Celebrating the diverse languages of Australia's First Peoples, this book presents stories told by elders in eighteen languages from around the continent, and explores their patterns of meaning. The stories recount the experiences of the tellers and histories of their communities, from tales of anti-colonial resistance to origin stories of the Dreaming. The book aims to make the languages accessible and engaging through the voices of the elders, while building readers' knowledge about language and language learning. It opens with some basic language knowledge for reading the stories. Each chapter then begins with the cultural and historical contexts of the stories, which are first previewed in English translation, then presented sentence-by-sentence, setting out the original sounds and wordings, glossed with plain English. Extracts are selected to illustrate patterns of meanings that are characteristic of each language. The final chapter sums up the various meaning patterns the stories use, and interprets their evolution in the light of First Peoples' deep histories, as recorded by archaeology and traditional knowledge. The book will be useful for language learning programs in communities and schools, for researchers of language and language teaching, and for any reader with an interest in the languages and cultures of Australia's First Peoples.

The Languages and Linguistics of Australia: A Comprehensive Guide is part of the multi-volume reference work on the languages and linguistics of the continents of the world. The volume provides a thorough overview of Australian languages, including their linguistic structures, their genetic relationships, and issues of language maintenance and revitalisation. Australian English, Aboriginal English and other contact varieties are also discussed.

This ground-breaking 1980 study of over 200 Australian languages is still valuable, especially for its non-technical opening chapters.

Linguists and non-linguists will find in this volume a guide and reference source to the rich linguistic heritage of Australia.

No detailed description available for "Languages of Australia and Tasmania".

This book traces language policy in Australia from World War II to the present, examining the changes in government policy over this time, and changes in major public institutions due to the presence of these languages. The major focus is on changes in the education and broadcasting systems, with attention also to interpreting/translating, industrial relations and the role of languages in diplomacy and trade. Dr. Ozolins places language in the context of multicultural politics and shows that government language policies that were once prompted by suspicion now accept and even encourage cultural and linguistic maintenance. In fact Australia has introduced many innovations of international significance in language policy, particularly with the National Language Policy, announced in 1987. This policy marked a decisive change in political assumptions toward languages in postwar Australia because it recognized the importance of languages other than English.