So much of it has been lost too. We could do better, though. Teaching what we can would at least teach the general skill of learning languages.
Indonesian is an underrepresented option in my opinion. They’re neighbours and the language is relatively easy. Couldn’t hurt to improve relations a bit. Might make a better impression during the customary pilgrimage to Bali.
Same with Te Reo in NZ, it’s kind of standardized now but when I was a kid living in the BoP I learnt a lot of Maori but when we moved to the south island the dialect was quite different so I lost a lot through atrophy.
I always thought it was a bit harder in Australia, given that the language changes so much across such small distances.
So much of it has been lost too. We could do better, though. Teaching what we can would at least teach the general skill of learning languages.
Indonesian is an underrepresented option in my opinion. They’re neighbours and the language is relatively easy. Couldn’t hurt to improve relations a bit. Might make a better impression during the customary pilgrimage to Bali.
Same with Te Reo in NZ, it’s kind of standardized now but when I was a kid living in the BoP I learnt a lot of Maori but when we moved to the south island the dialect was quite different so I lost a lot through atrophy.
There are something like 50 different indigenous languages across Australia. That makes it pretty hard to standardise one.