Both were native speakers.
Practice shadowing native speakers.
Several thousand people gathered outside Flinders Street railway station at 4pm. "Enough is enough – where is the justice for Aboriginal people?" a speaker shouted to the crowd before the walk through CBD streets, flanked by police.
Find native English speakers.
One Aboriginal group, in particular — speakers of Guugu Yimithirr, a traditional language of Far North Queensland — uses an absolute rather than an egocentric perspective to describe space (in other words, not "Move to your left" but "Move southeast").
He meets Patrick Nudjulu, the lonely speaker of Mati Ke, an Aboriginal language that may never have had more than 1,000 speakers - all it needed to survive - but is now almost extinct.
Several participants raised the importance of including the lived experience of Aboriginal People, which may involve inviting guest speakers into the classroom, conducting sharing circles with Elders and using various media (e.g., film, literature, art).
Mabuiag, spoken in the western Torres Strait Islands, and the Western Desert language have about 8,000 and 4,000 speakers, respectively, and about 50,000 Aboriginals may still have some knowledge of an Australian language.
"Our lives, our Aboriginal lives, are taken behind closed doors," speaker Jesse Corby told the crowd.
Dr. Kenneth Locke Hale, a master of more than 50 languages and the keeper of aboriginal tongues in danger of vanishing with their speakers, died on Oct. 8 at his home in Lexington, Mass.
