Welcome to Wadeye - an English language lesson

Please don't bring ganja into our town.
Those that smoke ganja are stupid and are losers.
Iced Earth.
Megadeth.
Judas Priest.
Lance 'Buddy' Franklin.
Pantera.

The slogans are as you are welcomed into Wadeye (or Port Keats depending who you are) and the later single or double words are what is written all over a lot of the houses, inside and out.

The thing is, for all the languages in the area, I was amazed that the graffiti is written entirely in English. Either English or some form of code of English. Even though no one speaks it amongst their own clans, it is the only form of anger expression with graffiti amongst Wadeye's young. I guess if you learn your language phonetically and it isn't used anywhere except to communicate, why would you need to write it down anywhere? English isn't used often amongst clans, but it is used in this instance.

Maybe I should explain a bit better. There are 7 different language groups, with the most common being Murrinh-Patha. The other 6 are slowly dying out with the younger generation because they are not being taught in schools, or even amongst their own clans. It is actually quite a sad state of affairs.

English is spoken well with most of the tribes but they don't speak it every day. It is more of a second, third or even fourth language for a lot of them. From what I have seen, they only speak it with white fellas, since none of us can speak any of their languages ('though I am trying).

So for them to be writing their anger on the walls of their homes in English, really dumbfounded me. It was only in thinking why that would be the case was why I had come up with what I did.

To be honest, I feel really bad for not being able to speak their language and speaking to them in English. I don't mean to, but what choice do we have when there isn't any good way of learning it? I can only keep trying to learn it little bits at a time to use at later stages, I guess.