In my new role, I’m supporting an event for Priority Schools of NSW. As far as I can make out, these are schools where the students consistently get poor marks and have literacy / numeracy problems. One of the speakers today put up some interesting census statistics relevant to the kind of students that live in these areas. The first was that 1 in 5 Australians were born overseas and the same seems to be true for students. Another study I heard said that 1st and 2nd generation Australians account for more than half of our residents. That’s a huge number and one I’m quite proud of and excited about.
It does present its own problems. Another statistic said that 21% of Australians speak a language other than English at home. Surprisingly, the language most spoken is Hindi. I only remember 3 Indians in all my years of schooling, but that’s obviously changing as fast here as it is in other developed countries.
Contrasting to that, Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders account for only 2-3%, though that number is growing. The first speaker, an Aboriginal man (possibly Phil Glendenning), told us that we were sitting in Gattagal territory and that he’d love to welcome us to his land in his own language, but his people had been forbidden to speak Gattagal 150 years ago. I take that to mean that the dialect has been lost. Sitting in that auditorium (trying to focus on technology), I couldn’t think of anything sadder. I feel ashamed for running off around the world, trying to learn interesting languages like Japanese, Spanish and French, when I can’t even speak a word of the native tongue of my homeland. It’s a lack I’d like to correct now, but I don’t have any contact with these people and it may be that there is nothing left to learn.
Gattagal is certainly used less than Hindi and probably Chinese and Greek. For that, I apologise to my hosts on behalf of all my ancestors. If it’s not too late to rectify the issue, I’m all ears.