An Australian town has come up with a radical solution to revive the local Aboriginal language \u2013 and has had some amazing results.<\/p>\n
The Wiradjuri language is learned by about 10% of the population every week in Parkes, a town in New South Wales. It\u2019s taught in all primary schools as well as high school and TAFE colleges. Learning the language has taught much more than words \u2013 it\u2019s given people a purpose, sense of culture and connection to their community. <\/p>\n
Ron Wardrop was quiet for a while when I asked him why language mattered to him. “We need to keep the languages strong,” he said. “Like a river, the water tells a story, it just keeps flowing on and on, like generations of people telling stories. If that river dries up, then that knowledge and that flow of language and culture – which gives people a strong sense of connection to self and country – is going to die away. And that would be a sad thing.” Ron understands all too well what’s at stake when language and culture is lost. “If the kids don’t feel they have a sense of belonging, self, Aboriginality, then they feel they don’t have anything. And that’s exactly how I felt when I was a kid.” (Source: ABC<\/a>)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This story just goes to show that there\u2019s more to languages than words \u2013 they can have a much wider benefit. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An Australian town has come up with a radical solution to revive the local Aboriginal language \u2013 and has had some amazing results. The Wiradjuri language is learned by about 10% of the population every week in Parkes, a town in New South Wales. It\u2019s taught in all primary schools as well as high school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,15,99],"tags":[842,359,123,25],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-education","category-indigenous-languages","tag-aboriginal-languages","tag-endangered-languages","tag-language-learning","tag-languages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1529,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.language-museum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}