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Lower Arrernte, also known as Lower Southern Arrernte, Lower Aranda, Lower Southern Aranda and Alenjerntarrpe, is an extinct Arandic language (but not of the Arrernte language group). Lower Arrernte was spoken in the Finke River area, near the Overland Telegraph Line station at Charlotte Waters, just north of the border between South Australia and the Northern Territory, and in the Dalhousie area in S.A. It had been extinct since the last speaker died in 2011, but there is now a language revival project under way.

Extinction

By 2007 only one person was known to speak it fluently enough to hold a conversation: Brownie Doolan Perrurle (1918–2011), known as Brownie Doolan. Gavan Breen, an Australian linguist, was able to compile a dictionary of Lower Arrernte comprising about a thousand words by recording talks he had with Doolan.

Doolan's mother Fanny, father Paddy and grandmother, who lived south of the small settlement at Finke/Aputula in the Northern Territory, near Mt Dare in South Australia, spoke the language. After a stint as a stockman on the Andado station in the mid-1940s, Doolan became a tracker for both Finke and Kulgera police. Doolan and his wife Biddy are recorded in 1960s censuses of Finke, with Brownie recorded as a tracker, and of the Purula group of Aranda people. When Doolan died in 2011, the language was rendered extinct.

Language revival

As of 2020, Lower Southern Arrernte is one of 20 languages prioritised as part of the Priority Languages Support Project, being undertaken by First Languages Australia and funded by the Department of Communications and the Arts. The project aims to "identify and document critically-endangered languages — those languages for which little or no documentation exists, where no recordings have previously been made, but where there are living speakers".

References

1. Lower Arrernte at Ethnologue (25th ed., 2022)
2. C29 Lower Arrernte at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
3. "C29: Lower Arrernte". Austlang. Retrieved 11 June 2019.
4. ^ Kearney, Simon (20 September 2007). "Another language faces sunset in dead centre". The Australian. Archived from the original on 14 October 2011.NOTE: Incorrect reporting of years of his two occupations, as 1925 and 1940.
5. ^ Mackett, Paul (2009). "Andado Station 1943 - 1969". From:National Archives of Australia, Darwin Office Series NTAC1976/5, Item 1963/465: Andado Station. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
6. Mackett, Paul (2003). "Finke 1963-1968". From:National Archives of Australia, Darwin Office CRS E944/0, Finke Township CA 7112 ATSIC Northern Territory State Office Aboriginal Population Records Census Results for Finke for (1) 22. 8.1963 (2) 20. 3.1965 (3) 14.10.1965 Finke Township (4)6. 6.1966 Finke Township (5) 23. 7.1968 Finke Township. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
7. Parnell, Sean (March 2011). "Brownie Doolan – the end of an era" (PDF). Northern Territory Police News. Boo Design, for NT Police Assocn: 13. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
8. "Priority Languages Support Project". First Languages Australia. Retrieved 13 January 2020.

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