Ngarigo and Ngunnawal word lists

I find it is impossible not to feel a huge sense of loss when seeing how fragmentary are the records of Aboriginal languages from South East Australia. Even today Aboriginal languages are still slipping away very rapidly. Why is this not seen as a cultural emergency? Why has the task always fallen on so few people to rescue Aboriginal languages from oblivion?

I was having trouble finding a Ngarigo word list on the internet so have transcribed the one out of “Victorian Languages a Late Survey”* by LA Hercus, and put it beside the Ngunnawal word list that is in RH Mathews’ work The Wiradyuri and Other Languages of New South Wales for purposes of comparison. The languages are usually said to be quite similar, although there is still plenty of difference between them.

A language is the ultimate poem, developed by its speakers over centuries, with a thousand intimate connections to the landscape and culture which it reflects. These few words are nearly all that is left from the first great work of literature, the original poem, which was created by the Ngarigo and Ngunnawal people of the Canberra region and the high country of NSW and Victoria.

nb. I have replaced “ng” with “ŋ” in the Mathews list. An excel version of this table is here: Languages – Ngarigo and Ngunnawal.

*Just the title “Victorian Languages” of this book speaks of the riches of the cultural tapestry which existed, and the nearly complete disjunction of this from what is the modern state of Victoria. The lateness of the survey is all too evident from the small number of natural speakers who were still alive when it was assembled in the 1960s. There are stories here of final speakers who died only days before contact with language researchers.