Australian Language Silent for 100 Years Speaks Again

For the first time in over 100 years, the Bunurong language is being spoken on the lands around Port Phillip Bay in Australia where it originated.

Elder Aunty Gail Kunwarra Dawson, known in her community as the Black Swan, is part of a team making this remarkable awakening possible. Working with linguists and community members, she's helping piece together a language that colonization nearly erased.

The process is painstaking detective work. Linguist Josh Van de Ven and the Bunurong Land Council's language group are reconstructing the language syllable by syllable from 19th-century records scattered across Victoria and beyond.

Old accents, multiple spellings, and words misattributed to the wrong language create puzzles the team must carefully solve. They compare sounds from other First Nations languages and study how English speakers of the 1800s would have heard Bunurong words to reconstruct pronunciations as close as possible to the original.

Once they find a word, they bring it back to the Bunurong community to verify its meaning and context. The collaborative process ensures the language returns authentically.

Recent research revealed that Bunurong is far more distinct than previously thought. Only 30 percent of its vocabulary matches neighboring Woiwurrung, making the languages more different than English and French.

The language has unique characteristics, including consonant clusters that set it apart from languages further west in Victoria. These sounds connect to other Gippsland Indigenous languages through historical marriages between communities.

The Ripple Effect

The impact reaches beyond academic restoration. Community members now incorporate Bunurong into daily activities and events, speaking their ancestral tongue on their ancestral land.

When Aunty Gail recently completed an acknowledgement of country entirely in Bunurong, witnesses fell silent. Some community members became emotional, realizing they were hearing their language spoken on country for the first time in a century.

Parents now video their young children practicing words. Kids as young as two are learning the language their great-great-grandparents spoke.

The newly launched online dictionary will serve as an educational resource and reference for place naming. And while some words are lost forever, the community is creating new ones when needed.

When searching for the Bunurong word for penguin, a bird strongly associated with Phillip Island, an elder observed how the fathers care for eggs. They named it the mother-father bird, showing how the language can grow while honoring traditional ways of thinking.

Aunty Gail's excitement is contagious as she watches a new generation claim their linguistic heritage, one beautiful word at a time.