The global effects of unprecedented indigenous language loss will be discussed in two public lectures at the Western Australian Museum – Geraldton on November 21 and 22.

Presented by Bundiyarra – Irra Wangga Language Program linguist James Bednall, the lectures will explain the contributing issues and detrimental effects language extinction has on individuals, communities and humanity as a whole.

“We are currently in the midst of a language extinction crisis - over fifty per cent of the world’s languages are predicted to die out by the end of this century,” Mr Bednall said.

“There are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world, representing the greatest collection of human knowledge ever assembled, but they are disappearing at an unprecedented rate under various pressures of globalization.

“This stands to be a catastrophic loss to not only the individuals and communities who speak these threatened languages, but to all of us as generations of cultural and historical wisdom erode and disappear.”

Locally, the decline of Aboriginal Australian languages has been evident since the time of European colonization, when, for almost 200 years, Australian government policy supported a monolingual, monocultural Australia.

“The combination of previous negative attitudes towards Indigenous languages coupled with the geographical dislocation of parents and children led to a break in the normal generational transmission of many Aboriginal languages,” Mr Bednall said.

While attempts to document these languages have been made over the past 50 years, the majority of Australian Aboriginal languages have not been recorded sufficiently.

“Australian Aboriginal languages, like most Indigenous languages worldwide, are traditionally oral languages - without proper documentation, when the last Elders of these critically endangered languages pass away, they take with them generations of cultural and linguistic knowledge,” Mr Bednall said.

“Opportunities to showcase the importance of these languages, such as the On Badimaya Country exhibition, are a necessary undertaking in educating the wider community of the cultural significance and rich history of these vital languages.”

The free lectures will take place at the Western Australian Museum – Geraldton on Thursday 21 November at 7pm and Friday 22 November at 10am. For bookings, phone 9921 5080.

Media contact:
Niki Comparti
Western Australian Museum
6552 7805
Niki.comparti@museum.wa.gov.au