Published Oct 21 2022

‘What Happens Next?’: What Do We Lose When Languages Die?

Susan
Carland
Academic, author and social commentator
John bradley
Associate Professor, Monash Indigenous Studies Centre
Inala cooper
Director, Murrup Barak, University of Melbourne
Alice gaby
Associate Professor, Linguistics

When we travel through Europe, we expect to experience a wide array of culture and customs – in each country, different foods, different views, and different languages. That’s not the expectation visitors to Australia have, but perhaps they should.

Before British colonisation, this land was home to nearly 300 Indigenous languages – each as distinct from each other as German is to French, and Finnish to Irish.

Read: Saving language: The power of ancient Indigenous oral traditions

But frontier violence, years of harmful policies, and entrenched, systemic racism against the Traditional Owners of the land stamped many of those languages out entirely, and those remaining have struggled to survive, spoken in secret or kept alive only in the memories of Elders. Today, just 10 Indigenous Australian languages are considered strong.

In a new episode of Monash University’s podcast, What Happens Next?, linguists and Indigenous human rights advocates discuss how we lost these languages, what it means when a language is sleeping, and the lengths communities are going to to wake them up again.

Host Dr Susan Carland is joined this week by Associate Professor John Bradley, Acting Deputy Director of Monash University’s Indigenous Studies Centre; Associate Professor Alice Gaby, Deputy Chair of the Board of Living Languages; and Monash alumna Inala Cooper, Director of Murrup Barak, the Melbourne Institute for Indigenous Development at the University of Melbourne.

“When you see children punished for speaking their language, when you meet Stolen Generation people who are punished for not speaking their language…, you just go, ‘Who's actually creating this story about language death?’ This is structural racism for me… Racism is never far away from this conversation.”

Associate Professor John Bradley

What Happens Next? will be back next week with part two of this series, “Can We Save Endangered Languages?”.

If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and rate or review What Happens Next? to help listeners like yourself discover it.

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About the Authors

  • Susan carland

    Director, Bachelor of Global Studies, and Lecturer, School of Language, Literature, Cultures and Linguistics

    Susan's research and teaching specialties focus on gender, sociology, contemporary Australia, terrorism, and Islam in the modern world. Susan hosted the “Assumptions” series on ABC’s Radio National, and was named one of the 20 Most Influential Australian Female Voices in 2012 by The Age.

  • John bradley

    Associate Professor, Monash Indigenous Studies Centre

    Associate Professor John Bradley is deputy director of the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre. He originally trained as a primary and high school teacher, and his subsequent PhD research concentrated on Indigenous ways of understanding dugong and marine turtles. For over three decades he's been actively involved in issues associated with Indigenous natural and cultural resource management. John has worked alongside Indigenous communities in the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria, in the Northern Territory, for more than 30 years. In that time he's developed a close bond with the local Yanyuwa people, and is now among a tiny minority of people who speak Yanyuwa fluently.

  • Inala cooper

  • Alice gaby

    Associate Professor, Linguistics

    Dr Alice Gaby is an Associate Professor in Linguistics at Monash. Her research explores semantic and structural typology; the relationship between language, culture and cognition; and the documentation and analysis of endangered languages, especially those of the Australian continent. Among other positions, Alice is Director of Monash’s Graduate Research Program in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Vice-President of the Australian Linguistics Society and Deputy Chair of the Board of Living Languages, which provides grassroots training to people and communities doing language work in Australia. Much of her research focuses on the languages spoken in and around the community of Pormpuraaw (Cape York Peninsula, Australia), in collaboration with speakers of Paman languages. For Alice, their knowledge has underscored the importance of language documentation, especially in contexts of language obsolescence. Alice’s PhD research focused on writing a grammar for the Indigenous Australian language of Kuuk Thaayorre, spoken by around 200 people from Pormpuraaw.

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