Australian indigenous language on children's TV

In today's rapidly globalizing world, it must be difficult to attract attention to indigenous languages and cultures. It is, however, as we have already discussed in class before, very important to save such languages, in part because they are rich sources of knowledge regarding human cognition and history. How can we, then, convince people speak, or at least make them aware of, indigenous and endangered languages when it is more useful to speak English, Chinese or Spanish in today's world?

In her article called "Indigenous language finds life through children's TV" on The Wall Street Journal, Sally Jackson talks about a way to make the children in Australia aware of one of the endangered Australian languages: the Noongar language. This indigenous language was once widely spoken in the southwest region of Western Australia. The Noongar language has thirteen dialects, and eight of these dialects are endangered. And now the Noongar language is being taught to children in Australia on children's program on TV, and the program is called "Waabiny Time."

I can't really imagine how they can teach the language to little children through TV, but I still think that this is a great idea. I believe that the aim of this program is not necessarily to get children speak the language fluently, but rather raise an awareness. If the children in Australia are aware of the existence of the Noongar language and the danger of extinction that it faces today, then they will be more likely to take initiative and be an active part of saving this language.

What is even more surprising for me is that the parents and grandparents of the children who watch the program and learn about the Noongar language gave very positive feedback to the producers of the children's program. This shows that even though the program's main target is children, it also influences and educates the other generations in a certain way. So, while childrens are educated about this issue at a young age, their parents and grandparents become aware of the issue themselves if they were not already familiar with it.

I think that raising awareness for disappearing languages is a challenging task, but this idea of reaching out to children and their parents through a children's program is a great idea. I wonder what else can be done. How can we let people know that languages are dying and that it is important to save them? I believe that the issue of disappearing languages and language death is somewhat limited to linguists and researchers - general public is unaware or indifferent to the issue, and that is something we should address before more languages die out.

Link to Article: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/indigenous-language-finds-life-through-childrens-tv/story-e6frg996-1225864247897