Carl Strehlow's 1909 comparative heritage dictionary : an Aranda, German, Loritja and Dieri to English dictionary with introductory essays / transcribed and translated from the German by Anna Kenny ; translated from Aranda and Loritja to English by the Inkamala families and members of the Western Aranda community.

Description based on print version record.

Intro; Disclaimer; Abbreviations; Foreword; Preface and acknowledgements; Contributors; 1. A heritage dictionary; 2. Working on the dictionary; 3. Rella nunaka inguia-our old people; 4. The unpublished manuscript; 5. Assessing Carl Strehlow's dictionary as linguistic description: Present value and future potential; 6. The Mission Orthography in Carl Strehlow's dictionary; References; Carl Strehlow's 1909 Comparative Heritage Dictionary; Select index

An excellent heritage dictionary is a cultural foundation stone for any people. This translation of Lutheran missionary Carl Strehlow's previously unpublished comparative Aranda-Luritja dictionary from German into English is one such dictionary. Building on the work of A.H. Kempe, his predecessor at the Hermannsburg mission, Carl Strehlow had over 7,600 entries at the time of his death in 1922, making it by far the largest dictionary for any Aboriginal language up until the present. It was a comparative dictionary because he wanted to show that Aranda and Luritja were two distinct languages, although the people were neighbours. The enormously painstaking work of transcribing the original manuscript handwritten in four languages, Aranda, Luritja, German and some Dieri, as well as sections in an old form of German shorthand, has been carried out by Dr Anna Kenny. As a native German speaker, she has also translated Carl Strehlow's German glosses into English, checking many of the translations in close collaboration with people whose mother tongue is Aranda and/or Luritja, in particular Rhonda Inkamala and her parents the late Davie Inkamala and Trudy Inkamala.

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