Language Wiradjuri was a fully spoken community language up until at least 1900, (3). In the seventy years of settlement prior to this many European settlers learnt, used and/or recorded the local language. Settlers almost exclusively adopted Wiradjuri names for their runs and stations. The children of early settlers often mixed with local Wiradjuri learning the language and customs. These included Matt Best (son of Robert Best, Wagga Wagga), Richard Cox (Livingstone Gully), Mary Gilmore and her father (Brucedale), James Bourke (Gumly Gumly) and James Baylis (son of Henry Baylis, first Police Magistrate of Wagga Wagga). Local recorders of the Wiradjuri language, consisting mainly of word lists and their meanings, were Henry Withers (1878 - 140 words), Henry Baylis (1887 - 112 words) and James Baylis (1927 - 330 regional Wiradjuri words). James Baylis also compiled, over many years, a list of some 1500 Aboriginal words of which, in addition to the 1927 list, only 30 or so appear to be local Wiradjuri. His hand written manuscript is still held by the Museum of the Riverina. Wagga Wagga Council administrators and community people have added to this list over the last 60 years. (Robert Emblem, Norm Grinton, Brian Andrews and Bob Palmer). The list now consists of some 1800 words and short phrases, (112). Further afield an estimated 20 recordings of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and wisdom of the Wiradjuri language were compiled by explorers, squatters and station owners, administrators, surveyors, missionaries and scholars in the first 100 years of European settlement, (93, 84). These recordings are collectively referred to as “Whitefella Wiradjuri” to distinguish it from Traditional (or pure) Wiradjuri and Restored Wiradjuri. Variations in pronunciation, interpretations of sounds heard, method of recording and the dialect being heard by the recorders all contributed to inaccuracies. Significant and most reliable of the recorders include; · James Gunther - Grammar, Phrases, Sentences and Vocabulary (from 1837 on Published 1892), (113). · Horatio Hale - Sentences (1846), (114). · C. Richards - Pronunciation, Phrases, Sentences 3000 word vocabulary, explanations of Wiradjuri customs, knowledge, beliefs and wisdom within the language (1902-03) · R.H. Matthews - Grammar (1905), (115). The above references, together with contributions from the few remaining current day speakers of Wiradjuri and earlier tape recordings of speakers, form the basis for the restoration of the Wiradjuri Language Development Program. From 1900 to 1940 those that spoke the Wiradjuri language became fewer and fewer (3). The handful of local white people, who had learnt the language primarily as children, had passed on, (with the exception of Mary Gilmore who died in 1962 aged 97).
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