Di Appleby welcoming us to Broome at the opening night of Corrugated Lines: A festival of words

We had a wonderful time attending events at the Corrugated Lines festival and are very happy to have been invited to attend. Thank you!

Thanks to the Yawuru language centre folks for the photo!

From heading along to the Yawuru language centre and hearing a story about the creation of the Milky Way, seeing bush medicine from around Broome and learning greetings in Yawuru, to strolling around the Courthouse Markets chatting with locals about linguistics, to having a heartfelt Bad Love Poem written by Miss Print, we had an excellent time.

We’d love to learn more about Broome English, so get in contact if you can tell us anything!

Our visit with the Year 8s at Broome Senior was action packed! We continued to learn more Yawuru from the students, and we got talking about some of the other things people say around Broome. It seems “fountains” were the popular place to grab a drink at school. And despite some uncertainty about what a battered, deep-fried potato snack was, we did discover a “Potato Scallop” at a local fish and chip shop…

…or is that a potato fritter?

We enjoyed hearing your questions – feel free to ask us more! Thanks for having us, Broome Senior.

We had a great afternoon on Friday with the Year 9s at St Mary’s College, who got their tongues wagging along to some MRI clips of some sounds used in English, and beatboxing! It was great to hear about the languages people speak, too. Thanks for having us, St Marys!

Last week the Linguistics Roadshow flew up and over to Broome, Western Australia, taking with us a bunch of dazzling facts about language and some of the exciting things we get up to as linguists to share with the Broome locals.

Thanks to Maya for sending us this nice photo!

Our first stop was Mabu Yawuru Ngan-ga, the Yawuru language centre in Broome, where we chatted with Maya, Mick, Coco and Clare about the incredible work they’ve been doing, and their exciting plans for the future. Uncle Mick also gave us an introduction to the verbal morphology of Yawuru!

It was really great to hear how they are being flooded with requests to run Yawuru language classes at the schools in Broome, spurring them to develop an immersion language program to train more language teachers.

Here’s a news story from Behind the News if you’d like to see more about Yawuru and their language in schools and around Broome and the work of Mabu Yawuru Ngan-ga. And check out the Yawuru facebook page, too!

Our final stop on this round of the Roadshow: delightful Dimboola, Victoria! We had a great morning on Friday with the Year 7s and 8s at Dimboola Memorial College, who got stuck into some Dyirbal noun classes, and gave us the low-down on lexical choices in Dimboola. We even had time to check out the gorgeous Lock Iel (Pink Lake) nearby. Thanks for having us, Dimboola Memorial College!

Stop 2 on the Roadshow: marvellous Murtoa College! We had a good yarn with the Year 7s and 8s, and then talked up a storm with the Year 9s and 10s. We learnt an important bit of local lingo: have you tried ‘The Florry‘ (steak, ham and cheese wrapped in bread crumbs and fried)? And we even managed to fit in an icy pole (or was it a By Jingo?) at Stuff Ya Guts Takeaway! Thanks for having us, Murtoa College.

The Roadies have hit the road and made first stop for 2015 – Ararat College! We had a great time visiting the Year 10s, and we even learnt something new: looks like when it comes to the word for ‘the object that might you might drink water from in a park or school’, bubble tap is a clear winner in Ararat compared to other parts of Victoria. We look forward to seeing what others in the Wimmera think! Thanks for having us, Ararat College.

Our showbags are bursting at the seams with language-y goodies! Along with your Linguistics Roadshow booklet and quizzes, you’ll be getting a whole bunch of swag…

Practice your fingerspelling with the Auslan chart, and learn about the linguistic diversity of our state with the Victorian language  fridge magnet! With our word badges, you can show your lexical allegiances – are you on ‪#‎teampotatocake‬ or‪#‎teampotatoscallop‬?!

Fold up the Linguistics Chatterbox to test your family and friends, and see if you can assemble our paper larynx – careful, it’s fiddly…

A final bonus challenge – can you figure out which words our mystery spectrograms show…?

Our RoadShowbags are bursting at the seams and packed in the Linguistics Limo 🚌, and we’re ready to hit the road! First stop is Ararat College on Tuesday, with Murtoa College and Dimboola Memorial Secondary College later in the week.

Our route: vroom vroom!

We’ll be talking about global linguistic diversity, language in our own region, and variation in language use. You’ll also be getting involved in activities on regional differences in Australian English, language learning in kids and robots, and noun classes in a Queensland language!

Hope to see you there!

We’re gradually adding to our resource pages, with collections of links, information and classroom materials on all sorts of language and linguistics topics. The focus in on the Australian context, but also on Australia’s place in the language diversity that can be found around the world. The resource page Englishes in Australia has just been added – have a look around to find out more about the history, accents, vocabulary and grammar of English varieties in Australia, and keep an eye out for more updates!

People who speak English at home as a fraction of total persons, in Australia, according to the 2011 census results. (source)