The Influence of Indigenous Languages on World Englishes

Did you know?

The language that was spoken around Sydney by the early Australian indigenous was called ‘Dharuk‘… it’s influence on English is profound!

Dharuk, which is also referred to as ‘Sydney Language’ by some scholars, presents a vast array of modern (Australian) English words that stem from indigenous roots. Included are words such as Wombat, Dingo, Koala, Wallaby, Wallaroo, Waratah, Boomerang, Woomera, and Cooee!

Significantly most of the borrowed words are nouns! The aboriginal languages of the Americas also added to the English lexicon; e.g. search the contribution of the Algonquian people in the U.S.

Despite this seemingly significant contribution to world English one finds that, contrary to English exercising great borrowing power, the indigenous languages were often merely used to describe ‘things’ (flora & fauna, religious ceremony etc.). This demonstrates that the English speaking colonisers actually showed little interest in understanding the conceptual aspects of the indigenous cultures they ‘borrowed’ from.

This is slightly different in a country such as New Zealand in which the Maori speak one indigenous language (compared to the array of languages/dialects spoken by Australian Indigenous peoples), and hence wield more power through their native tongue. Therefore, when comparing the influence of Maori words in English (almost 800) to that of Australian Aboriginals (only about 450) there are ‘conceptual’ differences in the usage… A great tragedy of the colony of Australia and its enforced monolingual nature, when combined with the multiplicity of her indigenous languages, is a great loss of culture and language in spite of English ‘borrowings’…