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GRIPES


Phil Perry

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  • 2 weeks later...

GRIPE:

I'm all for acknowledging the territorial and spiritual connection the descendants of the aboriginal people have with this landmass, but I'm getting sick of kowtowing to it. For background noise while I'm working, I have my radio tuned to ABC Classic. Every time they play music composed in Australia, and every time they mention where a caller is from, they name the tribal country of that place.

 

For those of us who don't live in that particular place, the name means nothing, and is often technically incorrect. I grew up on the southern shores of Botany Bay, which is Dharawal country. But Dharawal country extends from Botany Bay to the Shoalhaven. I grew up on the Gweagal clan land. So, What's my spiritual country?

 

The Gweagal have the dubious honour of being the victims of the first recorded shooting of an original inhabitant by Europeans when one of Cook's men fired on a group of men who were trying to tell Cook to bugger off.

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It's PC overkill, people will soon get sick of it. I detest the way everything has to have a new, unpronounceable Aboriginal name. We speak English as a national language, not Pitjantjara.

We've already had an instance where a woman Asian tourist dialled 000 because one of their group had fallen down the rocks at a waterfall, and was badly injured and trapped.

But the woman couldn't tell the 000 operator where she was, because the waterfall had recently been re-named with a long Pitjantjara name, and she couldn't even begin to pronounce it.

The emergency authorities had to then set to, and triangulate her phone position, to try and determine where she was, and this added about another 20 mins delay to the rescue action.

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Maybe us anglo saxons might have to get a bit more tuned in to various foreign languages in a country that is very multi cultural and likely to become more so.. The engine reconditioning place I worked in as a youngster had a progressive view about employing people of east european and Italian ancestry when they were all generally classed as Wogs and Balts. I don't remember any friction there at all... I remained a life long friend of the two bosses there, one who pretended to be my father when a shonky Motorbike sales firm withheld money on a bike they sold for Me on consignment. Nev.

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Tuned in to languages!

My little rant was the fact that Most ' tribes want their own language as the foremost 

Keep your original tongue.  

DW I ddim yn deall !.

I Was going to say ! In the four English tongues "  I don,t understand ". 

BUT

Google  couldn't even translate into Scottish .

AND communicate with that scientific  designed language.

Means to Communicate. 

Down with the English Grammer language 

The English on FB are using a different language now !.

I cannot communicate now.

spacesailor

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3 hours ago, onetrack said:

Yeah, my apologies, I don't speak Pitjantjatjara too well.  :cheezy grin:

I remember years ago having a browse through a university course book on the Pitjantjatjara language. I spotted it on the shelf of the Calgary Library in Alberta, Canada of all places. Have no idea what it was doing there. I remember there wasn't many consonants in their lingo, very vowel heavy.

 

A couple of white blokes I worked with were fluent in one of the Pitjantjatjara dialects. Not surprising as they were born and bred in Oodnadatta and were both married to aboriginal women.

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