Barngarla language's 'sleeping beauty' of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula people being awakened by two books
Barngarla Port Lincoln woman Jenna Richards worked with professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann (bottom right) on Barngarlidhi Manoo, building on the dictionary of words collected in 1844 by German Lutheran pastor Clamor Schumann (top right).
Main image by Jodie Hamilton, courtesy ABC News, Eyre Peninsula
The Barngarla language, described by Adelaide University linguistic and endangered languages professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann, as a "sleeping, dreaming beauty" had two resource books added ito its reawakening around 2021.
After Barngarlidhi Manoo (speaking Barngarla together), a Barngarla alphabet and picture book introduction to the language, Mangiri Yarda (healthy country) was the second book developed by Zuckermann with the Barngarla people of Port Lincoln (Galinyala), Port Augusta (Goordnada) and Whyalla (Waiala) on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula.
Before these Barngarla language books, the most authoritative source on the language was a dictionary of 3,500 words and means compiled by German Lutheran pastor Clamor Schumann at North Shields on Eyre Peninsula in 1844. The last person to speak Barngarla fluently died in the 1960s, with children punished for using it after European settlement.
Zuckerman started work on reclaiming the Barngala language in 2011 after he was approached by elders. He worked with Jenna Richards of the Barngarla Language Advisory Committee (BLAC) on Barngarlidhi Manoo. The book was backed by the Indigenous languages and arts section of the Australian government’s communications and the arts department, the Yitpi Foundation, the National Health and Medical Research Council, Peter Naessan and the Wardliparingga unit at the South Australian Medical Health Research Institute, Adelaide.
Another Port Lincoln Barngarla woman Emma Richards coauthored Mangiri Yarda with Zuckermann. While the first book was a more straightforward list of words and meanings, Mangiri Yarda focused more on usage and context, she told ABC News.
Zuckman added that in Mangiri Yarda "we include, for example, numerous foods that Barngarla people used to eat. We talk about fish traps, about the fact that Barngarla people used to sing to dolphins and to sharks so the sharks and the dolphins chased the fish towards the fish trap”.
Zuckerman and Emma Richards pointed to complexity of the Barngarla language: "In Barngarla, if I see one emu I say 'wárraidya'. But if I see two emus, I say 'Wárraidyalbili'. If I see three emus, I say 'Wárraidyarri', and if I see many emus, I say 'Wárraidyailyarranha'. So we have singular, dual, plural and super plural, whereas in English we only have singular and plural”. Zuckerman added: “This is beautiful, this is aesthetically pleasing."
