Developing an Orthography for Bardi: Some Problems

Abstract

If you work in a school which has an Aboriginal language program, you may have heard a new teacher make a comment similar to the one above. You may even remember making such a comment yourself! Teachers often become confused and frustrated when they try to use school resources, books and other teaching materials, only to find that the Aboriginal language has not always been written in the same way. The development of an orthography, a way of writing a language, is not a simple matter. Many, if not most, Aboriginal languages have been written in various ways over the years as linguists and others have revised the work of those before them. In this article I look at some of the problems encountered when developing an orthography for the Bardi language, in order to give teachers, and particularly new teachers, some understanding of the complications that can be involved. These include practical linguistic problems, as well as broader social issues that arise with such linguistic work.