Kaurna+language

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http://www.kaurnaplacenames.com/index.php This site, organised at the University of Adelaide, explains the Kaurna names and pronunciation of places around Adelaide

Please click here for a link to a site from the Adelaide City Council giving meanings of Kaurna place names around Adelaide

C. G. Teichelmann and C. W. Sch**ü**rmann were German Lutheran missionaries who set up a school for Aboriginal children on the banks of the River Torrens at a place called Piltawodli. The Red Ochre Grill is close to where the school used to be. Sch**ü**rmann in particular spent time living with the Kaurna people, moving around the plains with them and learning their customs and language. He and Teichelmann published //Outlines of a Grammar: Vocabulary and Phraseology of the Aboriginal Language of South Australia// in 1840. It contained some 2000 words of the Kaurna language. The dictionary and grammar are still used as a basis for the text books written to teach the Kaurna language today.

The Kaurna children at Piltawodli were taught in their own language. They learned to write the Kaurna language using English copperplate hand-writing. On 8th September 2014, three letters written in Kaurna by children (two boys and one girl) at the Piltawodli School to the Dresden Missionary Society in Germany were presented to the rare book collection of the Barr-Smith Library at the University of Adelaide. Below is a photograph of the handover ceremony. Samples of these letters are shown on the Adelaide City Council website shown above. The letters were significant for several reasons.
 * They were written in the Kaurna language, at a time when most colonials were forcing people (like the Welsh) to speak and write only in English.
 * The beautiful hand-writing shows how skilled the young writers were.
 * The letters are thanking the Dresden mission for toys and asking them please to send more. (Children are the same in every age!)
 * The letters are the oldest example in the world of the Kaurna language.
 * [[image:kaurna handover 2.jpg]] ||
 * Handover ceremony of the letters written by the Kaurna children at Piltawodli in the 1840s ||

Here are some pages from the C. G. Teichelmann and C. W. Sch**ü**rmann dictionary. It is important to remember that this dictionary was compiled by white Christian colonists. But they spent time living among the Kaurna people and spoke in the defence of many of them who were in trouble with the law. Their connection with the Kaurna people was possibly stronger than that of any other colonists of the time.


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 * [[image:scan0034a.jpg width="800" height="626"]] ||
 * [[image:scan0035a.jpg width="800" height="626"]] ||