Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
Reconciliation and Social Justice Library
This inquiry was undertaken because of widespread concern over language loss amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) people. Before European settlement of Australia there were approximately 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages. These were quite distinct languages which between them included about 600 dialects.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages have been poorly understood by non-Aboriginal people over the last 200 years and a number of misconceptions about them persist. In keeping with early colonial attitudes Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander languages were regarded as primitive and action was taken to eradicate them.
Contrary to popular misconceptions these languages had complex grammars, rich vocabularies and subtle ways of describing the world around them - a world in which they had lived for tens of thousands of years. Most indigenous language speakers at the time were multilingual.
These languages are also a means of group identification and contain embedded within them much of the culture, social values and world view of the language group. Each language probably had a vocabulary of at least 10,000 words, which is about the size of the receptive vocabulary of the average citizen in any country today.
Only about one tenth of the original languages survive today in a relatively healthy state. About a third of the original languages continue to be spoken but are under considerable threat, often being spoken by only a handful of elderly speakers.
Much of the language loss that has occurred is irretrievable. However, language maintenance activities can do much to maintain strong language and assist weakened languages. As it is not possible to revive dead languages it is necessary to assist languages before they reach a severely threatened state. The committee acknowledges that many severely weakened languages do not have good prospects for survival as a comprehensive living language.
The importance of a language to its speakers and descendants is much more significant than the linguistic aspects alone. Language goes to the very core of a person's identity and this inquiry has sought to cover the wider language needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including those whose language has been partially lost.