A long-lost list of words from one Indigenous language, compiled by 19th-century English explorer Edward Eyre, has been rediscovered.
Caroline Hughes, who researches the Ngunnawal language of the Canberra region, made the find during a workshop last week.
The words, buried in a book held in Adelaide, were drawn to her attention by a relative she met while tracing her family history.
"She mentioned to me in an email last week that she'd found some words in the Adelaide museum," Ms Hughes said.
"We were able to make that connection and access that information here in Canberra at the National Library."
Today, iconic South Australian sites such as Lake Eyre and the Eyre Peninsula bear Edward Eyre's name.
But in the 1830s the explorer also spent time in what is now the Canberra region, where he recorded the local language.
"When anthropologists in the 1800s were speaking to our people, they took down words and interpreted what Ngunnawal people were saying," Ms Hughes said.
The list, with potentially dozens of previously lost words, will be analysed and compared with existing lexicons.
Languages once forbidden are revived
Australia is home to more than 250 Indigenous language groups.
Jane Simpson, of the Australian National University, said that after white settlement, many Indigenous Australians were encouraged to speak only English and forbidden from using their traditional words.
"That resulted in many, many languages no longer being spoken," Professor Simpson said.
This month the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) hosted a two-week workshop to help revive endangered languages at risk of dying out.
Institute researcher Doug Marmion said the aim was to "try to support that activity by helping people with access to materials held in our archives at AIATSIS and to give some training in how to do work on those materials, to analyse them and use them for language revival".
Finding identity through language
Researchers delving into different five language groups attended the workshop.
They focused on the languages and people of the Yorta Yorta (in NSW/Victoria), Wergaia (Victoria), Anaiwan (northern NSW), Wakka Wakka (Queensland) and Ngunnawal (ACT/NSW).
Fred Cobbo, who researches the Wakka Wakka language in south-east Queensland, said the workshop was empowering.
"Language is the missing link in my identity as an Aboriginal Australian," he said.
"I want to hopefully create a book and put it into schools back home on my country and … re-love, rebuild that energy, rebuild that language within the schools, just to create a space for the kids to actually learn our Wakka language as a second language."
A recent study undertaken by a group of researchers, including the ANU's Nicholas Evans, found more than half of about 7,000 now living languages around the world are endangered.
According to AIATSIS, about 90 per cent of Australia's Indigenous languages are endangered and only 13 traditional Indigenous languages are still spoken by children.
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