Moção de apoio à correspondência do Hein van der Voort à SSILA

[Nilson Gabas Junior]

Prezados membros desta lista,

Vi hoje a correspondência do Dr. Hein van der Voort, 
pesquisador holandês dedicado ao trabalho de estudo e
descrição de línguas isoladas de Rondônia, enviada e publicada
pelo boletim eletrônico da SSILA (veja abaixo a referência e o texto
completo), e gostaria de propor que fizéssemos uma moção de apoio
à referida correspondência, em nome da lista (vou propor o mesmo
para ser enviado em nome da ABRALIN), para averiguação dos fatos.

Por favor, verifiquem o que o Dr. Hein aponta/sugere, e iniciemos,
se necessário, um pequeno debate para aprofundarmos (ou não) a
questão (acredito que o que o Dr. Hein aponta é suficientemente
claro).

Cordial abraço,
Gabas Jr.


The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas

               *** SSILA BULLETIN ***

       An Information Service for SSILA Members

         Editor - Victor Golla  (golla at ssila.org)
Associate Editor - Scott DeLancey  (delancey at uoregon.edu)

-->>  --Correspondence should be directed to the Editor--  <<--
_____________________________________________________________________
                           Number 242:  August 22, 2006

---------------------------------------------------------------------
242.1  Correspondence
---------------------------------------------------------------------


* Problems with the Ethnologue
   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>>From Hein van der Voort (hvoort at xs4all.nl)
25 July 2006:

Last year the International Standardization Organization 
(ISO) decided to adopt the Ethnologue's language codes 
as the reference standard for the languages of the world, 
called ISO 639-3.  The responsibility for setting up the 
standard was in fact given to the Summer Institute of 
Linguistics (SIL) (see SSILA Bulletin #227, 16 August 
2005, and SSILA Newsletter, April 2006, p.16). This 
decision was not discussed with the wider linguistic community.

Why should a missionary organization like SIL be given 
the control of the universal standard for linguistic reference?

One reason is the fact that SIL has developed the 
Ethnologue, which is a highly useful reference tool.  
The good thing about the Ethnologue is that it represents 
the most complete survey of the languages of the world 
that exists today.

However, the Ethnologue is filled with errors, at least 
as far as South America is concerned.  With regard to the 
50 languages of the region where I work, the Guaporé 
region of Bolivia and Brazil, these errors include 
languages being represented as dialects, dialects 
represented as languages, languages attributed to the 
wrong family or stock, living languages declared dead, 
languages omitted entirely, and countless alternative 
names applied incorrectly or to more than one language.

SIL has, indeed, set up a procedure to correct and improve 
the information that forms the basis for the ISO standard.  
Linguists with documentable knowledge have been invited 
to submit their corrections on special forms that are to be 
evaluated for the Americas by an independent committee 
of SSILA members.  This procedure will also improve the 
quality of the data contained in the Ethnologue.  But why 
is the existing information in the Ethnologue not subjected 
to the same scrutiny as the corrections that will be submitted
to the SSILA committee?

There are alternatives to the Ethnologue, in particular the 
ideologically neutral UNESCO website in Tokyo for the 
Red Book of Endangered Languages (http://www.tooyoo.l.u-
tokyo.ac.jp/Redbook/SAmerica/SA_index.cgi). 
Granted, the Red Book's database is still not complete (the 
important sections on Brazil and North America are not yet 
activated).  But at least the information it does contain is 
reliable and comprehensive, and it deserves to be developed.

Perhaps another reason SIL was chosen is because the ISO 
Institute was not aware of any of these issues, since it is not 
specialized with regard to language and linguistics.  They 
seem to have handed over the controls to the first 
organization that was pointed out to them.  I can't recall any 
preceding discussion of this ISO decision at all.

The central issue I raise here is an ethical one: should we as 
scientists collaborate so directly with a proselytizing 
organization, lending it legitimacy and potentially 
contributing to its ultimate goal -- that of replacing 
indigenous cultures with a specific Western one?

                          --Hein van der Voort
     Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, The Netherlands
                             (hvoort at xs4all.nl)

[To be fair, the editorial staff of the Ethnologue has asked 
for help from the linguistics community in identifying 
factual errors of any sort that appear in the publication, 
including misclassifications and outdated information on 
numbers of speakers and their locations.  Updates and 
suggestions can be sent to Ethnologue_Editor at sil.org. --Ed.]











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