Lower Arrernte language

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Lower Arrernte
Lower Aranda, Lower Southern Arrernte
Alenjerntarrpe
RegionSouth-Eastern Northern Territory, northern South Australia
Extinct 2011 [1]
Pama–Nyungan
Language codes
ISO 639-3 axl
Glottolog lowe1436
AIATSIS [2] C29
ELP Lower Southern Aranda

Lower Arrernte, also known as Lower Southern Arrernte, Lower Aranda, Lower Southern Aranda and Alenjerntarrpe, was an Arandic language (but not of the Arrernte language group). Lower Arrernte was spoken in the Finke River area, near the Overland Telegraph Line station at Charlotte Waters, just north of the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory, and in the Dalhousie area in S.A. [3] It had been extinct since the last speaker died in 2011, but there is now a language revival project under way.

Contents

Extinction

By 2007 only one person was known to speak it fluently enough to hold a conversation: Brownie Doolan Perrurle (1918–2011), known as Brownie Doolan. Gavan Breen, an Australian linguist, was able to compile a dictionary of Lower Arrernte comprising about a thousand words by recording talks he had with Doolan. [4]

Doolan's mother Fanny, father Paddy [5] and grandmother, who lived south of the small settlement at Finke/Aputula in the Northern Territory, near Mt Dare in South Australia, spoke the language. [4] After a stint as a stockman on the Andado station in the mid-1940s, [5] Doolan became a tracker for both Finke and Kulgera police. Doolan and his wife Biddy are recorded in 1960s censuses of Finke, with Brownie recorded as a tracker, and of the Purula group of Aranda people. [6] When Doolan died in 2011, [7] the language was rendered extinct.

Language revival

As of 2020, Lower Southern Arrernte is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the Department of Communications and the Arts. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages — those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers". [8]

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Pertame, also known as Southern Arrernte or Southern Aranda, is an Arandic language from the country south of Alice Springs, along the Finke River, north and north-west of the location inhabited by speakers of Lower Arrernte. Ethnologue classes Pertame as a variant name for Lower Southern, but other sources vary in their classifications and descriptions of this language.

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Erlikilyika, known to Europeans by the name Jim Kite or Jim Kyte or Jim Kite Penangke, was an Aboriginal Australian sculptor, artist and anthropological interpreter. He was an Arrernte man, born into the Southern Arrernte or Pertame language group in Central Australia. He was the first Central Australian artist to be nationally recognised for his artistic talent, in particular his carvings of animals in soft stone, illustrations and sculptures, after an exhibition of his work was held in Adelaide, South Australia in 1913.

Brownie Doolan Perrurle (1918–2011) was an Aboriginal tracker who was known for being the last person to speak the Lower Arrernte language, the language becoming extinct when he died in 2011. Gavan Breen, an Australian linguist, was able to compile a dictionary of Lower Arrernte comprising about a thousand words by recording talks he had with Doolan.

The massacre of Running Waters was the killing of 80 to 100 Arrernte men, women and children of the Southern Aranda language group of Aboriginal Australians by a raiding party of 50 to 60 Matuntara warriors in 1875. The massacre took place at Irbmangkara, a permanent water stretch of the Finke River about 200 kilometres (120 mi) south-west of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory of Australia.

References

  1. Lower Arrernte at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022) Closed Access logo transparent.svg
  2. C29 Lower Arrernte at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
  3. "C29: Lower Arrernte". Austlang. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
  4. 1 2 Kearney, Simon (20 September 2007). "Another language faces sunset in dead centre". The Australian. Archived from the original on 14 October 2011.NOTE: Incorrect reporting of years of his two occupations, as 1925 and 1940.
  5. 1 2 Mackett, Paul (2009). "Andado Station 1943 - 1969". From:National Archives of Australia, Darwin Office Series NTAC1976/5, Item 1963/465: Andado Station. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  6. Mackett, Paul (2003). "Finke 1963-1968". From:National Archives of Australia, Darwin Office CRS E944/0, Finke Township CA 7112 ATSIC Northern Territory State Office Aboriginal Population Records Census Results for Finke for (1) 22. 8.1963 (2) 20. 3.1965 (3) 14.10.1965 Finke Township (4)6. 6.1966 Finke Township (5) 23. 7.1968 Finke Township. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  7. Parnell, Sean (March 2011). "Brownie Doolan – the end of an era" (PDF). Northern Territory Police News. Boo Design, for NT Police Assocn: 13. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  8. "Priority Languages Support Project". First Languages Australia. Retrieved 13 January 2020.