First Languages Australia teams up with Snapchat to teach Wiradjuri to younger generations

news, local-news, When Geoff Anderson started going into classrooms in Parkes to teach the Wiradjuri language to primary school students, he realised what he’d been missing all his life. “As soon as I walked into that room I realised, I’m home,” he said. “It just made me feel so good to share what it did for me … and now it’s in all schools in Parkes.” Now Mr Anderson, a Wiradjuri descendant and First Languages Australia (FLA) director, is helping to take the language to even more young people with the launch of a new Wiradjuri Snapchat lens on Monday. The Wiradjuri language learning ‘lens’, one of four Indigenous languages featured on Snapchat as part of International Mother Language Day on February 21, uses augmented reality and machine learning to identify different objects and display their name in Wiradjuri. Young First Nations people worked with Snapchat developers on between twenty and thirty words in each language, including their phonetic pronunciation, mostly for common objects such as trees and animals. Mr Anderson said he hopes the Snapchat lens will help keep students engaged with Wiradjuri language when they reach their teen years. “You know what it’s like with teenagers: if their…
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