Australian Kriol language

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Kriol
Spoken in:	Australia
Region:	Roper River, Katherine areas, Ngukurr, Northern Territory; Kimberley region of Western Australia; Gulf Country, Lower Cape York Peninsula, Queensland
Total speakers:	10,000 (1991 Borneman)
Language family:	creole language from contact of Australian Aboriginal languages with English
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	none
ISO 639-2:	cpe
ISO/FDIS 639-3:	rop
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

Kriol is an Australian creole language that developed out of the contact between European settlers and the indigenous people in the northern regions of Australia, presently spoken by about 30,000 people. Despite the language's similarities to English in vocabulary, it has a distinct syntactic structure and grammar, and is, therefore, a language in its own right.

Contents 1 History 2 Varieties of Kriol 3 Current issues 4 Reference

[edit] History

European settlement in the Northern Territory was attempted over a period of about forty years. Settlement finally succeeded in 1870, and an influx of both English and Chinese speakers followed. In order to communicate between these two groups and the local Aboriginal people, pidgins developed throughout the territory. By 1900, Northern Territory Pidgin English (NTPE) was widespread and well understood.

For NTPE to creolise (to move beyond being a convenient pidgin and become a fully independent language), a new community would have to develop where it would became the primary language for all speakers. This first occurred in the Roper River Mission (Ngukurr), where cattle stations were established and a township developed.

During this period, the relations between the native and European peoples were strained: “a war of extermination” was declared by the settlers, and the Aboriginal people fiercely defended their lands. However, the control of lands was eventually seized by the settlers when a cattle company acquired much of the area. The settlers became more determined to take full control of the land from the native people, and carried out a campaign to do so.

The resettlements and land seizures nearly annihilated the indigenous population, and also provided one major factor in the development of the creole: drastic social change accompanied by severe communication difficulties.

The second requirement for the development of the creole was a new community, which came about when Anglican missionaries set up a refuge in the Roper River region in 1908. This brought together around 200 people from 8 different aboriginal ethnic groups, who spoke different native languages. Although the adults were multilingual, due to frequent meetings and ceremonies, the children had yet to acquire their native language skills, so they used the only common language they had: the NTPE. In their lifetime, these children were almost totally responsible for developing the pidgin into a full language.

Although the relations between the missionaries and Aboriginal people were friendly, the missions were not responsible for the development of Kriol. In fact, they tried to introduce Standard English as the official language for the mission, and although the Aboriginal children used this language in class, and to the missionaries themselves, Kriol flourished.

Kriol was not formally recognised as a language until the 1970s, mostly due to linguistic snobbery, that regarded it as a bastardisation of English rather than a language in its own right.

[edit] Varieties of Kriol

Kriol is very widely spoken in the Katherine area, but there are minor differences between the varieties of Kriol spoken in particular areas, and certain speakers of Kriol prefer to refer to their language by their unique name. However, linguistically the varieties are quite similar. Debate is ongoing about whether the varieties should be named differently, to highlight their different social significance, or whether they should all be lumped into one big category of Kriol. The differences are not actually that large: Mari Rhydwen compares the distinction to the distinction between American and British/Australian spelling.

Roper River (Ngukuur) Kriol is also spoken in Barunga, and in the Daly River area they speak a variety that is mutually intelligible to these people, but Daly River speakers do not consider themselves to be Kriol speakers. There is the question of whether the varieties should be understood as different forms of Kriol to strengthen the identities of the respective regions; or whether they all should be seen as Kriol, and potentially have a better chance of funding for bilingual education programs.

[edit] Current issues

A problem facing many communities in Northern Australia is that creole-speaking children are treated as though they speak English, but speak it badly; so they do not receive education in English as a second language. On the other hand, because they are not regarded as having a native mother tongue, they are denied access to education in their traditional language.

The only official bilingual language program in Kriol is at Barunga, which was established during the Whitlam government, and has successfully included Kriol as both a medium and object of study. Funding is scarce for any further development of programmes. Although Kriol is widely spoken, its literal translation is minimal, with the exception of the Bible. This means that literacy rates of Kriol are quite low. Apart from practical implications of this, especially if English literacy is also low (i.e. written communication, education opportunities), it means that traditional stories are either not recorded in written form, or the Ngukurr people must rely on texts from Barunga, which may lessen the identity distinction between the two groups. However, Aboriginal cultures are not traditionally rooted in written records, so the lack of written versions of texts may be a function of the oral nature of Aboriginal storytelling.

[edit] Reference

• Harris, John (1993) Losing and gaining a language : the story of Kriol in the Northern Territory. In Walsh, M & Yallop, C (Eds) Language and culture in Aboriginal Australia; Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.