ARDS at the Puliima Language and Technology Conference:

Some of our team members attended the epic Puliima Language and Technology conference at the Darwin Convention Centre in August. Puliima brought together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander language workers from around Australia to share workshop sessions and presentations, including an ARDS presentation on our upcoming Rumbalpuy Dictionary App.

There is a lot of interest in the app as it is one of the biggest Aboriginal language apps that has been made, and certainly the biggest resource in anatomy that is available in an Australian Aboriginal language. Our team demonstrated the features of the app, using Djambarrpuyŋu, Dhaŋu’mi and English throughout the presentation, and spoke about how Yolŋu families have ways of talking about health and the body that are not yet contained in this app.

In the workshop sessions, we learned about morphology and how words in different languages change shape depending on how we use them. It was fun to see other people’s languages on the whiteboard and our team enjoyed sharing examples from Djambarrpuyŋu grammar. 

Photo: The ARDS team at PULiiMA 2019 (from left: Gawura Waṉambi, Salome Harris, Joy Bulkanhawuy, Yinin Dhurrkay and Hannah Harper.