Widders, Terry --- "Book Review- Australian Aboriginal Languages - A General Introduction" [1983] AboriginalLawB 36; (1983) 1(9) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 12

• Book Review – Australian Aboriginal Languages-A General Introduction

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Book Review –

Australian Aboriginal Languages -
A General Introduction

Barry J. Blake

Angus & Robertson

Reviewed by Terry Widders

As the author states in the preface "this book contains answers to the questions most commonly asked" about Aboriginal languages. Such questions have included, for example, those which ask: "Are they simple? Do they have many words? Is there more than one Aboriginal language? Do they have grammer?"

In answering such general and often simplistic questions the author quite often has to resort to general and, occasionally, simplistic answers. The book, therefore, is of most use to those who seek such answers to such questions and should meet a felt demand at least.

This rather short book (134 pages which includes two appendices) seems to be pitched at a readership wishing to acquire an appreciation and some understanding of Australian languages and their current cultural (e.g.: economic, political and linguistic) contexts. I have reservations that this can be done adequately by the book but it may well start some readers along that path and therein be the potential strength of this work.

Given (and accepting) the shortcomings of its generalist approach there are however, one or two points I should carp about. One is (p.4) the unqualified assertion that in 1788 there were 300,000 Aborigines organised into "roughly 600 tribes with an average of 500 members each". Did they (the "tribes") all wear different uniforms, too? Munta!. This population/tribe structure formula is not only the statistical figment of the anthropological imagination, but is also bullshit. It should not have been repeated so unreservedly here. Another concerns the bilingual education programme (p.76). The brief account would leave the reader thinking the programme began without political prompting (from the '72 - '75 Labor government) and continues with unqualified support from education departments. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even now it has a very limited role (the first 3 years of primary school) but at least this is some support in resisting the regomonic tendency of the otherwise English - language based curriculum.

This book, remember, attempts answers to "commonly asked questions"; do not seek answers to uncommonly asked questions within its pages.