if it is ever to regain its political strength.

Woo, Mr. Abbott? Woo?

Why not smooze, flatter, flannel or lead up the garden path? Because if Neales is quoting then you obviously aren’t seeing women, plumbers, blue-collar workers and students as responsible adult voters who have a right to be honestly presented with considered policy and promises at the next federal election.

Australian Federal Election 2010: linguistically it's a bad, bad thing

Finally Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appears to have let go (at least temporarily) of that phrase "great big new tax".

But don't vent a sigh of relief just yet because he's discovered the adjective "bad" under his bed.

BAD bad Bad bad b-a-d BAD bad.............times about one trillion.

There's a very, very bad tax, bad things, bad news, a really bad result, bad bosses, fathers & husbands, a bad lot, a bad plan, a very bad situation, and a just for a change a few adverbs based on degrees of badness.

I'd like to suggest that he throw in the odd "criminal", "corrupt", "depraved", "dangerous", "evil", "rotten", "sinful", "villainous", or wicked" to leaven the loaf, but I'm worried about letting him loose further into the alphabet.

Link to Austalian Indigenous Languages Database

Wilhelm Schmidt map 1912

AUSTLANG provides information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. The core of AUSTLANG is a database which assembles information about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages from a number of sources.

The database contains the following information about each Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language:

• alternative/variant names and spellings
• history of the number of speakers
• geographical distribution
• classifications from various sources
• resources
• documentation
• programs
• researchers

Browser requirements here.

Fair go, Andy!

I pulled my miserable cold-laden head out of a Vicks infusion last Friday long enough to read Google News for Australia and discovered that Andrew Fraser over at The Australian (helped along by that perennial attention seeker, Bernard Salt) was having a go at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for his dated "folksy idiom".
Andrew complains "that only Australians over the age of 70 spoke like that these days".
Leaving aside the fact that 70 is really too high a bar for defining common use of Australian slang, the fact remains that older Australians now make up at least a quarter of the Australian population.
So if Rudders wants to occasionally pitch his song and dance routine to this demographic (which let's face it, is part of Liberal Party heartland) more power to him.
Andrew may not realise it but Baby Boomers like myself do use the odd "folksy idiom" or two and don't feel dated doing so.
As for Bernard Salt. Gawd, the chap thinks we are all channelling Chips Rafferty.
No Bernie - Rafferty was aping a mob just like us!