Course overview
This course will introduce students to the methods, approaches and strategies for reclaiming sleeping languages through the lens of the Kaurna language, the original language of Adelaide and the Adelaide Plains. Students will gain familiarity with the Kaurna sources and will investigate Kaurna in relation to neighbouring languages focussing on both linguistic and cultural ties. Students will gain an appreciation of Kaurna history and of the Kaurna language, both as it was spoken in the mid-nineteenth century and within its contemporary social context.
Learning to speak, use and understand the Kaurna language is not the main purpose of this course. In this respect this Kaurna language course differs from most other language courses where developing 'communicative competence' is the main goal. Rather, this course focuses on developing understandings about the Kaurna language, the historical source materials, how we know what we know about the language, and how it is being used today. Students will learn of the importance that the Kaurna language has to Kaurna people as they rebuild their cultural and linguistic identity. Strenuous efforts will be made to 'get inside' the Kaurna language and use the language as a key to understanding Kaurna culture and a little of our history and the place in which we live.
Course learning outcomes
- Respectfully contribute to a language reclamation effort alongside owners and custodians of that language
- Apply linguistic analytical skills in the interpretation and assessment of historical source material
- Understand the relationship between revived languages and their antecedents
- Draw comparisons between a range of language reclamation movements and identify common features and points of difference
- Appreciate the importance of the Kaurna language to the Kaurna community and the general public living on the Adelaide Plains
- Gain insights, through a study of the Kaurna language, into the early contact history, Indigenous cultures, placenames, the environment and Nunga English
- Understand and apply the revised Kaurna spelling system
- Demonstrate a knowledge of the emerging functions and use of the Kaurna language within the Kaurna community, in the education sector and in the public domain
- Gain familiarity with common Kaurna expressions such as greetings, leave-takings, introductions, requests, commands, questions and statements
- Appreciate the role played by Kaurna language reclamation within the global renaissance of Indigenous languages
- Write a coherent and logically argued essay drawing on a range of perspectives and source materials in answer to a question posed