Status
Iwaidja is spoken by about 150 people in the community of Minjilang on Croker Island, alongside English, Kunwinjku and Maung. Maung is primarily spoken in the community of Warruwi on Goulburn Island, and it too has about 150 speakers. Both languages are still being learnt by children.
All the other Iwaidjan languages are close to extinction. In 1998, Amurdak had three remaining speakers, Garig and Ilgar three speakers between them, Marrgu one speaker, and Wurrugu one rememberer.
Read more about this topic: Iwaidjan Languages
Famous quotes containing the word status:
“The censorship method ... is that of handing the job over to some frail and erring mortal man, and making him omnipotent on the assumption that his official status will make him infallible and omniscient.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Recent studies that have investigated maternal satisfaction have found this to be a better prediction of mother-child interaction than work status alone. More important for the overall quality of interaction with their children than simply whether the mother works or not, these studies suggest, is how satisfied the mother is with her role as worker or homemaker. Satisfied women are consistently more warm, involved, playful, stimulating and effective with their children than unsatisfied women.”
—Alison Clarke-Stewart (20th century)
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)