A 500-page dictionary to preserve a recently dead language

The two greatest collaborators of Jean-Christophe Verstraete, a linguistics professor at a Belgian university, dedicated their last years to helping him in a task that only they, worldwide, could carry out: to preserve for posterity his language, the umpithamu, a language of the Australian aborigines.

The women, the last native speakers, died in 2009 and 2012, but by then they had already contributed in part to the 500 pages of a book and an audio app with the pronunciation of many words that Verstraete has now completed. 

Umpithamu is (or was) one of the five languages ​​spoken by the Lama Lama people in the Cape York area of ​​northeastern Australia.

Although some members of that ethnic group can still understand the language, including the children of the last two deceased speakers, two sisters, it is no longer used in daily conversation,

"They knew this was important," said the researcher, who lived with the two sisters, whom he ended up calling 'amitha' ("mother" in his language).

"The two sisters spoke it to each other all the time and also to their children, who responded to them in English."

For the researcher, who works for the KU Leuven University in Leuven (Belgium), several factors were conspired in the disappearance of the language.

Among them, a government policy that discouraged use: of some 250 Australian Aboriginal languages, only a dozen are still in use today.

In the 1960s, the Lama Lama were expelled from their lands and forced to live on reservations.

Little by little, following new policies of the Australian Government, they managed to return little by little to their area of ​​origin.

From their culture, the dictionary will now remain.

"It is a form of inheritance," says Verstraete.

"There are 600 copies for the [lama lama] community. It is a way of transmitting their language to their descendants," he says.

A niece of the sisters, Elaine Liddy, who works as a cultural agent, says she was moved by the publication of the dictionary.

"Neither I, nor my relatives, nor the younger generations have been taught the language. Our language is English."