WEST AUSTRALIANA ABORIGINAL
Picture dictionary in English and Ngaanyatjarra. The Ngaanyatjarra Picture Dictionary provides a valuable educational resource for Ngaanyatjarra school children and their teachers, for Ngaanyatjarra speakers wanting to learn Ngaanyatjarra literacy, and for anyone wanting to learn something about the Ngaanyatjarra language. Approximately 400 illustrations and 580 Ngaanyatjarra keywords are included, as well as translations of Ngaanyatjarra sentences into English. A map of Ngaanyatjarra communities and surrounding areas is also included.
Linguist Kazuko Obata and literacy consultant Inge Kral worked closely with Ngaanyatjarra speakers to produce this literary resource based on aspects of the Ngaanyatjarra culture.

‘We feel proud to still hold on to our grandfathers’ and grandmothers’ country. This dictionary is for people, young people, and the young generation to learn our language, and also for children to rise up and learn our language so that they will keep holding our language and will not forget it,’ says Dorothy Ward, one of the Ngaanyatjarra contributors to the picture dictionary.

There are around 11 communities who still speak the Ngaanyatjarra dialect in the Central Desert region of Western Australia called the ‘Ngaanyatjarra Lands.’ This publication will be a valuable resource for Ngaanyatjarra school children adult literacy learners and their teachers.
Kazuko Obata arrived in Australia from Japan in 1991. She worked on her first language, Japanese, in order to understand why some aspects of English grammar is hard to learn for Japanese. This inspired her to study previously undescribed languages and wrote a PhD thesis on a grammar of Bilua, a language spoken in the Solomon Islands. In completing her PhD thesis, she decided to use her knowledge and skills for the maintenance of Indigenous languages and moved to a remote Aboriginal community, Warburton, WA, where she worked as a community linguist for the Ngaaanyatjarra language maintenance program.
xi, 160 p. : ill. ; 30 cm. #290423
Ngaanyatjarra language — Dictionaries | Picture dictionaries, Ngaanyatjarra. | English language — Dictionaries | Libraries – Reference materials – Dictionaries. | Ngaanyatjarra language (A38) (WA SG51-08)