Screenshot of Iwaidja app.
One of the world's most endangered languages is to be brought into the digital age through the first phone app designed specifically for the documentation of an Australian Indigenous language. The Ma! Iwaidja (pronounced ' ee-WHY-jah ') smartphone app has been developed as part of the Minjilang Endangered Languages Publication Project. The project team, based on Croker Island in remote Northwestern Arnhem Land, worked with Mr Bruce Birch, a linguist from the School of Culture, History and Language in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific to develop the app. The app includes a 1,500-entry English-Iwaidja dictionary with audio, a 450-entry phrase book, a 'WordMaker' allowing users to conjugate verbs and construct short phrases, and an information section about Iwaidja and other endangered languages of Arnhem Land. Mr Birch said that use of the app as a reference tool was far from the whole story. "The app also gives users the ability to record new dictionary or phrase book entries using the on-board recording capability of their phones, so people can customise their app by including, for example, new phrases which are particularly useful to them. "And with the completion of the next phase of development (which is currently underway) the app will become the world's most user-friendly language documentation tool.
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