6 years ago

Revitalising the Aboriginal language Gathang is about learning and speaking it together every day

The Aboriginal language Gathang largely disappeared when its last fluent speaker died in the 1960s, and now the task of revitalising it has begun. "Initially when I started learning my language it brought up a lot of trauma for me because historically we weren't allowed to speak our language," Ms Radley said. "The Gathang language, to me, is like connecting back to the land, my ancestors, my people, my mob." Gathang is now available as a TAFE course, and from there Ms Radley said there were efforts to get Gathang onto local town signage and, ideally, see greetings commonly used in everyday language. The Gathang language has a large footprint — from the Birrbay, Warrimay and Guringay nations — and in those nations are people who are passionate, like Ms Radley, about revitalising the language.

ABC
Language Words Learning Radley Gathang Ms Radley Guringay Warrimay Ngarrgan Mirriiyn Birpai Birrbay

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