Ngay le patha (“I am happy here”)

Wanyjalpa (Hello),

Before going further I want to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners on which I am currently studying: the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong/Boon Wurrung peoples. Additionally, I want to pay my respects to the Elders both past and present of these mobs and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who have made a contribution to the life of the University community.

Taking Language in Aboriginal studies has not only been rewarding in learning about the past and present culture of Australia, but has also contributed to my understanding of communication and development between all humans. As mentioned in a previous blog post, we tend to think of older cultures as being less developed or complicated than the ones now. However, this is far from the truth, especially in grammatical structure. While following rules

In this class we have focused on the relationship between land and language. For the indigenous people the language determines geographic divisions and borders. The language is so rooted in the land that the two can almost be referred interchangeably.  When indigenous people step onto each other’s land they change the language in which they speak as a sign of respect. This makes each indigenous individual have to learn multiple different dialects even when talking to neighboring mobs. While one might initially assume that neighboring languages would be very similar in nature, this is not usually the case. Neighboring languages can be as different as porteguese is from English.

This class has gotten me thinking about how this information can apply to indigenous cultures and languages in the United States? How are their traditional natures both similar and different? How are their more modern aspects different and similar to present day United State’s Indigenous clans?

I feel like more often than not we over look how cool it is that humans have such a complex way of communicating with one another. We seem to dismiss the complexity of our language and our culture. My interest in language has not only peaked due to the course in Indigenous studies but also in my course of developmental psychology. Even though very young infants can hear all phonetic contrasts, by around 21 mnths of age they can only hear those that are in their native tongues. This means that we actually lose our ability to decipher words from other languages so we can concentrate on the words that are particularly relevant to use. So, over the course of learning we are are to some degree unlearning  by enabling our ability to hear phonemes in other languages. I found this static to be incredibly interesting.  As humans, we tend to over simplify things or to over look things that make us think too hard, but we should not shy away from these complexity but embrace them. We should embrace the complexity in our language, culture, and abilities as a humans