No, you are not "reviving" a language

or even "saving" a "dormant" one. 

I was told yesterday that a good reason to vote "yes" in the upcoming referendum was "because it will save Aboriginal languages". The person telling me this went on, with great enthusiasm, to tell me how they are "reviving Aboriginal languages and saving dormant ones".

Really? 

I know something about languages and I venture to suggest that this is not how it works. This is in fact something I have known for many years, long before I knew much about languages themselves. My last high school history teacher told us something about this. 

My last year at school was spent at a Lutheran boarding school. It just happened to be the boarding school with a vacancy and I needed to do my final year away from home. I was very unhappy there for a number of reasons but I had an outstandingly good English teacher and another very good history teacher.  

It was the history teacher who told us something about "aboriginal languages". Up to that point the students had been told how much the early Lutheran pastors had done in their attempts to teach the "natives" about Christianity. The students had been told about efforts to "translate the Bible" and teach people in their first languages. 

"You think that's a good thing don't you?" our history teacher asked. There were dutiful nods around the class before he went on, "Well I am going to shock you. What those pastors were told they often got wrong and sometimes they were deliberately told the wrong thing. They were thinking like people who spoke German or English. They were asking the men, not the women. Sometimes the men did not want them to know so they were deliberately telling them something else."

I remember that very, very clearly. I can still see that man standing in front of the class and telling us this. I remember the shocked silence and then one of the boys saying, "That can't be right sir. They wouldn't do that."

Wouldn't they? 

Some of those students came from places on the far west coast of the state. I had lived in one of those places for two years. I remembered even then that we were given different meanings for some of the names we came across. The old Aboriginal man who lived alone not far from the school would shake his head when we asked him for the meanings of some of the names. He spoke an Aboriginal language. I heard him talking to groups who passed through from time to time. He told us we couldn't know because we were not Aboriginal. 

If I sat down to talk to him now I am sure he would tell me that the pastors who went out so determined to spread Christianity had often been misinformed. The pastors were not there to "preserve" a language. They were there to proselytise and using Aboriginal languages were part of the process. 

And, as I have said elsewhere, languages are living things. They have to change and adapt in order to survive the surroundings in which they are found. The idea that we have somehow "revived" the "local indigenous language" is nonsense. We know it was "Kaurna" and there are some words which have survived. Some people claim to be able to speak it but, while they may be speaking something, they are not speaking a language which would have any meaning for the people who were here at white settlement. That language simply does not exist. It cannot be "revived". Even if it could be revived it would not be suitable for use in 2023. It was not a "primitive" language, just a language which was right for the people who used it.  

Still there are people, like the pastors at Lutheran school I attended, who insist that they know about these languages and that they can somehow revive them if they are gone or wake them if they are dormant. They may find out much about them but they can do neither.  It just isn't possible. All we can do is retain a version of a few people do use on an every day basis. We also need to recognise that we may only retain them at the expense of those who use them. If they wish to participate fully in the current or future world then they will need to know English. 

I wish we could revive those languages, that they could survive. We lose so much when they go but please don't tell me that voting "yes" in the upcoming referendum will save those languages. It won't.