This is actually word!!

I have been trying to learn Arrernte for the last couple of months. Unfortunately I can not go to classes as I work on the same night they are on so I bought myself “A learner’s guide to Eastern and Central Arrernte” book and CD and have been trying to spend a couple of hours a week. I am usually unsure if this type of learning works but I seem to be proceeding as fast, if not faster than my friend who is attending the class.

Arrernte is a pretty hard language to learn. Words like the word above highlight the difficulty in learning the pronunciation but believe it or not I seem to be getting my head around all that. What is hardest is that it is so hard to translate most things directly. The Arrernte people had/have such a different way of understanding things and therfore communicating to the way we do that trying to put anything into a sentence that makes sense to them is almost impossible I discover each time I translate what I have learned into something I can say to my Arrernte friends.

It is good to be learning Arrernte. I don’t think I’ll ever speak it fluently but it sure teaches me a lot about the culture and language learning. Also, so many other indigenous languages from here and around the world have been lost it is exciting to me that some including Arrernte have survived. And with only 2000 or so speakers left in Central Australia if it is to survive then other people have to start learning it. Funny though the other two languages that I speak are spoken by millions and millions of people whereas this one only 2000.