When, as a child, Annalee Pope ignored her parents, they delivered her a simple reprimand that contained a powerful clue about her history.

"Open your binungs!"

"Go and clean out your binungs!"

She'd grown up hearing the word for 'ears' in Waka Waka, the language of her ancestors.

Through language, her parents strengthened her connection to her culture and history.

Now, she is encouraging children across Australia to learn too.

"Kids hold the power in strengthening languages," she says.

Ms Pope is project officer at First Languages Australia (FLA), which works to ensure the survival of Australia's traditional languages in the future.

She's overseeing a national competition that invites schools to work with their local Indigenous community to translate a simple song, Marrin Gamu, into their language.

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The songs are uploaded online and serve as important contributions to the work of preserving Aboriginal languages.

It's an urgent exercise.

Of the 250 Indigenous languages in Australia today, all but 20 are highly endangered or in a 'deep sleep'.

And when you lose a language, you lose more than just words.

"Language and culture and lore is all connected and without one you really don't have the other," Ms Pope says.

"Each language is different and each language can describe what we see, so losing an Aboriginal language is losing a way to see the world."

But reviving and preserving Indigenous languages is a mammoth task. Many languages have little or no written records and when documentation does exist, it's often lean.

"It is big and daunting," Ms Pope says.

These Yipirinya School students from the Northern Territory have entered the competition in the past ( Supplied: First Languages Australia )

How Aboriginal languages work

Learning a simple song in an Indigenous language might not immediately demonstrate to children the full complexity of those languages — but it's a very good place to start.

A deeper look at the grammar, syntax and vocabulary of Aboriginal languages reveals interesting points of difference from English.

Sorry, this audio has expired Reviving Indigenous languages through song

In Aboriginal languages, for example, words can have multiple meanings.

The Waka Waka word 'jun' means 'earth' but can also refer to 'sand', 'ground' and even 'tree'.

There's also a free word order.

Whereas English often follows a subject-verb-object order — 'the dog bit the boy' — in Aboriginal languages words can appear in any order, so that you could say 'the boy bit the dog' and a suffix on the word 'dog' would explain who's doing what to whom.

Primary students from Western Australia sing in Noongar, one of 250 Indigenous languages in Australia. ( Supplied: First Languages Australia )

Word structure, Ms Pope explains, is also different from in English.

Take 'waga' or 'come'.

"If you want to say 'coming', there's no 'ing', obviously, but there is a continuous suffix," Ms Pope says.

Different verbs take one of four different suffixes.

"Depending on the way the word ends the suffix is different. So it's quite complex," Ms Pope says.

The Aboriginal language sound system is different, too.

There is a combined 'n' and 'y' sound, for example, which is like the 'ni' in 'onion' but is a single sound.

Ms Pope uses symbols to represent some sounds so speakers are discouraged from falling into English pronunciation.

"Our sounds aren't English, so we need to stop writing them that way," she says.

Hope for a new generation of speakers

The song competition, run by FLA and ABC Education, is one of several initiatives working to preserve and revive Indigenous languages.

'Word detectives', a dedicated group of linguists and teachers, are rebuilding languages from sources such as historic word lists that might contain only 100 words.

FLA's Place Names Project, which identifies places that are named using Indigenous words, helps people recognise the Aboriginal words they already know.

But it is in children, Ms Pope says, where a huge amount of power rests.

Children like these Torres Strait Island Kalaw Kawaw Ya students hold significant power to strengthen first languages. ( Supplied: First Languages Australia )

"The way I look at it, our children are going to be the next generation speakers of the language," she says.

"I don't think that I will ever actually become a fluent speaker but I know that the more I expose language to my children, the better chance they will have of being that generation that starts speaking it."

Ms Pope has been teaching language to her children, now aged five and six, since they were toddlers.

The feeling of hearing them speak in language, she says, is almost inexpressibly powerful.

"It's really hard to describe, but it's just amazing. Everyone in the family is so proud of them," she says.

"For us adults, we're actually making a difference for these kids — they're going to have a chance to know their language and speak it."

Their knowledge of language instils in her a hope for the future.

"One of the biggest rewards is when my kids tell me a word that they know.

"My son loves that he can speak an Aboriginal language. He tells me all the time, Mum I'm Aboriginal and I can speak in Aboriginal.

"Hearing him be proud is what helps motivate me."

The song competition, now in its fourth year, is another source of motivation for Ms Pope.

She says it's having a big impact.

"It is actually helping schools to identify who's the local traditional owner and who are the people in the community who are able to teach them language," she says.

When schools, like the one in Queensland these Yugambeh students attend, learn first languages it sends a strong message of support to Indigenous people. ( Supplied: First Languages Australia )

For those schools who need it, FLA offers help to connect with their local Indigenous community.

"That is step one in breaking down the barriers. The schools are the one reaching out to the [Indigenous] community and then the community is invited into the school and are asked to participate in this project," Ms Pope says.

"The school makes those contacts and hopefully establishes a long and lasting relationship with the community."

But the competition is also an important show of support.

When non-Indigenous people learn about first languages it sends a strong message to Indigenous Australians, Ms Pope says.

"It's the whole school getting behind the Indigenous population of the school."

The school her nieces and nephews attend took part in the competition last year and the experience left a special mark.

"Where they come from it's a school of 60 kids and they're the only Aboriginal kids in the school," Ms Pope says.

"They were so proud to be part of it and to have their school supporting them."

To find out more and enter the Indigenous Languages Song Competition, see the competition page.