The Adelaide Language Festival is a language festival that celebrates linguistic diversity and encourages people to learn about the cognitive and cultural advantages of multilingualism. [1] It consists of keynote presentations, musical performances, [2] Welcome to Country by a local Aboriginal Australian, and intensive sessions in dozens of languages.
The Festival was founded in 2014 by Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Professor of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide. It is held at Bonython Hall, University of Adelaide. [3]
Each Adelaide Language Festival attracts approximately 500 people. [4]
The Adelaide Language Festival is known for its representation of revived, engineered, endangered and other Less Commonly Taught Languages. It has included intensive sessions of more than 40 languages: [5] [6] [7] [8]
Each language session, a.k.a. "crash course", [11] provides the audience with the following: [12]
Keynote speakers have included Roland Sussex (Winning the LOTEry. Why Learning Languages Gives You a Healthier Mind in a Healthier Body, and Makes You Popular, Attractive and Successful), [13] Lynn Arnold (The Virus of Language), [14] Ghil'ad Zuckermann (Should We Reclaim Killed Languages?), Christopher Pyne (then Federal Minister for Education) [15] [16] and Jeffrey Shandler (Wanted Dead or Alive: Yiddish after WW2). [17]
An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead language". If no one can speak the language at all, it becomes an "extinct language". A dead language may still be studied through recordings or writings, but it is still dead or extinct unless there are fluent speakers. Although languages have always become extinct throughout human history, they are currently dying at an accelerated rate because of globalization, mass migration, cultural replacement, imperialism, neocolonialism and linguicide.
An extinct language is a language that no longer has any first-language or second-language speakers, especially if the language also has no living descendants. In contrast, a dead language is a language that no longer has any first-language speakers, but does have second-language speakers, such as Latin. A dormant language is a dead language that still serves as a symbol of ethnic identity to an ethnic group; these languages are often undergoing a process of revitalisation. Languages that have first-language speakers are known as modern or living languages to contrast them with dead languages, especially in educational contexts.
The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 up to possibly 363. The Indigenous languages of Australia comprise numerous language families and isolates, perhaps as many as 13, spoken by the Indigenous peoples of mainland Australia and a few nearby islands. The relationships between the language families are not clear at present although there are proposals to link some into larger groupings. Despite this uncertainty, the Indigenous Australian languages are collectively covered by the technical term "Australian languages", or the "Australian family".
Language policy is both an interdisciplinary academic field and implementation of ideas about language use. Some scholars such as Joshua Fishman and Ofelia García consider it as part of sociolinguistics. On the other hand, other scholars such as Bernard Spolsky, Robert B. Kaplan and Joseph Lo Bianco argue that language policy is a branch of applied linguistics.
Modern Hebrew, also called Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. Developed as part of Hebrew's revival in the late 19th century and early 20th century, it is the official language of the State of Israel, and the world's only Canaanite language in use. Coinciding with the creation of the state of Israel, where it is the national language, Modern Hebrew is the only successful instance of a complete language revival.
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival and language revitalization. There has only been one successful instance of a complete language revival, the Hebrew language, creating a new generation of native speakers without any pre-existing native speakers as a model.
Jewish languages are the various languages and dialects that developed in Jewish communities in the diaspora. The original Jewish language is Hebrew, supplanted as the primary vernacular by Aramaic following the Babylonian exile. Jewish languages feature a syncretism of Hebrew and Judeo-Aramaic with the languages of the local non-Jewish population.
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct language. A related term is linguicide, the death of a language from natural or political causes, and, rarely, glottophagy, the absorption or replacement of a minor language by a major language.
An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by its indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages are not necessarily national languages but they can be; for example, Aymara is both an indigenous language and an official language of Bolivia. Also, national languages are not necessarily indigenous to the country.
Ngarrindjeri, also written Narrinyeri, Ngarinyeri and other variants, is the language of the Ngarrindjeri and related peoples of southern South Australia. Five dialects have been distinguished by a 2002 study: Warki, Tanganekald, Ramindjeri, Portaulun and Yaraldi.
The revival of the Hebrew language took place in Europe and Palestine toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from purely the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel. The process began as Jews from diverse regions started arriving and establishing themselves alongside the pre-existing Jewish community in the region of Palestine in the first half of the twentieth century. Arabic-speaking Jews in Palestine and the linguistically diverse newly arrived Jews switched to Hebrew as a lingua franca, the historical linguistic common denominator of all the Jewish groups. At the same time, a parallel development in Europe changed Hebrew from primarily a sacred liturgical language into a literary language, which played a key role in the development of nationalist educational programs. Modern Hebrew was one of three official languages of Mandatory Palestine, and after the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, one of two official languages of Israel, along with Modern Arabic. In July 2018, a new law made Hebrew the sole official language of the state of Israel, giving Arabic a "special status".
The Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla and also known as Pangkala, are an Indigenous people of South Australia and the traditional owners of much of Eyre Peninsula. Their language, Barngarla is a Yura language and part of a revival effort by the University of Adelaide.
A language festival is a cultural and educational event held by Esperanto and other organizations in different countries around the world. The purpose of language festivals is to teach and provide information about the world's languages to people interested in languages and cultures, and to show the wealth and diversity of language. Language festivals also aim at demonstrating that all languages in the world are equally important and valuable, and that there should be no "major" and "minor" languages, which are ideas broadly promoted by Esperanto-speakers.
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity.
Barngarla, formerly known as Parnkalla, is an Aboriginal language of Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. It was formerly extinct, but has undergone a process of revival since 2012.
Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew is a scholarly book written in the English language by linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, published in 2003 by Palgrave Macmillan. The book proposes a socio-philological framework for the analysis of "camouflaged borrowing" such as phono-semantic matching. It introduces for the first time a classification for "multisourced neologisms", new words that are based on two or more sources at the same time.
Clamor Wilhelm Schürmann was a Lutheran missionary who emigrated to Australia and did fundamental pioneering work, together with his colleague Christian Gottlieb Teichelmann, on recording some Australian languages in South Australia.
Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond is a scholarly book written by linguist and revivalist Ghil'ad Zuckermann. It was published in 2020 by Oxford University Press. The book introduces revivalistics, a trans-disciplinary field of enquiry exploring "the dynamics and problematics inherent in spoken language reclamation, revitalization, and reinvigoration".
Native tongue title is a revivalistic term that refers to compensation for linguicide. Native tongue title is the enactment of a statute-based, ex gratia financial compensation scheme, to cover efforts to resuscitate a heritage tongue that was killed, or to empower an endangered one.