Literacy work in the Red Centre

I guess they call it the Red Centre for a reason - below is a satellite image of where I went in December 2017.

Ngaanyatjarra Communities

At the end of November, I flew to Alice Springs and drove out to a number of Ngaanyatjarra communities across the WA border with a Wycliffe worker named Jan. She has been working in the communities for over 25 years helping people with literacy and encouraging people to read the Bible in their own language. Jan used to live in Blackstone and usually stays for a few months at a time, this trip was just to get a few things done and let people know she was still around and would be back the following year. It was great to visit so many communities and I got to see what literacy work is like and learn from Jan’s experiences and wisdom. Not speaking Ngaanyatjarra, I was rather useless though, as that's what everyone was speaking - including the kids.

Please pray that the Ngaanyatjarra people will be transformed by the word of God!

Evening fellowship

The language

Ngaanyatjarra is the name of the language, and it literally means ‘having-ngaanya’. So what’s ngaanya? It’s their word for ‘this’ and is one of the words that distinguishes it from a neighbouring dialect called Ngaatjatjarra, which uses ‘ngaatja’ for ‘this’.

There are multiple sounds in Nyaanyatjarra that are not in English, so I still haven’t even mastered saying the language name! The alphabet uses digraphs, two letters together, for many single sounds - like English has ‘sh’ and ‘th’. There are five digraphs just in the name of the language.

ng – is the ng in sing. Can you say it at the beginning of a word? Try saying or singing ‘sing a song’ and changing it to ‘see nga song’ aa –  is a long ‘a’, like in car (for Australians). ny – is a dental. It’s similar to ‘n’ but you need to slide your tongue forward so the tip is on the edge of your teeth. Pretend you are about the say ‘th’, or smile and stick your tongue out slightly, and then say ‘nice’ without bringing your tongue back in for the ‘n’. tj – is also a dental, with your tongue on your top teeth. But unlike ‘t’ in English it doesn’t have a puff of air with it (aspiration), so it sounds more like ‘d’, or the t in stop. rr – is a flap or rolled ‘r’. If you can’t roll your ‘r’ try just flapping your tongue against the top of your mouth, like someone might when they say ‘water’ really quickly (so it sounds like ward-ah).

So can you say Ngaanyatjarra now? You then need to say it about 10 times faster to sound local!

A real experience

Playing music at Singing Rock

Sucking on the sweet nectar of honey grevillea