Refugee Health Translation Grant

Congratulations to Emily Davis and Katrina Rohr from the Bathurst Community Health Centre who were awarded a Refugee Health Translation Grant to have two of our handouts from the Waiting for Speech Pathology website translated into:

• Arabic
• Burmese
• Dari
• Farsi
• Nepali
  
• Swahili
• Tamil
  

Learning about books and print (Burmese)

https://wnswlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/our-services/speech-pathology/childrens-literacy

Visiting a speech pathologist: What to expect? (Dari)

https://wnswlhd.health.nsw.gov.au/our-services/speech-pathology/more-information

Top 5 languages spoken in Australia

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released the 2016 census data today. For the first time, Vietnamese is one of the top 5 languages spoken in Australia (Ben will be pleased). The top 5 languages are: Mandarin (2.5%), Arabic (1.4%), Italian (1.2%), Cantonese (1.2%), and Vietnamese (1.2%). Greek is no longer in the top 5. The number of people who only spoke English at home has decreased to 72.7%. Here is my summary

Census QuickStats are here: http://www.abs.gov.au/websitedbs/censushome.nsf/home/quickstats

Early Learning Languages Australia

The Australian Government Department of Education and Training have created apps for preschool children to learn languages and details are found here: https://www.ella.edu.au
Currently the ELLA program is available in 8 languages: Arabic, Chinese (Mandarin), French, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese or Spanish.
In 2018 two more languages will be added: Hindi and Modern Greek
More information is available here
The evaluation report is here

About World Languages website

In a recent Speech Pathology Australia evidence alert the About World Languages website was profiled: http://aboutworldlanguages.com/languages-a-z
It includes details about the phonology, morphology and syntax of over 100 languages.

Mi'kmaq First Nations Heritage Centre

Helen Blake and I were privileged to visit the Millbrook Heritage Centre of the Mi'kmaq (Micmac) people during our visit to Nova Scotia, Canada. We learned that the seven teachings of the Mi'kmaq are: courage, respect, truth, love, humility, wisdom, and honesty. We learned about the legend of Glooscap (see below) and about the traditional and modern lives of the Mi'kmaq people. We also learned about their language, including that the Mi'kmaq alphabet has 11 consonants, 6 short vowels and 5 long vowels (see below).

A statue of Glooscap (note his size - I am on the left)

A multilingual world

Over the past month I have visited Stockholm (Sweden), Reykjavik (Iceland), Helsinki (Finland), and stopped over in Dubai (United Arab Emirates) and Singapore. I am constantly amazed by the multilingual dexterity of the people I interact with in each country. The people I have talked with have switched to converse with me in English as soon as I have opened my mouth (and sometimes before I do). In contrast, I have only learned a few simple words:

• Swedish: hej (hello), tack (thank you)
• Icelandic: halló (hello), takk (thank you), Þetta reddast (she'll be right mate)
• Finnish: hei (hello), kiitos (thank you)

A sign in downtown Reykjavik

 Code switching is such a regular part of life for the Nordic countries. Children learn other Nordic languages in school, as well as English. For example, children in Iceland learn Danish and English. Children in Finland learn Swedish and English. Russian is also seen in the streets of Finland.

Herkullissia marjoja (the delicious berries) of Suomi (Finland)

It is said that one of the reasons these Nordic languages have survived and remained distinct was due to the translation of the Bible. For example, in Iceland, the New Testament was translated in 1540 and the entire Bible in 1584. The first Finnish translation was in 1548. I also learned about the importance of the translation of the Bible for the Irish people when I saw the Book of Kells earlier this year.

Helsingin tuomiokirkko, Suurkirkko in Helsinki

The Jamaican Language Unit (Di Jamiekan Langwij Yuunit)

Dr Karla Washington, Professor Hubert Devonish,
and Sharynne holding the Jamaican New Testament and How to Write Jamaican

Today Dr Karla Washington (University of Cincinnati) and I visited Di Jamiekan Langwij Yuunit (The Jamaican Language Unit). The Unit was established in 2002 by the Jamaican government to recognize and support the use of the Jamaican language.

Professor Hubert Devonish is the head of the Unit, and is a distinguished linguist and scholar in the area of Caribbean languages. His most recent project has been to provide advice for the translation of the New Testament (Bible) into Jamaican. He also has written "Writing Jamaican the Jamaican Way/Ou fi Rait Jamiekan". The book uses the Cassidy-JLU writing system that is based on a phonetic realisation of spoken Jamiekan. The Jamiekan alphabet contains the following letters and letter combinations: a, aa, ai, b, ch, d, e, f, g, hn, I, ie, ii, j, k, l, m, n, ng, o, ou, p, r, s, sh, t, u, uo, uu, v, w, y, z, zh.

Professor Devonish provided us with valuable advice about the various phonetic and phonemic transcriptions of words pronounced by Jamaican adults. We will use these as the range of possible adult targets for our research with the Jamaican children next week.

Jamiekan

Jamiekan, also known as Jamaican Creole, Patwa (or Patois) is spoken by many Jamaicans. Jamaicans are said to be diglossic, that is, they speak both Jamiekan and English along a continuum, depending on the communicative and social situation. Jamiekan contains words from English, West African, and French languages (Cassidy, 1966). In 2001, the Parliament of Jamaica created a Charter of Rights that included protection from discrimination on the basis of language use and recommended recognition of two co-existing language varieties in Jamaica. The Jamaican Language Unit (Di Jamiekan Langwij Yuunit) took effect in September 2002 as a language planning agency to foster the use of Jamiekan.

Jamiekan phonology consists of 33 different phonemes, comprising 21 consonants and 12 vowels (five short vowels, three long vowels, and four diphthongs) (Devonish & Harry, 2004; Harry, 2006). Phonological rules common to Jamiekan include: /h/ deletion or insertion, palatalization of plosives, obstruent neutralization, obstruent weakening, and labialization (Harry, 2006).

Information based on:

Washington, K. N. (2012). Translation to practice: Typical bidialectal speech acquisition in Jamaica. In S. McLeod & B. A. Goldstein (Eds.), Multilingual aspects of speech sound disorders in children (pp. 101-105). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

References:

Cassidy, F. G. (1966). Multiple etymologies in Jamaican creole. American Speech, 41(3), 211-215. 
Devonish, H., & Harry, O. G. (2004). Jamaican phonology. In B. Kortman, & E. W. Shneider, (Eds.). A handbook of varieties of English, vol 1: Phonology, (pp. 441-471). Berlin: Moton De Gruyter. 
Harry, O. G. (2006). Jamaican creole. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 36(1), 125-131.

Intelligibility in Context Scale in 24 languages (with more on the way)

Over the past year I have been working with colleagues around the world to translate the Intelligibility in Context Scale (ICS) into a range of languages.

The Intelligibility in Context Scale is a quick parent report measure of children’s intelligibility. The 7-item questionnaire rates the degree to which children’s speech is understood by different communication partners (parents, immediate family, extended family, friends, acquaintances, teachers, and strangers) on a 5-point scale. It has been developed to provide speech-language pathologists with information about children’s intelligibility (e.g., children with speech sound disorders, childhood apraxia of speech).
Information about the creation and English validation of the Intelligibility in Context Scale can be found at http://jslhr.asha.org/cgi/content/abstract/55/2/648 . 

Next month, the versions in 24+ languages will be available at www.csu.edu.au/research/multilingual-speech/ics. The languages of the ICS so far are:

1. Arabic (Standard) (ﺍﻠﻌﺮﺒﯿﱠﺔ)
2. Bulgarian (Български)
3. Chinese (Simplified) (简体中文)
4. Chinese (Traditional) (繁體中文)
5. Croatian (hrvatski)
6. English
7. Finnish (suomi)
8. French (Français)
9. German (Deutsch)
10. Greek (Standard Modern Greek) (Πρότυπο Νέας Ελληνικής)
11. Israeli Hebrew (עברית)
12. Hungarian (Magyar)
13. Icelandic (Íslenskur)
14. Japanese (日本語)
15. Malay (Melayu)
16. Maltese (Malti)
17. Portuguese (Português)
18. Romanian (român)
19. Russian (русский)
20. Slovenian (slovenščina)
21. Spanish (Español)
22. Swedish (Svenska)
23. Turkish (Türkçe)
24. Vietnamese (Việt)
    McLeod, S., Harrison, L. J., & McCormack, J. (2012). The Intelligibility in Context Scale: Validity and reliability of a subjective rating measure. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 55(2), 648-656. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2011/10-0130)

Wiradjuri: An extinct or endangered language?

To my surprise, when I looked into the Ethnologue, I found that my local Australian Aboriginal language - Wiradjuri - was listed as extinct.

I then looked at the following website that is dedicated to Endangered Languages
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
It is described as "the world through 3054 lenses: an online collaborative effort to protect global linguistic diversity". I noticed that Wiradjuri is listed as "critically endangered, with 3 native speakers worldwide in 1981." They provide a document defining endangerment and extinction.

I am not sure that Wiradjuri is extinct or critically endangered:

In 2009 I learned Wiradjuri for a year and received a Certificate 1 in Wiradjuri from the NSW Technical and Further Education Commission of Australia. During this course I met and learned from Wiradjuri speakers.

Last week, I asked the authors of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children if they knew of children on their project that spoke Wiradjuri. They said that there were.

UPDATE 20th August 2012

Laura Bennetts-Kneebone, the linguist on LSIC has just told me about AUSTLANG: The Australian Indigenous Languages Database. It shows that in the 2006 Australian census there were reported to be 102 speakers of Wiradjuri.

I look forward to working further to find out more about the actual status of Wiradjuri

Australia's changing linguistic landscape revealed in census data

Sarah Verdon (my PhD student) has been comparing the 2006 and 2011 Australian census figures for the languages spoken by Australian people:

"In the 2006 census, 21.5% of the population indicated that English was not the primary language spoken at home. The main other languages used, in order, were Italian (1.6%), Greek (1.3%), Arabic (1.2%), Cantonese (1.2%), Mandarin (1.1%) (Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2008).

In the 2011 census, 23.2% of the population indicated that English was not the primary language spoken at home. This was an increase from 21.5% at the 2006 census. The main other languages used, in order, were Mandarin (1.6%),  Italian (1.4%), Arabic (1.3%) Cantonese (1.2%), and Greek (1.2%) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012)."

Census year	2006	2011
English was not the primary language spoken at home	21.5%	23.2%
Main other language
Italian	1.6%	1.4%
Greek	1.3%	1.2%
Arabic	1.2%	1.3%
Cantonese	1.2%	1.2%
Mandarin	1.1%	1.6%