From speaking Ngiyampaa to speaking English

Abstract

This paper1 is both background and sequel to 'What's in a name?An etymological view of land, language and social identification from central western New South Wales.'2That paper's first part looked at traditional Ngiyampaa social nomenclature, and its second part 'at changes in the ways in which people of Ngiyampaa descent perceive their social world, changes . . .which have taken place alongside their changeover from speaking Ngiyampaa to speaking English'.Here I outline the causes of the changeover and discuss some of its symptoms.Similar transitions have been or are being made all over Australia.It is now likely that less than a quarter of the two hundred odd discrete Australian languages known to have been spoken in the past are still being acquired by children.These children are also learning English, at the very least to the extent that educational policy is implemented.What does the future hold?Which elements in the linguistic history of the people of Ngiyampaa descent are likely to be repeated in communities whose languages are being as universally spoken now as Ngiyampaa was, at least in the southwest of Ngiyampaa territory, for a hundred years or so after the first intrusions of English speakers?3(By 'universally' I mean 'right through', as the usual Aboriginal phrase goes, by all generations.)I shall be concentrating on the twentieth-century linguistic experiences of a group of Ngiyampaa speakers from this southwest corner, from the dry belar and nelia tree country north of Willandra Creek and south of Cobar and Sandy or Crowl Creek -see Map -and on those of their descendants.Members of this group, and their language, are also known as Wangaaypuwan.Their Ngiyampaa is 'wangaay-'having (-puwan means 'having' or 'with').That is, it has the word wangaay where the more northerly variety has the word wayil (both words meaning 'no').Unless otherwise stated 'Ngiyampaa' should be taken from now on as referring to this group or to their Wangaaypuwan variety of the language.One of the features of the more recent history of the Ngiyampaa which has parallels in the history of many other Aboriginal groups is their repeated institutionalisation in a series of government run 'Aboriginal stations'.I have already pointed out in 'What's in a name?' Tamsin Donaldson is a linguist based at the Australian Institute o f Aboriginal Studies. She has written a grammar o f Ngiyampaa as spoken by the Wangaaypuwan people (1980). She has since been working on its lexicon as an aid to historical understanding o f matters ranging from colonial perceptions o f Aborigines to traditions o f song-making. She is compiling a Ngiyampaa dictionary.1 This paper was written while 1 was a Visiting Scholar in the Linguistics Department at the University of Cambridge.I would also like to thank students of the course 'Language in Aboriginal Australia' at the Australian National University for their reactions to some of the material.The paper of course owes its existence to the knowledge and insights of my Ngiyampaa colleagues.