Archive to preserve multitude of Indigenous languages
Indigenous languages will be gathered from across Australia for an archive project aimed at preserving them and their hundreds of dialects.
The University of Queensland and Australian Research Data Commons will develop the archive, also intended to help people better understand the myriad of native tongues and explore their heritage, culture and history.
Australia was one of the world’s most diverse continents linguistically, project director Michael Haugh said.
“More than a quarter of the world’s languages are spoken in Australia and its region, including many hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and dialects,” he said.
There are more than 250 Indigenous languages, including 800 dialects, in Australia with each language geographically particular to place and people.
Many different languages are spoken in areas such as Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, over a small area.
In larger places like the Western Desert, dialects of one language are spoken.
More than 250 Indigenous languages were spoken on the continent in 1788, but that dropped to 120 languages in 2016.
Some 90 per cent of Indigenous languages were considered endangered as of five years ago.
The digital archive being built at Brisbane’s UQ would centralise the languages scattered around the country, Professor Haugh said.
“There are significant collections of materials on Indigenous languages and regional languages of the Pacific, as well as of Australian English, Auslan and other community languages,” he said.”But they’re all over the country in different libraries, archives, research data repositories – and in some cases, literally in a box under the bed.”The digital archival repository … marks the first large-scale effort to consolidate these materials at a single source and make them more accessible to the communities reflected in them.”
The archive will help share First Nations languages and represent the respective communities’ rights and interests, program manager Robert McLellan said.
It would also offer researchers access Australia’s rich language data.
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