Word Up

For Word Up this week Ebony Joachim shares a word that is special, not just to Yorta Yorta mob, but also to her because of the people that have passed on in her life.

Yugambeh linguist Shaun Davies delves into the language name itself and the power of names.

Throughout March, Yugambeh linguist Shaun Davies has been delving into the nuance of his language.

This week his word selection has been inspired by our previous guest, Lorna Munro.

Linguist and Yugambeh man Shaun Davies shares a word you may have come across before but as Shaun explains when you look at the formation of the word it goes much deeper.

Yugambeh linguist Shaun Davies shares a word that his old people created in the early days of colonisation.

Poet and podcaster Lorna Munro's passion for language has led her to understand the origin of words that she used every day, without knowing they were indeed Wiradjuri – words like nyin – for grandmother, which translates to ‘heart’.

Her last word is not so much a word as a conjugation, a Wiradjuri term widely spoken in Aboriginal English, but which is now known across Australia.

Words are something Lorna Munro knows all about — her poetry is widely published, and she’s even translated the King’s speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V into Wiradjuri, the language of the central west of New South Wales.

For Word Up this week, she shares a single word that can act as a greeting, ask a question and lay down a philosophical challenge.

Lorna Munro has spent more than half her life engaged in a long research project, to discover how even a monosyllable — a familial term like ‘nan’ — holds a key to understanding how the ancestors thought, and more than that their worldview.

They say some babies grow into their names.

Meanwhile others fully inhabit the name their parents choose, as if it was ordained to be so before they were born.

That’s what Lorna Munro found when she named her son a particularly beautiful word in Gomeroi, her father’s language.

Poet and podcaster Lorna Munro explains how meaning and a particular worldview is embedded, and embodied, in the Gomeroi word 'yilaalu'.