IN the 1960s, when a young Swedish linguist, Nils Holmer, was researching Australian Aboriginal languages he was lucky enough to meet Biripi elder Eddie Lobban, the last known fully fluent speaker of Taree's local native tongue.
Quite a few other Biripi people were, and still are, conversant in single words and phrases but the language was largely unspoken by the time the academic and the elder sat down to record it.
Today in Purfleet, a very special event is taking place with the launch of a dictionary of the Gathang language, which comprises the dialects of a large group of Aboriginal people from Port Stephens to Port Macquarie, including Biripi and Worimi.
The dictionary is the result of a project funded through the Many Rivers Aboriginal Language Centre in Nambucca and the passionate work of the local Koori community but it was only able to come to fruition as the result of the work that Nils Holmer and Eddie Lobban were prescient enough to carry out 50 years ago.
The dictionary has been written by linguist and Nambucca resident, Amanda Lissarrague.
Jeremy Saunders, a Biripi man and local Aboriginal cultural heritage officer with the Forestry NSW, said it is hoped the dictionary will provide a strong foundation for a revival of the language in the future.
Mr Saunders, who will MC today's book launch, which begins at 10am at Purfleet Community Church, said the current project was not the first translation of the local language.
Mr Saunders' maternal grandfather, Bert Marr, translated the Bible's Psalms and Book of John in the 1930s but that work has since been lost.
The work done by Nils Holmer and Eddie Lobban was critical because Holmer did phonetic recordings of the discussions between the two and this has proved the key the success of the Gathang lkanguage project because it provided accurate pronunciations, Mr Saunders said.
"When we collaborated that work with anthropologists and archaeologists who've done similar work on other language over the years, we found we had a very reliable starting point.
"Because Aboriginal languages are oral languages, that is they are traditionally recorded in script but passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth, you often get variations in the way they're written in English.
"Nils Holmers' phonetic recordings meant that he was really able to capture the way the language was actually spoken and pronounced."
Mr Saunders said that Nils Holmer returned to Sweden after the work he did with Eddie Lobban but the Many Rivers Aboriginal Language Centre was able to contact his son and get permission to access his work.
The dictionary will be distributed among all local Aboriginal families and in schools and libraries for use as an educational resource.
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