Language and Culture of Australia - Essay Example

Crawford (2003, p. 2) stated that the Aboriginals, the first people in Australia, were mostly nomads who were constantly on the move to find their necessities: food and water. They were farmers and burning the native grass for re-growth was their common practice. They were a traditional race; caves and rocks were their temporary abode.

During the era of pre-European settlement in Australia, according to Crawford (2003, p. 38), they were approximately 500 000 Aboriginals, speaking about 2000-2500 different languages living in groups that had distinct languages and cultures, who identified themselves with the language they spoke. When the Indonesians (Macassans) came to the shore of this remote island, they brought with them goods: knives, blades, and fishing nets to trade for the local cucumbers and other goods. In this process, the Aboriginals picked up new words from the Indonesians and changes were inflicted on their dialect (Crawford, 2003 p. 43).

On 26th January 1788, England made its first settlement in Australia at Sydney Cove at Port Jackson (Walsh and Yallop, 1993, p. 33); this marked the beginning of a drastic change in the linguistic background and the cultural heritage of the indigenous people of the island. According to the authors, it was made a high-priority matter to establish a channel of communication between the colonizers and the Aboriginals, and subsequently, measures were taken to enhance the linguistic interaction between the two parties.

Banting (2002, p. 8-10) states that the impact of British Colonization on the Aboriginal land was colossal, many aboriginals, he says, were killed in the battles defending their land from the British or succumbed to the diseases brought on by the colonizers. He further stated that the natives who survived were taken prisoners and forced to work for the British. Furthermore, the Tasmanian Aboriginals were completely wiped off the center of the earth by the European settlements.

Crawford (2003, p. 43) states that the colonizers settled on the island by introducing a new language and a whole set of new technologies to the local inhabitants, as a result of which the lifestyle, as well as mindsets, were manipulated to suit the requirements of the existing situation. In this way, the rich cultural and spiritual background of the aboriginals received a severe blow and most of their traditions and rituals were eradicated in the process.  Moreover, Crawford reveals that during the 1800s, the Aboriginal children were placed as missionaries where they were only permitted to speak in English as per the British administration policy, which contributed, heavily to the loss of the traditional language.

There was a Gold Rush in Australia in 1851 when gold was discovered in the region. Almost 700,000 emigrants from the United States, China, England, Poland, and parts of Europe flocked to the country to find their fortune (Banting, 2002, p. 10). This must have contributed to the establishment of English as the language of expression in Australia since the new emigrants from different outlooks would have needed a common mode of communication and due to their proficiency in English, the language would have further reinforced its root in the Australian soil in this process.

Leitner (2004, p. 54) points out factors that accelerated the destruction of aboriginal habitat. He thinks that the intermingling of traditional multilingualism with the ‘intruding languages” was a chief reason for the demise of the ancient culture. Secondly, he contemplates that the shift to English, as well as the influence of other languages in the indigenous languages, also played a key role in the process; its continuous manipulation to make it meet communicative ends and the creation of contact languages resulted in the oppression of indigenous languages in the region.

Today, however, the Aboriginal living conditions in Australia have improved drastically, in 1967, Aboriginals were granted the right to vote and were included in the census, they are being now allotted funds from the Australian government for healthcare, education, and other necessities (Banting, 2002, p. 12).

In most Aboriginal communities at present, the children are made to learn English as a first language so that they face no hindrance in maintaining contact with their non-Aboriginal counterparts, in schools and other social places. Some families, however, have preserved their traditional language by keeping it in use, and have made English a second priority (Crawford, 2003, p. 44). Crawford further states that the Australian government is taking measures to preserve these traditional languages, which have suffered from contacts from other cultures; they have established language centers dedicated to the conservation of Aboriginal traditional languages. These centers are working for the cause by printing books and making audiotapes containing the language so that they can be saved from total extinction.