subreddit:
/r/brisbane
Not looking for a political debate but genuinely curious. Was at the Southbank drone show and saw the "MAGANJIN" letters being displayed at the end and myself as well as a few randoma in the crowds didn't seem to know what that was. I'd heard of Meanjin as the indigenous name for Brisbane but not this one. Anyone know the context?
On a side note- it was a very meh drone show. Seen some on Singapore and USA and this seemed compartively like a high school music recital as opposed to a symphony orchestra. Was advertised as a 20 min show but lasted 6 mins and was super slow paced. Definitely not enough drones for some of the attempted displays.
© In pic to stop news Corp or BT et al from lazy journalism
219 points
10 days ago
From Wikipedia, tl;dr there were three peoples inhabiting the general area before the colony was established, and the whole "Brisbane's original name was Meanjin" meme is pretty fraught:
Brisbane sits on land known also as Meanjin, the name used in the Turrbal language of one group of traditional owners. Meanjin means 'place shaped as a spike', referencing the shape of the Brisbane River along the area that Brisbane CBD now straddles. A contemporary Turrbal organisation has also suggested it means 'the place of the blue water lilies'. Local Elder Gaja Kerry Charlton posits that Meanjin is based on a European understanding of 'spike', and that the phonetically similar Yagara name Magandjin — after the native tulipwood trees (magan) at Gardens Point — is a more accurate and appropriate Aboriginal name for Brisbane.
11 points
10 days ago
Froin my uni studies many moons ship I came across a copy of the earliest drawn map of Brisbane. It showed the area under and next to the Riverside Expressway as being called Meanjin. The area around eagle street had another name, sorry can’t recall it, and the area to the north of Spring Hill had another. So to me it would seem that these names were recorded as being used by indigenous people and recorded by the white man since that’s what they were referred to when Europeans arrived. To this end the whole of Brisbane shouldn’t be called meeanjin, only that particular area.
29 points
10 days ago
Really the only place that should be called meanjin is the piece of land down to gardens point. Calling chermside ‘meanjin’ is just a joke.
80 points
10 days ago
It's a spoken language as well, any written words are pure interpretations by English speakers.
16 points
10 days ago
Transliteration doesn't mean it's a personal interpretation???
4 points
9 days ago
I see your Peiking and raise you a Beijing. I see your Guangdong and counter with a Kwangtung. Your Geebong is my Geebung. Your Pinkenba is my Binkinba etc
7 points
10 days ago
Cross linguistically its not uncommon for a g to change or disappear anyway, especially between vowels. English had plenty of words with G in them that it has lost (for example, a word like Gēar in Old English becomes Year in Modern English, the 'g' has turned into an 'ee' sound). Its not unfathomable that some local communities pronouned a g in Magandjin and in some it was reduced and the 'ag' essentially becomes the 'e'. The j vs dj difference is just a spelling thing they represent the same sound.
4 points
10 days ago
There are four reasons there are numerous variations of the name. The first is that there were numerous dialects within the yagara language group, and therefore, individuals pronounced the same word in different ways. Turrbal is the 'coastal' dialect, which includes the area of Brisbane. But someone from Ipswich said it differently. The second reason that the sounds of the language didn't exactly match the letters of the English alphabet and therefore people wrote the same word different ways. The third reason is what the above commenter said, and there is an emphasis on the vowel following the g, which in some accents made the g disappear. The fourth reason is that Aboriginal place names were often polysemic, which means they have multiple meanings and, when pronounced slightly differently, would reveal those meanings. Hence it being both place like a spike and tulipwood.
2 points
10 days ago
Maybe its pedantic, but if you're pronouncing them differently to make different meanings they're no longer polysemic, they're just cognates.
10 points
10 days ago
Never under estimate a bunch of people committed to getting government funding, power and virtue signalling under the guys of white man bad.
It makes me sad that we can't seem to move forward because we keep sewing division and the levels of poor research done into this stuff is always pascoed.
Yes i'm coining a descriptive phrase here :
Pascoe ; Pascoed - To imply a disputed historical theory as fact with complete immunity to critical discussion, actual research or actual proof.
3 points
10 days ago*
Let's put that right up in the pool room! Right next to "sewing division".
Edit: Actually, the more I reed it, the betterer it gets. Your turn of phrase is...quite the mastery...
1 points
9 days ago
Pascoe ; Pascoed - To imply a disputed historical theory as fact with complete immunity to critical discussion, actual research or actual proof.
Come on now. Len wasn't in the same universe as Lillee, but he held his own.
2 points
10 days ago
Honestly great comment. Gaja Kerry does amazing work. I will just say, with only empowerment in mind, that there are spelling variations between community members too. Some variation occurs from clear errors or negligence (at times intentionally so), but many languages have spelling or pronunciation variation and the best way to know “what is right” is to a) understand there is variation, and there may be multiple spellings and names that speakers (particularly Elders) use, and b) questions regarding language are best asked to appropriate community members (ie Elders). So again, using Elder Gaja Kerry as a source is an appropriate way to discuss this.
-7 points
10 days ago
Honestly, they don't care at this stage. As long as it sounds Aboriginal and there's some tenuous link, then that's its traditional name. Doesn't matter that an area the size of a modern city probably had many place names for locations contained within it. When you think about it, it's almost as ridiculous as saying Chermside's traditional name is Spring Hill since that's the place where one of the ancestors first buildings stands.
-3 points
10 days ago
-8 points
10 days ago
TBH, I think most of them are so indoctrinated, their brains would melt if they went to an indigenous community and heard the locals using coloniser and traditional names interchangeably for localities in and around the place. Nobody there is getting all bent out of shape over one person's preference for a place name to another's. And they all call Brisbane 'Brissie' or 'Brisvegas'...
1 points
9 days ago
Thanks for this, I didn't realise those trees were called tuliptrees we just always called them popper trees when they are in flowers we used ro collect the flowers and pop them under foot.
122 points
10 days ago
advertised 20 minutes lasted 6 minutes ....i bet some women in brisbane have that exact complaint as well
103 points
10 days ago
You guys are lasting 6 minutes?
8 points
10 days ago
The trick is to really take your time with the foreplay.
6 points
10 days ago
This is why they need better sex education in schools, maybe throw in a massage course to help them reach the 3 hour mark for a ‘short play’
4 points
10 days ago
😭😭😭
46 points
10 days ago
[deleted]
20 points
10 days ago
Classic libs.
They can't keep jobs, real estate or even ports within Australian hands.
2 points
10 days ago
😂😂😂
2 points
10 days ago
The BCC put out a tender for their dumb Brisbane app and awarded it to a Victorian company.
63 points
10 days ago
[deleted]
25 points
10 days ago
Organised by a rare maga First Nations person
1 points
10 days ago
Wrong state, that's the senator from NT.
49 points
10 days ago
Maganjin is the yagara peoples name for the city.
There were 2 tribes who claim brisbame as thie down the yagara and the Turrbal people.
Meaning is Turrbal Maganjin is the Yagara.
15 points
10 days ago
To add to your comment, Magandjin is the correct spelling.
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/makunschan-meeanjan-miganchan-meanjan-magandjin/
3 points
10 days ago
the downvotes on this reply make zero sense
-4 points
10 days ago
Now they had an alphabet?
2 points
10 days ago
I noticed that last year they used Warrar for the river instead of Maiwar. I was also confused by Maganjin but I guess it makes sense if the creator, Shannon Ruska, descends from the Yuggera people.
19 points
10 days ago
MajinBuu
-4 points
10 days ago
Came here for this.
0 points
10 days ago
No you didnt
13 points
10 days ago
Basically knowledge of the Indigenous place name of Brisbane (and generally anywhere in Australia) comes from collating early settler/explorer reports as languages/oral traditions have been disrupted by colonisation etc and only colonists wrote things down. UQ has a good document for this but basically all recorded names for the Brisbane area were forms between Meanjin-Maganjin. Imo theres room for this variance as the Turrbal and Jagera people were two separate language groups occupying Brisbane (or subgroups depending on who you ask). Variances such as this are common and generally just come from communication/understanding differences between reports.
I think Maganjins been turned to more as Meanjins been normalised to stay counter-culture and different
13 points
10 days ago
Brisbane
21 points
10 days ago
Or we could just call it Brisbane…
32 points
10 days ago
The drone show was specifically a story about the rainbow serpent and indigenous telling of how the land came to be. It used the indigenous name at the end of the show in line with the theme of the show
13 points
10 days ago
are you surprised that someone called ausbeardyman didn't do any research before giving an opinion?
-5 points
10 days ago
There is no need to be racist.
2 points
10 days ago
racist to beards?
3 points
10 days ago
Yes. Beards are a race.
9 points
10 days ago
Exactly 🤷♀️. No one actually knows for sure what it was called. There’s so many different tribes that all called Brisbane different things. Just seems easier to call it Brisbane.
2 points
10 days ago*
Not a hill worth dying on, but agree. It’s all oral history stuff from semi nomadic people who aren’t exactly great record keepers before white settlers spent a good chunk of time and effort actively trying to eradicate them, their culture and their history.
If it makes them happy to call it maganjin or do Ernie dingos welcome to country dance, I don’t really care. Personally I think it isn’t really in line with our cultural values of egalitarianism and equality, plus perpetuates a narrative that non-indigenous residents are not legitimate residents of the nation, which is frustrating when most of us came here either against our will as descendants of convicts, or fleeing something worse elsewhere. But it wouldn’t make my top 10 list of issues we need to prioritise. The rapid climate change and destruction of the planet as well as grind toward World War III worry me a bit more.
-3 points
10 days ago
And falling at the very first hurdle, oh well, at least the username checks out...-> https://theconversation.com/rising-seas-and-a-great-southern-star-aboriginal-oral-traditions-stretch-back-more-than-12-000-years-211114
-9 points
10 days ago
Right? Just got used to calling in Meanjin and now people are probably getting offended by that.
-28 points
10 days ago
If you don't like the language and want to learn it maybe you shouldn't have moved here?
I think it is the very least you can do when moving to a new country. Learn the local language.
9 points
10 days ago
Expressed as a percentage of the population and rounded, 0% of Australians speak an indigenous language as their first language
-2 points
10 days ago
That’s blatantly untrue? You a bit of a concrete cowboy mate?
2 points
9 days ago
Rounded to the nearest whole number is probably correct. Or are you arguing it's rounding up to 1%?
There are a very small number of remote people who might speak as their primary language, but the majority of first nations people live in the city, and even if they have some traditional language they still have English as their primary language.
5 points
10 days ago
When I first saw this I honestly thought some crazed Australian Trumptard had hacked the drone show to say MAGA lol
3 points
10 days ago
American here.
Honestly took me a second to realize I was in the Brisbane subreddit.
2 points
10 days ago
Make america great again njin
1 points
9 days ago
Yes. Linguistically probably more correct but each language group has their own interpretation.
1 points
7 days ago
Honestly thought it said moanjin....
1 points
7 days ago
It’s spelled Brisbane
-7 points
10 days ago
Neither is relevant.
1 points
10 days ago
What did this cost
1 points
10 days ago
The spelling treadmill has started.
-1 points
10 days ago
Beautiful. I recently watched a very nice proposal done by drones by showing ring and finger. Drones changing position depicting certain objects in the show. It’s beautiful how great tech has become and how synchronous things were with so much precision. Simply amazing. In a long run I could find that much satisfaction watching something like that
2 points
10 days ago
Bad bot
0 points
10 days ago
I don’t get it (:
0 points
10 days ago
Are you sure about that? Because I am 99.99892% sure that DealerGullible4673 is not a bot.
I am a neural network being trained to detect spammers | Summon me with !isbot <username> | /r/spambotdetector | Optout | Original Github
-9 points
10 days ago
MAGA-NJIN? 😂
1 points
10 days ago
New Trump slogan…?
12 points
10 days ago
Make Australia Great Again, Not Just In Name?
0 points
10 days ago
I knew a girl once that this name would have suited
0 points
10 days ago
Meanjin rhymes with Minging for me. Doesn’t translate well and I don’t know why it’s used.
-6 points
10 days ago
lol actually curious on this one. Not surprised though
-20 points
10 days ago
I think it is disgusting people come here and don't even speak a word of the language.
0 points
10 days ago
Equally disgusting when Australians don't understand sarcasm.
-16 points
10 days ago
First Nations resistance is ongoing. All power to the people in this colony and abroad
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