Question from one indigenous admin assistant to another, overheard in the DAC main office this afternoon:
"How do you spell 'corroboree'?"
"C-R-O..."
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
About Me
Blogs you should read
- That Munanga Linguist
- Finding a Voice
- Anggarrgoon
- Transient Languages and Cultures
- matjjin-nehen
- ¡Pérez Sez!
- urban linguist
- Stefanie's Weblog
- Indigenous Language SPEAK
- Iced-Tee
- Change Junkies
- Hoyden About Town
- Katherine's Diary
- Language Log
- Duffy Writes
- living in the south pacific
- a very big adventure
- Travel around Katherine
Blog Archive
-
►
2008
(67)
-
►
May
(19)
- Which language would that be?
- The Linguists heart's NY
- The tribulations of writing a PhD on an endangered...
- Heads up
- Parse and discuss
- Tips on reducing your language footprint #2
- More language footprints
- Via Perez comes news of a Kimberley mining company...
- Tips on reducing your language footprint #1
- Meta-Aboriginality?
- The joys of working on endangered languages #2
- Sad News
- The pitfalls of working on endangered languages #4...
- Language Footprint
- Im pappap fo thet yem
- The pitfalls of working on endangered languages #3...
- Erdős number in linguistics
- Endangered languages on Facebook and in films
- Posting vicariously
-
►
May
(19)
7 comments:
I was wondering this myself recently,as I distincly remember reading a few variants.
Corpus.google.com, as I now prefer to call it, clearly shows 'Corroboree' to be the correct spelling, but also shows that many people cannot spell it, including something called Corrobboree College, which is almost entirely consistent apart from the browser title ('Corroborree').
All 7 other permutations occur, in differing amounts, ranging from 4 (Corobborree) to 13,500 (Corroborree).
In case you were wondering, 'Corroboree' returns 403,000 hits.
Whoa, this word is beginning to annoy me now.
Thanks aidhoss, very interesting. I have absolutely no idea now how to spell 'didjeridu', given my approach to spelling Aboriginal language words has noww been so heavily influenced by phonemic alphabets - in this particular case, Kriol. Care to provide another summary??
kaman na mami!
maitbi yu garrim samting bla dalim mela bla yu wek... yu nomo jidanabat oldei la kemp! dalim mela stori!
wamut.
Well, 'didgeridoo' is the 'correct' English spellng, but it seems allowable variations are 'dj' for 'dg', and of course, 'u' for 'oo'. I personally prefer 'didjeridu', since, as you point out, it reflects a fast-emerging, Australian orthographical standard. Something we should aspire to, even if it is impossible. (Apparently AIATSIS reckon 'didjeridu' is the new 'correct' spelling. Hurrah! Vindication!)
I stumbled upon a website from Perth that sells dijeridus online. They have a page detailing a few different language names for the didj.
I was going to go on a massive rant about it (Have a look, you'll see what i mean), but it was too long for a comment (bad blog etiquette), I'll save it for a post.
speaking of which, when are you going to start posting? hope that thesis is ticking over nicely...
Many english dictionary spellings could be open to discussion, especially if you recognise the simple fact of history being written by the conquerors.
Does it mean that I need to have a real academic/anthropologist (AIATSIS), to then change the spelling of all the anglicised aboriginal dialects?
Post a Comment