 Hello, and welcome to this special Lowe Institute panel on Papua New Guinea's Indigenous Languages as part of what we are calling the Long Distance Lowe Institute. I'm Jessica Collins, a research fellow in the Institute's OSPNG network and Pacific Islands program. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, as well as the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, and pay my respects to elders past and present. 2019 was the United Nations Year of Indigenous Languages. In recognition that a year was not long enough to protect, bolster and promote Indigenous languages, the United Nations dedicated an entire decade to it. On January 1 of this year, the United Nations International Decade of Indigenous Languages began. There is no country in the world that holds more Indigenous languages than Papua New Guinea. Current estimates of its living languages are between 830 to over 850. That number, though, has been in steady decline since Papua New Guinea's colonisation. But while extinction to local languages remains a severe problem, a new Papua New Guinea language was recently added to the list. Today, we are going to talk about and unpack how a language came to be added to Papua New Guinea's list of documented languages. But first, we'll discuss the significance of Indigenous languages for Papua New Guinea's cultural diversity and identity. And I'm pleased to introduce the panel joining me today to discuss these issues. First up, we have Dr Kalala Devetici, Senior Research Fellow and Programme Leader from the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute. Kalala's academic advocacy has focused on the benefits of bilingual education in Papua New Guinea's schools. We also have Dr Lydia Mazatelli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Slavic Institute in the University of Cologne. Lydia was a principal investigator on the project that documented and described the Kurumau language, the latest Papua New Guinea language to be added to its extensive list. Our junk professor Craig Volker is also joining us from the Cairns Institute at James Cook University. Craig is a specialist in Papua New Guinea language documentation, Tok Pison and Pitch and Creole studies, and second language teaching of Tok Pison English and German. Craig also writes extensively in the media about Papua New Guinea's Indigenous languages. And finally, we have Dr Sakarepe Kamene, Head of Linguistics and Modern Languages at the University of Papua New Guinea. He was also publicly advocated for the preservation of Papua New Guinea's languages and the challenges of language preservation for this country. We have a lot to cover today, so let's get straight into it. Sakarepe, I'd like to start with you first. Can you tell us about the nature of Indigenous languages in Papua New Guinea? Just how many languages do you think there are across this extensive landscape? That's a question I think we need to do more work on it to find out. Actually, if you get a new one coming out, that suggests that there are many probably are not discovered yet, I think. So the numbers could vary greatly. But at the moment, we have very old numbers that exist, about 800 something, 30, 850. Many of them are very small in terms of number of speakers, half of them, I think, 450 or 500. Very small. I was looking at a late net auto-nepidels research book. It says about 427 or something has less than 500 speakers. That's a matter for concern for many of us in Papua New Guinea. Because there are many small languages, they are practically not possible to include all of them in education or other things. And probably that's why many people are looking at larger languages to use in practical sense for education and other purposes. And many other small ones are somewhat neglected. We must increase in large projects, especially in rural areas. That's a matter for concern because we haven't done enough research in many of these rural areas where small languages exist. And with the coming of this larger development, they could really affect and quickly diminish our vernacular languages or top places in rural areas. So that's one major concern. Big developments amidst all these local cultures and languages, it may really severely affect many other languages, which we really do not have much idea about them. So smaller languages, we haven't really worked to find out what their statuses are. Whether they are decreasing the maribond status or whether they are increasing in terms of numbers because so it's quite a complex situation with the dynamics of economics coming into play. And in Papua New Guinea, I think social type of aspects have been neglected as more economic aspects have been promoted much vigorously. So that could also have a negative impact on many of our smaller languages. So my concern is the smaller languages we know very little about at this moment. Large number of it is Mendang-Sipic area. So again, that area is also being affected by big developments. So again, this is the concern. It's complex. We know little about all these languages. So the impact, negative impact could be quite severe on many of these languages. Will I leave it for anyone who wants to comment on it? Thanks, Sakarepe. Yeah, I think I might bring Craig in at this point actually and just see if he can unpack for us what it takes to become an independent language. And how does that play out in place like Papua New Guinea where there are just so many languages sitting side by side? Okay, well linguists like to talk about the difference between language and dialect. So we've got different varieties of speech. You know, I speak more American, you speak more Australian, but we can understand each other easily. So we speak different dialects of the same language. If I speak my ancestral language, German, perhaps you and I won't be able to understand each other. So we say that English and German are different languages. And so we've got the same thing happening in Papua New Guinea, except that these, this idea of language and dialect is really introduced from Europe into Papua New Guinea. In Papua New Guinea, people don't make that distinction as distinctly or as readily as people would in Europe. So it's important, not only in terms of identity of people whose identity is very connected to the ground where they live and to the village where they live and to the plans with which they're associated. But not only that we talk about the different languages and we describe those different languages, but that we also describe different dialects in within a language group. Thanks, Craig. They sound like really important distinctions to be making in a place like Papua New Guinea and in a place that's so linguistically diverse as this country. Can you tell us what's happening with top person in English? Is it, are these becoming the dominant languages? And is this a problem? Yes, thank you, Jess. It's very interesting how these two languages are taking dominance in the country at the moment. Okay, so it is a, it is in fact a concern for some of us when we try to think of the indigenous languages that are not being spoken quite well now by the current generation. Okay, the current generation can to speak more of top person in English, which have now top person is actually now the dominant the language of dominance in Papua New Guinea. Okay, even even in the homes, languages or indigenous languages are not spoken most often. And the problem is when we have mixed marriages, that is the problem right there. Mixed marriages, I mean a couple coming from two different language backgrounds. So when we have a lot of that in existence now in Papua New Guinea to a couple coming either from the island, one from the highlands. So when they are in the home, they tend to speak more of top person than English, and they do not speak their mother tongue at home. And that is how children do not grasp the language of either the father or the mother in the home. And that is very problematic right now. And I'm sure the others who are listening on here will agree with me that that is what's happening now, because there's a lot of mixed marriages in Papua New Guinea, and the languages are not the indigenous languages are not being spoken. And especially when we come to families who live in the cities, or towns of Papua New Guinea, they'd rather, they'd rather to speak English or talk this into their children in the home and not their languages. That is something that I've been very vocal about. I've spoken, you know, like in the in the media outlets on TV and other platforms like that, trying to encourage parents that the onus is now on the parents to take on board that responsibility to speak the mother tongue, the vernacular skin the home, because if some of you know the vernacular language or the vernacular education, which was used in the outcome space education has now been thrown out the window, and we are back to to use in English only in the classrooms. So what happened during the time of the OB when vernacular education was in existence was the first three years of education was in the mother tongue, they called it topless topless schools. So we had elementary one elementary true elementary one sort of prep e prep elementary one and then elementary two, and then when they completed that phase, they would move on to the primary school, lower primary school which started off in grade three. So during that time, that is something which I did quite a lot of work on on the transitioning from the mother tongue into English. So the problem I found was that teachers who supposed to be teachers in grade three. These teachers supposed to be teachers who spoke or speak the languages of the children, the students that they are teaching, but in most instances. They were teachers who were speakers of talk missing from another another language group. They did not speak the languages of the children so when the then transitioning from the children's mother tongue to English was happening. The teachers were using talk missing to transition the children from their language to English. There was a lot that there's a big problem right there. The teachers were supposed to be in grade three to transition the children from their mother tongue to English, supposed to be a speaker of the child's language, but it didn't happen that way. So that was how there was a lot of problem in this so I can see Craig nodding his head I think he, these are the kind of problems that we have uncovered in Papua New Guinea schools. So because of that situation. Politicians so people have the hierarchy decided to, to abolish that that system of using vernacular education and now we are back to SBC which is using English only as the language of instruction in the classrooms. So going to my own research as somebody who is very much interested in, like I put all my, my work into bilingual education using the first the mother tongue as the first language for a child in his or her education journey. That is the way to go. But what I found in my research was that it was not implemented, although it is a very brilliant theory bilingual educational teaching or a child in his or her first language that did not happen, simply because of the implementation part of it. And one of the reasons was not correct. And one of the reasons was just what I gave. And there are other issues that other factors that were also involved in this. So it said to say that the vernacular education using mother tongue in the PNC education system has now been thrown out the window it's been abolished and it's now back to English only. That is, it is quite a big problem at the moment when it comes to language education. And so my, my take on this is that when I've been interviewed and been asked by reporters. I've always taken back my view that even if we do not use bilingual education anymore, maybe use still teach the language, just like teaching Bahasa Indonesia or talk piece. What's this Japanese or Mandarin. Teach the language as a subject in the classroom. These are just my ideas or my views because it is, it is really problematic and if we have to preserve and maintain the PNC languages, how do we do that. So the other only option, apart from our reintroducing in the classrooms is back to the parents. I have always been telling parents or advocating for parents that parents need to speak to their children in their mother tongue or what we call in PNC talk less. That needs to be spoken in the home. So at least the children can appreciate their own language because language goes together with the identity that all these need to be appreciated. But that is not happening at the moment so that is why I've been drumming it into parents even like people I have discussions with, we need to speak the language our mother tongue to our children. Especially, the problem is with educated parents. Educated parents don't have time to speak their, their language to their, the children if it's always stop, you know, engage, maybe I will stop there. You can come back to me later and let me give an opportunity to others to talk. There's a lot to talk about. Thank you, Jess. Could I just break in there. I think what Kailala has said is very important about parents. And I think one of the problems is that parents don't know how in mixed marriages, how to use both languages within a family. And for that reason, they use talk piston or with educated families they use English. And I think the media in Papua New Guinea fail us, because they don't give enough opportunity to people like Kailala to explain to parents through radio or TV or newspapers, how families can use different languages within a family. You know, my children were raised with with three languages quite easily, because both their mother and I were comfortable with them using different languages within the family, sometimes Papua New Guinea and families are not comfortable using a language at one of the parents doesn't speak well. And so people like Kailala can explain to families how to do that would be really useful. It sounds like a really important thing to do, especially within the household, starting small it's something that I wanted to touch on later in this panel is, you know, what are the solutions to these challenges that we're bringing up today. But first, I would like to bring you in Lydia, I'd like to hear from you at this point giving your experience in a small rural community in New Island, which will also touch on in just a minute. Yes, I'd just like to ask you, do you think communities are growing more aware of the importance of raising their indigenous language. I cannot speak for communities. I can speak for the lack of our community. And even that, as an outsider who went there in order to study their language and to sensitive device in a way. So I think my point of view is a bit biased. But what can I say is that the whole community really responded very enthusiastically to me being there and documenting their language they felt really proud, because the neighboring communities already had Craig documented knowledge, which is the one that just on the south of local mouth, the language color which is North has also been documented has a Bible translation. So the people in local mouth have a little bit left out and they were really happy to have the language documented. So there are some language activists, sadly, some of them have passed away. But there are people definitely in the community who feel that the language is threatened. And literally, everyone when asked directly would say, yes, it's a shame that some of our children speak better talk pleasing than the criminal. Everyone is, I would say is aware of the importance of passing on the language. Yes. Whether this then becomes practice really goes into the practice of then transmitted this language that you feel it's so important. The answer is yes and no in some families. Yes. And in some families, especially mixed families. Also a couple of monolingual families. It is, it is not, but not, not because the people think that it's not important that have never met this point of view yeah we don't care. How to do because many children speak to peace in a school then they use the peace and English, and you can often see people of, let's say 3040 years of age, speaking with each other in the local language and then when they address the children to talk pleasing. So the answer that I can give from my outsider perspective is that, yes, definitely people are sensitive to the topic. And they have also become more sensitive in the last years that outsiders unfortunately mostly have come to the region to document the language and that also makes them proud. But there is a problem in the transmission, absolutely not in devaluing the language, but what Kailala and Craig said that many people I think lack the instruments lack the basic education just for learning how to speak to your kid. And in general to keep the language alive in the community, though they tried, I cannot say that they don't. Thanks Lydia. I wanted to redirect this question to you as well. Sir Julius Chan who is the governor of New Island province where you documented this language. He's also the former Prime Minister he made a statement in 2020 urging new all New Islanders to hold on to their local languages. He said, it is your identity and makes each and every one of you unique. Through our languages we honor our ancestors and through our languages we find ourselves. So, are you able to explain to us the dynamic between identity and language in Papua New Guinea and how languages work are they are marking of belonging to a particular social cultural or ethnic group. Again, I, unfortunately, I cannot speak for the whole of Papua New Guinea and that I think the other three panelists will have more experience. I can speak for what I saw in lack of mouth, and they're let's say, like remote is a highly multilingual society, people there, everyone speaks the same. Some speak also good English, especially those who went to school during colonial Australian room because they learned very well English at school. But even now, I mean some of them really speak good English, then they speak like remote and they also speak the car and knowledge which are the neighbor languages so the society is multi lingual and to how language relates to identity. I think it's not black or white. It's not just that your language is your identity. On the one side, yes, and I will come to that in just a second. But also your multilingual multilingualism is your identity. I mean, you are not only defined by the fact that you pick that particular particular language, but also by the fact that you can communicate with other groups in, in other languages, especially in New Island where the communities are small than there are other regions of Papua New Guinea like Anga province which basically monolingual so they are perhaps the replace of that in New Island. Almost everyone is multi lingual. But then coming back to lack of mouth. It has been used by the lack of mouth people as a sort of secret code and it is still by children who go in boarding schools in the car speaking territory, because then they can use lack of mouth among themselves to communicate and to keep secrets from the other children. It is not that the language are totally unintelligible. You can understand the car speaker with lack of mouth if you put attention to it. The lack of mouth people also speak the car. The car people do not speak lack of mouth because lack of mouth is a very small language spoken only one village, so they can use it as a secret code. And they do acknowledge the common origin of Kara Nalik, La Kurmao Tagak and Lavongai people. This is spoken in the North of New Island. They all come from the same ancestral place. They have the same clans, the same tradition so they acknowledge the common history, but they are really very proud that they have their own language and when I went there and asked the community whether I could go live with them and document. And before they were really enthusiastic because they felt like we wanted to be recognized. So I would say that the identity of La Kurmao people, yes, it is shaped by the fact that they do speak this. They are La Kurmao speakers. I should say that they come from La Kurmao even if they don't speak that well the language, but still they would say that they speak it. This is a huge chapter that I don't know if we do have the time to dwell in, but anyway they do have the past acknowledge and here that defines them as La Kurmao people. I should say that multilingualism is also a part of identity of being in this large New Island region. I don't know much about the other reasons of Papua New Guinea so perhaps someone can speak better than me, but that's, I would say represents really well as a situation in La Kurmao. Thanks Lydia. I'm going to bring in Kallala and Sakarepe in just a minute but we've heard Topless come up quite a few times already in this discussion so I'd like to bring in Craig here Craig's written about Topless. You could just talk us through that concept please. Okay. So Topless is a talk person word and it comes from English. Talk means language in place means your home. So it's the language of your home. And as in Australia with indigenous people, Papua New Guineans are very closely tied to the land where the ancestors have been living for a very long time. So your talk place is a reflection of your relationship with your land and with your home and with the people who live in your land. And as Lydia said to La Kurmao people I think everywhere in Papua New Guinea, when you're walking down the street and you hear somebody in town speaking your language, you turn around you look you feel a little happy that you've got somebody who's connected in Papua New Guinea, people use the word one talk, which means people who speak the same language. And this is a word like mate in Australia it's your friend, somebody whom you can trust somebody whose behavior is predictable. It's somebody who speaks the same language that you speak. Thanks Craig. I'd like to bring in Kalala now and hear about your experience with Topless and and perhaps your reflections on Sir Governor Chan's phrase about statement about language linking to ancestors. Thank you Jess. Yes, with regards to that, I would say that I'm a Kuanua speaker to start off with. Kuanua is the language of the Tau Lai people I'm a Tau Lai, and I'm from from East New Britain, New Britain Island but I'm from New Britain. So why speak Kuanua? Kuanua is the Tau Lai language, the language of the Tau Lai. So when it comes to trying to relate the language I speak back to our ancestors, it is actually a challenging question that you asked me to say something to say, you might be on this, because as a speaker of Kuanua speaker, we speak the language, but who in the right frame of mind would think that we are, you know, like, we think about our ancestors. You do this unconsciously, you don't realize that you are speaking a language which has been passed on from generation to generation, you know, like going back to our ancestors. So I think what I'm trying to say here is, it is interesting how our languages have been passed on from generation to generation. The Tau Lai language, the Kuanua language has been documented, I mean, it's written, we have Bibles, a Bible that is written in Kuanua, we have our hymn book in Kuanua. So even I must say that the languages, the neighboring languages, or like Nakana in West New Britain, even some in New Island, in Nakana when their languages were not documented yet, or like the Bible or the hymn books were not written in their languages yet, they used Kuanua in church because Kuanua, my language was already written before way back, I'm not too sure when exactly it was written, but because of that, neighboring languages who had not heard their languages written, used the Kuanua language for church services, for their hymns, and for the Bible, reading the Bible, the word of God in the Bible was done in Kuanua. My take on that is that for my language, unlike other smaller languages in Papua New Guinea, I'm lucky to say that my language was documented long time ago, but it's not that I'm not proud that it was documented. I am sad actually because the current generation have deviated from the original Kuanua language. A lot of code switching has actually hampered the actual Kuanua language. So code switching, talk in English, in the Kuanua language, into the Kuanua language, that's actually kind of what, how can I say that the language is now not purely Kuanua these days. I just returned from my home in Kokopo in the village, like two, three weeks ago, and I was actually surprised to hear the way the younger generation speak the language. They do not speak Kuanua all the time now. When they speak Kuanua, there must be talk pissing in there. So it's always code switching that is taking place in my village at the moment, or in all the most of the villages in, in East New Britain, I'm speaking for Kokopo, the villages along the Kokopo area. The Kuanua language or talk less is not really spoken like how it used to be. And two, when it's interesting as linguists, we know that when different age groups speak to each other, they speak a certain type of Kuanua or a certain type of talk pissing. And if you try to converse with an older, older or an elderly person, it's different. You can speak a different talk pissing to the older person or a different type of Kuanua to that elderly person. And that is because the language has changed so much because it is now in the language, there is English and talk pissing in it. So I think what I'm trying to say is these, the language is now being mixed. So it's not the pure version of Kuanua that I told I would speak. It is now, it has been tempered here. So the language has now changed from the pure Kuanua to a Kuanua which I'm not, you know, we need to give a description to the current type of Kuanua that is being spoken today. So the language is changing. And as we know, language are never stated. Language change all the time and that is what's happening to my language and I believe that is what's happening to a lot of Papua New Guinea languages today. Thanks, Kalala. It's really interesting local experience and thanks for sharing your insights on that. I'm sure it's not localized as well. I'm sure it's a common experience across Papua New Guinea. Thank you, Sakarepe. You've made quite a few public statements about how languages are vital because they are vessels of information. I'd really love to hear more about this paraphrase your words you said if a language becomes extinct all sorts of information will be buried with that language so can you just talk about this perspective for us please. Working with language I think we realized that I realized that language captures all kinds of things and keeps those things, information, land information, vehicle information, fish or whatever it is in local areas. Also language also captures location where you are. It gives you space and time in your location so it becomes a way to identify yourself when you have language around with you. When you lose language all these things disappear, all these things go. So you are left with nothing and I find this with young people who have gone to school in English, have lost their vernacular languages or top place, they quite often go to the village while listening to them, they have no space for themselves, they can't locate themselves where they are. And that's becoming a problem in terms of identifying themselves in a modern Papua New Guinea to have a real strong footing to say whether or not they are educated person, modern Papua New Guinea or whether they are traditional young people, it's becoming hard in terms of just making distinctions using identity or top place, using top place to make distinctions. So that's one of my concerns. One of my experience, my personal experience in 1978, 1979 I was doing a research on traditional transaction of properties. And there was a dance that was going to be translated to another tribe. So I was recording all those things and they said, they told me to re-enter our society, the Zia society, which is my society, you got to know Zia to re-enter. This is the point of entry. That's your identity that you must use. That's a label you must use. So they told me, take off all your clothes and get into traditional clothes. And then they said, we are giving you a topic on transaction of this particular dance. And you're going to say the story all in the Zia language, not in top person, no mixing, not in English. And that was a challenge I thought. I was thinking all the time that I'm a Zia person, so I know everything about it, but they challenge. This is where they think your position becomes important. Their position becomes important. And that's where they locate their identity. And if you are not there, you are losing it and people are concerned. Once they are concerned about loss of identity, loss of your top place, loss of your history, it becomes a serious problem for us in Papua New Guinea. As Lydia was saying, we come from a lingual society also, so you know extensively about other societies if you know their language. Neighboring societies, neighboring communities, if you know their language, you know quite a bit about these neighboring people, their river systems, their land systems, their marriage systems. So again, that knowledge captured as a multilingual person becomes a larger kind of say global in inverted commerce. Global ideas, global knowledge for you to operate in a much wider sense if you are multilingual in that local community. So top place gives you somewhat restricted kind of way of operating, but if you become multilingual, it opens up with global way of looking at things, even in that particular area where your neighbors are. So we haven't really worked on these many aspects of multilingualism, bilingualism, to really open up what these ideas capture and maintain for us to learn more about the situations we have, especially in Papua New Guinea. Thanks so much. I think I absolutely love that story. It really is a brilliant vignette to the complex dynamic between identity and language. We're going to move on now to hearing the stories about documentation. So I'd love to hear from Lydia first about her experience in documenting the language of La Coroma and just exactly what that entailed. The story actually began in Europe. When I first met Craig, he came to teach a talk piece in course at the University of Bremen in Germany, where I was working at the time. And I always had the desire to work to do fieldwork to work with a yet undocumented language because so far I had always worked with already documented languages in Europe. And then Craig offered me to organize a stay in the Nalik speaking village where he had near to the village where he had been working. I went there and by the way to catch on what I said, I, I, there I studied the vocabulary related to landscape. So how the Nalik language conceptualizes the landscape they have different words for different parts of the reef. Found in English, for instance, so they have their own view of the landscape, something that if the language disappears, also disappears this, this link to do to the land, so to say. Well, when I was there, I came to Papua New Guinea for two weeks. And during this time I made a couple of trips to the village of La Coroma, where Craig had told me that a language was spoken, which had traditionally been considered a dialect of Nalik or of Cara. And I just wanted to ascertain how deviant it was from these two languages. So I basically went there I asked people to cooperate with me just on one day trip. Tell me some basic sentences and some basic words. I compare them to Nalik and Cara. Yes, they are similar, but they are different enough to be a different language. It's like Dutch, Frisian and German, for instance, or English, Frisian and Dutch, they are all related, but still different languages. So then I made an application to get a grant, I got it, and I came back to Papua New Guinea for several periods of extended time I was once three months, four months, and then two months. So my work consisted of making recordings of people talking in the language. First I started with simple narratives like my life. What did I plant yesterday in the garden. I tell you about my family. And then with Mrs. Diana Gurumang, and other who unfortunately passed away last year. And then with other people from La Cromau who speak very well La Cromau and as well as English, we sat down and transcribed word per word. So I had a recording on my computer I put it in a documentation software called Elan. I segmented into chunks, like I am going, which at first of course I didn't understand I learned the language while documenting it. So I went back to my consultant, the person who was working with me in that moment, like, usually it was Mrs. Gurumang. Can you please transcribe exactly word per word, what they said, then the unity of word. It's also difficult to define in a language of the so far has never been written. Luckily, I had Craig's grammar for Nalik and a grammar for Kara. The languages are similar so I already had an idea. And then I translated and very likely, luckily, and Mrs. Gurumang speaks perfect English also other people so I could get the meaning in English and then I would ask. Not always the meaning is one to one, there were some words that she didn't know exactly how to translate. So then I would ask questions to understand exactly what's the meaning of this grammatical construction or words. For simple words, it's easy, like mango or wreath. Of course, when we move on to grammatical topics like the difference between I have been singing and I have sung and I sang, but then it's more difficult and you need a lot of work to distinguish among all these meanings. It's not that we see these and of course I have not yet completely understood the whole of the grammar, but basically documentation is that to make a lasting record of a language, which is also multi purpose. It can be used by linguists, it can be used by anthropologists, it can be used by the community to have a recording of their own language to use to teach children. And in Lacroix-Romao, I also produce what I mean, what does it mean, I, they produce, I just help in writing down. We produced some school books for children in the pre-school, so before prep, so that they could read in Lacroix-Romao and just a sample of simple stories where like the alphabet, animals, plants, colors, things like that. So to sum it up, documenting, the process is to go there, record the language, transcribe, translate into the English, I use the English because it's easier or whatever other language you may want, and create a lasting record digitally, also on paper, if there is the possibility, I did everything digitally because it will be stored forever and ever, hopefully. And then as I said, it must be multi purpose in that that I try to record different kinds of text genres, narratives, my life, my family, traditional narratives, but also conversations, and procedurals and instructions, for instance, how to bake a seagull cake, first to take the leaves, then you do that and that. Why? First, because it gives us very interesting information about the culture of the community who speaks the language, but also for us linguists, when we only analyze narrative languages is something different than the language that then you're using conversations or you're using giving instructions to have a lot of new words and new constructions that would never come up if you only record monologues or just people talking about their lives. So I try to vary as much as possible so that the people who will, I hope, the community first, but also other linguists, or everyone else who is interested, who will then have my collection in the hands will have as complete as possible to blend onto the language and the culture that it represents. Thanks so much Lydia, it sounds like a really valuable experience that you had in that community, and a really, really important thing that you've done for them documenting that language. There's a little bit of time left before we move on to talking about preservation of these languages and what can be done next but first I'd just like to hear from Craig about his experience in writing or documenting the Nalik language and exactly how the Nalik language interacts with the Nalik language as well. Yes, as Lydia says, Nalik and Likurumau came from the same ancestor language, very similar languages. And I've been living in the Nalik area for quite a long time before we had the idea that Lydia would come and work with the Likurumau language. I don't know if I've told Lydia this, but I was scolded by the elders and Likurumau village when I came and and said this is lady coming from Italy and she wants to document your language and they said you were supposed to be doing this a long time ago now you go away to bring this lady in, because she's more enthusiastic than you are. But my situation with Nalik was quite similar when I went to work there. The difference being that I'd lived in Papua New Guinea for a long time that was a senior high school teacher so I had contacts in the community. So when I decided I wanted to do my PhD, I went to the community and I said, I want to get a PhD. I'm the one to become a professor someday I want to get a dissertation this is what I want. Now what do you people want if I come to your village and work with your language. And they mentioned a number of things they said they wanted to have a writing system for the language. They wanted to have a prayer book with Baha'i and Christian and Muslim prayers in it, because the community has different religions. They wanted to have help making school books for the primary school in their own language. And I said okay I can do this. And so then the community organized a language teacher for each day I had a Monday teacher. I choose to feature Wednesday teacher and so on for the five days of the working week. And I would spend a morning with each of those language teachers, learning how women speak how young people speak how old people speak. And the same way that Lydia work with the look for my I learned knowledge language and documented it. And if I just like to point out what one of my teachers said, his name was Michael. He was a poet and the knowledge language and composed a lot of songs. And he said that the knowledge language is only spoken by 5000 people and in five or 600 years. Quite possibly this language will no longer exist because knowledge people are marrying other people. He says, but when we produce something that's written in our language and they go to a museum and they see that book in their language. They'll know that people at this time were proud of their heritage. And they wanted to pass on their heritage to people and their language to people even if the language no longer exists. So they pick up a book and learn the language of their ancestors and have access to the knowledge of their ancestors. And he says because of that. He said his descendants would be able to be proud of who they are. And so this is the work that we're doing now, we're working for our for the descendants of the speakers of these languages now. They can become proud of who they are and what their cultural and linguistic heritage is. When we developed the first book in the knowledge language and it was launched to the community. Somebody picked up the book and gave a speech and he said, for years we've been following the white man like a dog yapping after the heels of somebody, because he had the books and reused his books. So we're equal to the Europeans. And I think this is also a very important thing that we through documenting the language through writing language down through writing down indigenous knowledge. We put them on the same level as languages of cultures who think they're very important. And allows this knowledge to be shared with people elsewhere in the world. Thanks Craig, this is I'm really glad that you brought this up some nice segue into our final discussion about the, the extinction of languages in Papua New Guinea and what can be done about it. Sakharappa I'd like to start with you. You've talked about before about the importance of language institutions. If you could just expand on that for us please and also just share with us briefly about the different stages of extinction that that the communities are experiencing at the moment. Yes, I'm trying to find out ways to save language and one of the ways that I think it's important to establish some kind of structure, basically to look after our many languages that we have and that can probably be easily done by creating a language Institute of some sort in Papua New Guinea. So that that Institute can generate probably research on the Nakula talk less languages on many of our languages at the moment. And as you said yes haphazard not control. We don't know who is getting what kind of information, and probably a structure like language Papua New Guinea Language Institute might be the way to get people, task people to do particular research and we have information with us and kept in that institute and maybe also students may be using that to do their PhDs and masters by using the Institute, and they gather information for us. And that extends our educational opportunities for young people, rather than just depending on universities to train language which we can't because of various restrictions funding and other things a number of porters of students coming to do linguistics at the university is very very small. So maybe finding another way an Institute which might give us a better idea better chance, we might have better resource. The government might give us a bit more resource because we are an Institute separate so we can conduct more research, especially targeting folklore language information. Language ecology, grammar of languages, we can do a lot of this if we have an Institute that controls this information, and most information we have may be kept in this institution for our younger generations and for other linguists, for other researchers and so on. So, so that's the kind of background I had in terms of talking about promoting the Institute, Language Institute in PNG. Thank you Sakarebe. Craig, I might bring you in here. I'd like to ask you your thoughts on how the government can contribute to preserving the languages. Is this just solely a responsibility of the Papua New Guinea government or are there others that can help? Well, Australia has a very important responsibility to Papua New Guinea because Papua New Guinea exists as a country because of Australian colonialism. So, in addition to what Sakarebe has said, and perhaps in support of what Sakarebe would like to be setting up with the Papua New Guinea Language Institute and to support the work at the University of Papua New Guinea where he is or the University of Guroka, which also has a linguistic program. I'd like to see the Australian government specifically give scholarships to young Papua New Guineans to do their master's degrees and PhDs in Australia in linguistics because Australia has very good linguistics programs. They're also very expensive linguistics programs. And in the overall scheme of Australian aid to Papua New Guinea, this would be a very small amount. And it would help to develop a core of Papua New Guinean linguists like Sakarebe and like Keelala, who are trained not only to educate people in Papua New Guinea but also elsewhere in the world. And that's where Lydia works at the University of Kelowna. It's a very good department of Papuan languages. And if you go there, you will not see one Melanesian person at all. But if you go to a Chinese language department or a Japanese or German language department, you'll see Germans and Chinese and Japanese people, you'll see speakers of those languages. And so I'd like to see Papua New Guineans working with linguistics not only in Papua New Guinea but also elsewhere in the world. We had a Brazilian researcher come to New Ireland, Claudio de Silva, and he was working with education and he made the comment that Papua New Guineans are much more aware with multiculturalism and colonialism than most people in the world. And this is a gift that Papua New Guineans should be able to share with people elsewhere in the world, like Australia, which sometimes has ethnic tensions or misunderstandings because of language. And so I'd like to see Papua New Guineans evolve much more academically outside of Papua New Guinea, as well as inside Papua New Guinea. Thanks, Craig. Clearly, education is coming up as a running theme tonight as well. Kalala, I'd like to ask you to talk a little bit more about how education can play a role in preserving languages in Papua New Guinea, and just how it can be better implemented. You talked before about how the challenges with the implementation at the moment, what can be done to make it better and more successful. I've seen so far as I go around to schools, I mean, in the time when bilingual education was in existence, I was carrying out the research in very certain schools in the country. So what, like I said previously, like it was not being implemented correctly, and I think that's why you're asking me what it can be done. So one is if we want to make sure that children are continuing to learn and we preserve the languages to these children, one of my recommendations is to reintroduce the bilingual education system in Papua New Guinea. This is one alternative, but if it is to be reintroduced back into the PNCS education system, it needs to, the approach needs to be very done in a way that it is actually useful. Just like I said previously, that it wasn't taught correctly, you know, there were no, it was not always the teacher who knows who knew the language of the child. So if it was to be reintroduced, the education, what is it, the authority who deal with teachers postings must make sure that their teachers are posted to schools where they know the language. When they teach they're breaching a ear, transitioning in ear tree, which is the breaching ear from a vernacular or topless to English, the teacher must be the speaker of the language, who knows the language of the child. So that's one. Another problem that I found was to do with the teacher training itself, teachers need to be trained in the, I think that is another area that needs to be looked at if we have, if we try to reintroduce this bilingual education in the country. There has to be a component in the teaching, teacher training curriculum, so that teachers are well versed on how to teach bilingual education, and I think that was something that was missing in the teacher training curriculum. So teachers were just like on a kind of situation, placed in there, but they didn't really know how to deal with children on how to actually teach them the transition period. So that is one. Okay, if it's not that I was suggesting earlier on, if it can be, it can be taught as a subject, just like, you know, one of the other foreign languages, if the education department does think that bilingual education is not, if we work again, then why not teach it as a subject, so that at least children who have now missed out or like who are now, who cannot speak the language itself, we still learn the language. So, in fact, what I found in my bilingual education research was that the, the bridging situation was only done for transitioning into English but there was no allowance for language preservation or continuity into the future. There was merely just to teach English. You see what I'm trying to say so like, there was a component in this whole bilingual transition program, what happened was like there was a certain percentage. For example, you start off, you come in at the transition period, maybe you start off with 90% or like maybe like 10% or 20% English, and 80% vernacular, and then as you go up the grade, the percentage reduces. So you go into the next grade and then maybe it's 60%, 40% vernacular until it's 100% English. I'm trying to explain something like that. So that is actually what the department of education was doing with regards to this bilingual education program in the country, but that was not implemented correctly simply because teachers need to undergo the specialized training in bilingual education to teach it well. So that is one, so I think I'm suggesting two things, either you bring the bilingual education or teach the language as a subject. Thank you all so much for your frank and thoughtful answers today. I really found it so inspirational. I do hope that our listeners at home will be encouraged to continue on with their local languages in the home. And perhaps for those that don't know another language like myself to go out and start learning. Kalala, Sakarepe, Lydia and Craig. Thanks again. That's all we have time for today. Thank you for your insights and to the audience at home for watching. This has been a special panel for the Lowy Institute's OSPNG network. And I'd like to thank my colleagues Josh Goading, Andrea Pollard and Shane McLeod for their assistance in producing this event. You can head to our website to view more of our events and podcasts. Thank you and goodbye.