We often think that the 'tides of history' have washed away most of the languages in south eastern Australia. But Aboriginal people say those languages are not dead, just sleeping. We hear the stories of three different Aboriginal nations whose languages were declared extinct last
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century. Incredibly, all those languages are gently being brought back to life... and in a great twist, they've been revived using the colonial historical record.
The same colonists who believed they were recording the language of a dying race, or seeking to translate the Bible and thus save souls, are now the main informants for Aboriginal cultural renewal. But language revival requires patience, and the courage to face significant dilemmas. If words are missing, do you make up substitutes? How do you modernise a language that was last spoken in the 1800s? And is this language engineering right or wrong?
This program was first broadcast on Hindsight on 8 March 2009.
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