All over the country all but 20 of the 250 Indigenous languages are highly endangered or, as some describe, in a deep sleep.

But now they are waking up thanks to the word detectives, a dedicated group of linguists and teachers determined to make language revival a success.

Desmond Crump is one of them.

He is a linguist researcher and former teacher and has been running the Indigenous Languages Project at the Queensland State Library for the past seven years.

So far he has worked with people from 85 different language groups across the state.

Reclaiming from lists

"They are really reclaiming a language because it's pretty well been lost apart from a hidden word list tucked away here or there, perhaps in a historical document or a journal, a newspaper article from the 1800s," Mr Crump explained.

"We look for clues."

The library houses large collections, and it is a matter of those in search of their language to sift through that material.

One of the largest collections is that of Archibald Meston, a journalist, adventurer and then the chief protector of Aboriginal people for five years at the turn of the 20th century.

This word list from the Rockhampton region in Queensland was compiled by W E Roth, the chief protector for North Queensland, early last century. ( Supplied: Queensland State Library )

For many Aboriginal people, there is a love-hate relationship with the likes of Meston and others who collected information at the time.

"Meston's collection, it's a silver lining to a dark cloud of that protection era," Mr Crump said.

"For some languages, they're the only records we have of that language."

In one case, a list of 500 words of the Yirendali nation in north-west Queensland was found in a shearing tally and that was liking hitting the jackpot.

Rebuilding the grammar

"Most of our languages don't have that huge vocabularies that we have in English and other nations.

"Most of them would be one-and-a-half to 2,000 and now we're trying to rebuild languages with only 100 words, 150 words.

"These word lists are worth their weight in gold."

Once a word list is found, it is a case of then filling in the blanks and rebuilding the grammar.

If there is a neighbouring group that has some documentation, words and grammar structures can be borrowed and the words can be put into a sentence or word order that fits with the community. This 125-word list for the Yugara language was recorded in 1842, and it's from these historic lists that many languages are re-awakened. ( Queensland State Library )

The language is then taken to the community to validate it, and often this is where the magic begins.

"We've had some word lists where the community has said, 'We've lost our language', and all of a sudden that single word list has been the trigger for social memory and then they start recalling words from their own childhood growing up.

"Words that a grandmother, or an uncle or someone else has used and all of a sudden those memories start coming back.

"Next minute, they are adding to that word list."

Mr Crump has seen this happen in his Kamilaroi language group in south-western Queensland.

"By lunch time, all of these elders who had said they didn't know any language words all of a sudden were remembering."

Old-school grammar

Once you find a language list and start building on that, how do you then fill in the gaps with grammar?

Enter Bridget Priman, a member of the Queensland Indigenous Language Advisory Committee, who has been piecing together languages for decades.

She is one of the first Indigenous linguists and has worked for decades on restoring her mother's language, Warragamay, in north Queensland. Bridget Priman is a linguist and has spent decades working on grammar for many Queensland languages. ( ABC Capricornia: Inga Stünzner )

"I just fell in love with things to do with our language," Ms Priman said.

She had been sitting at home, dabbling in language, when she realised there had to be an easier way for "our mob to learn to be able to do the grammar of the language and be able to put it together".

So she completed a degree in linguistics and has since worked on the grammar for a number of languages, including Gurang in central Queensland and its neighbouring languages.

"Once you learn those rules — and it's just like learning the rules in English grammar, it's the same concept, but we've got to learn to speak our language before we get to that."

"If we want to be able to read and write and speak our language properly, you have to put all that stuff in," Ms Priman said.

"I was lucky enough because when I went to school, we learned about that sort of stuff — prefixes and suffixes — that they really don't teach you today.

"They teach you a whole-of-language approach."

Final touch

Once the grammar is in place, there is one more step.

Alfred Gray is from the Gunggandji Guru-Gulu language group in Yarrabah, east of Cairns on Cape Grafton.

Yarrabah is a large community that once had between 50 and 60 different language groups, but most of these have been absorbed into the local languages of Gunggay and Yidinji.

"We're working with a few other groups that don't have any language speakers in their country and we are just helping them with their pronunciation of their language," Mr Gray said.

Alfred Gray has been invited to a number of communities to help with pronunciation. ( ABC Capricornia: Inga Stünzner )

How difficult is it to go from a word list or sentence to the pronunciation?

"Well it is really hard if you have no one speaking the language because you need the actual sounds of the language to speak it."

For example, there is the rolling of the 'r' sound, the 'nya' sound and 'dja'.

Although his mother's language, Gunggandji Guru-Gulu is an endangered language that has only been used by a few family groups, Mr Gray has grown up speaking the local language and that has helped with his learning.

"It makes a big difference because we've got a base to work off."

Language is not dying out.

"It's just been sleeping but we're waking the language back up again."

"I see language growing, out into the streets and into the cities, our people singing and dancing with our songs once again.

"A lot of our people never had this opportunity that's been given to myself and a few of us now and we're just grasping this with both hands."