From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Sat Jan 3 01:04:53 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 17:04:53 -0800 Subject: Banned WOrds Message-ID: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=15&u=/ap/banished_words From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 5 18:06:40 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 11:06:40 -0700 Subject: Love of Creek language inspires teacher to share (fwd) Message-ID: [list manager note: i suspect this Jan. 2 article may be an old news item being revived, but i include it fyi.] ~~~ Love of Creek language inspires teacher to share By KEITH DINWIDDIE / The Norman Transcript http://www.okmulgeetimes.com/articles/2004/01/02/news/709.txt NORMAN, Okla. (AP) -- In the American Indian language of Creek, the word mvhayv (pronounced mu-high-ya) means teacher. On the University of Oklahoma campus, Margaret Mauldin is much more than that. Mauldin, affectionately known as "Mvhayv" to her students at OU, is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Creek language. In the fall of 1995, Mauldin became OU's first Creek language instructor. In her first semester as a university-level Creek instructor, Mauldin said she had only limited homemade materials to use. "OU had been experimenting with several tribal languages, such as Kiowa, Choctaw and Cherokee, but before that time there was no Creek language course offered for college credit," Mauldin said. "But all of these languages, including Creek, were at the beginning level." Mauldin's love affair with the Creek language can be traced to her childhood. As a Native American, Mauldin grew up in a home where English was not the first language. In Mauldin's childhood home in Okemah, Creek was the language spoken most frequently between family and friends. In fact, Mauldin's mother, who died two years ago at the age of 94, spoke only Creek her entire life. Mauldin, who is now 63, said growing up in a Creek-speaking home gave her an appreciation and love for the language she has carried with her throughout her life. Before becoming a teacher, Mauldin spent several years driving 18-wheelers across the United States. During her years on the road, Mauldin said she found herself missing the Creek language. Once she returned home to Okemah, she discovered fewer and fewer people were speaking Creek. "It struck me that I wasn't hearing the language as frequently as I used to," Mauldin said. "I kept wondering why 'they' weren't doing anything about it, and then I thought why aren't I doing anything about it. I decided then that I could make a difference, and I would make a difference." Mauldin said she gave up all employment and began working on a plan to keep the Creek language alive and growing. She said the first step in the process was evaluating how fluent she actually was in the language and finding out how well she could read what little written material there was available. She said the only real reading source she could find was the Creek version of the New Testament, making the book her source material of sorts when it came to spelling and grammar. In 1991, she began teaching Creek language classes in her home in Okemah. Mauldin said she was initially surprised at how many people wanted to learn the language. "I advertised the classes in the Okemah newspaper, and people just came," Mauldin said. "I originally wanted to teach the language to two people in the same family or two people who spoke to each other frequently. That way these people could practice the language together on a daily basis. I still believe language learning should be done by families. That's the most effective method of learning a language." Mauldin's first step in bringing the Creek language to the OU campus also came in 1991. After hearing Mauldin speak in Creek at a tribal meeting in Okemah, John Moore, OU anthropology chairperson at the time, contacted Mauldin and asked her to do some translation work for OU. Eventually, the translation job led to a position as a consultant for anthropological linguistics classes at the school. Realizing Mauldin's familiarity and knowledge of Creek language were virtually unparalleled, OU offered her a position as an instructor of curriculum development in the Creek language in the department of anthropology/Native American studies. Today, Mauldin is joined by her daughter Gloria McCarty as OU's two Creek language instructors. Together, the mother and daughter teach six courses at three levels. "The Creek language program today compared to what it was when we started it in 1995 is like night and day," Mauldin said. "While we've come a long way, we're really just now taking step two. We're now gathering data and materials for a textbook, and we want our textbook to be just as good, attractive and shiny as the textbooks for most other classes." While the Creek language program has operated without a textbook for its first eight years at OU, students in the curriculum do at least have access to a Creek dictionary, thanks to Mauldin. In 2000, Mauldin, along with linguist Jack Martin, published a Creek dictionary. It was only the second Creek language dictionary ever published and the first since 1890. As part of her Creek curriculum at OU, Mauldin teaches her students a number of classic Creek songs and hymns, giving students a chance to harken back to what it was like for Mauldin growing up in a Native American home in rural Oklahoma. All of the songs Mauldin includes in her classes have been transcribed entirely from her memory. From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jan 7 16:49:31 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:49:31 -0700 Subject: Focus stays on Aboriginal languages (fwd) Message-ID: Focus stays on Aboriginal languages By Education Reporter JEMMA CHAPMAN 08jan04 http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/ 0,5936,8345786%255E2682,00.html THE number of school students studying Aboriginal languages has more than doubled in the past four years, while interest in traditional languages, such as French and Italian, has declined. Education Department figures show the number studying Aboriginal languages has risen from 2000 in 1999 to 4118 in 2003. At the same time, the number of students studying French has dropped from 15,206 in 1999 to 13,341 in 2003. Pupils learning Italian have decreased from 13,583 to 13,305. Enrolments in German and Japanese have also declined, but numbers studying Greek and Indonesian have increased. SA Secondary Principals Association president Bob Heath said yesterday the increase in the study of Aboriginal languages reflected greater cultural and racial understanding in schools. "It's showing that our education programs are making students more culturally aware and more racially tolerant than in the past," he said. Of the 4118 students studying Aboriginal languages, 1653 were Aboriginal and 2465 were non-Aboriginal. Languages include Pitjantjatjara, Antikirinya, Kaurna, Arabana, Adnyamathanha, Ngarrindjeri, Yankunytjatjara and Narrunga. Demand for summer courses in Aboriginal languages has also increased. Nearly 50 students are enrolled in the Pitjantjatjara Language Summer School course at the University of South Australia's Underdale Campus, which started on Monday and runs until January 16. For the first time, a Kaurna language summer school course is being offered because of growing demand. About 40 students are enrolled in the course, which starts next Monday and finishes on January 23. Students include people of varied backgrounds, including public servants, community workers, lawyers, teachers, health professionals and indigenous people working in health and drug abuse areas. SA Association of State School Organisations president John White described the interest in Aboriginal languages as positive. "It's important that we keep as many languages as possible in our schools, so that present and future generations can communicate with the world at large," he said. Mr White questioned whether the decline in some more traditional subjects was due to insufficient specialist teachers or simply a lack of interest on the part of students. SA Primary Principals Association president Leonie Trimper said the increase in students learning Aboriginal languages could "only be a good thing for keeping our heritage alive". -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2921 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 8 01:04:10 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:04:10 -0800 Subject: Call To conference Message-ID: You are invited to attend the 27th Annual California Conference on American Indian Education, April 22-24th, 2004, at the Westin Hotel, in Los Angeles California. This years~R theme ~SSelf-Determination Through Education~T will showcase 27 years of the successes, growth and impact the American Indian Education Centers have had on the American Indian community in California. If you wopuld like the call to conference foms please email me for the pdf From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Thu Jan 8 17:09:17 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:09:17 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Linguistics Babel's children Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG From The Economist print edition Corbis -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 908 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 282032 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase “the chicken is eating” translates into colloquial Riau as “ayam makan”. Literally, this is “chicken eat”. But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as “the chicken is making somebody eat”, or “somebody is eating where the chicken is”. There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (“the”, as opposed to “a”). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky—in particular, his theory of “deep grammar”. According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, “I dided it” instead of “I did it”). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. Plumbing the grammatical depths Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages—for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages—than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek. As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of “informants” who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. Word, words, words A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked—an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept—every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 9461 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 224 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 224 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 185 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stonefbr at GSE.HARVARD.EDU Thu Jan 8 20:48:16 2004 From: stonefbr at GSE.HARVARD.EDU (Bruce Stonefish) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 15:48:16 -0500 Subject: Call To conference In-Reply-To: <3FFCAC8A.7060906@ncidc.org> Message-ID: Hello Could you send me a form Thanks Bruce Stonefish On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:04:10 -0800 Andre Cramblit wrote: >You are invited to attend the 27th Annual California Conference on >American Indian Education, April 22-24th, 2004, at the Westin Hotel, in >Los Angeles California. This years~R theme ~SSelf-Determination Through >Education~T will showcase 27 years of the successes, growth and impact >the American Indian Education Centers have had on the American Indian >community in California. > > >If you wopuld like the call to conference foms please email me for the pdf From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 8 22:19:09 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:19:09 -0800 Subject: California Indian Education Message-ID: Annual Conference Info can be downloaded @: http://www.ncidc.org From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jan 9 17:43:20 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:43:20 -0700 Subject: GRANT OPPORTUNITY (fwd) Message-ID: GRANT OPPORTUNITY Summary: Tribal Preservation Program The purpose of this program is to provide grants for tribes to protect their significant cultural and historic resources. Grant awards are made in five categories: Locating and Identifying Cultural Resources: A) Survey and Inventory of Historic or Significant Places projects are designed to be the first step toward protecting historic places by locating them through a survey. B) Survey of Traditional Skills and Information projects aim to determine the community's cultural needs in transmitting skills and traditions between generations. Preserving a Historic Property: A) Project Planning will be funded toresearch and plan the physical preservation of a site. B) Repair work on historic structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places will also be funded under this category. Comprehensive and Land-Use Preservation Planning projects will focus on planning for the preservation of previously identified cultural resources. Oral History and Documenting Cultural Traditions projects will focus on preserving culture for future generations. Education and Training for Building a Historic Preservation Program projects will focus on the development of a sustainable preservation program. For more information, visit the National Park Service site at http://www2.cr.nps.gov/tribal/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1462 bytes Desc: not available URL: From fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 9 19:10:28 2004 From: fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Francisco Marmolejo) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:10:28 -0700 Subject: North American Higher Education Conference Message-ID: Sorry for potential duplicates. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Colleague: Join leaders and practitioners of higher education, business, government and students in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico for CONAHEC's 9th North American Higher Education Conference! It is the premier networking and information sharing event for education leaders in Mexico, Canada and the United States. The theme of the March 17-20, 2004 conference is "Discovering North American Potential: Higher Education Charts a New Course." For complete information, visit http://conahec.org and follow the link to the conference Web site. The event is organized by CONAHEC, a trinational consortium linking higher education institutions in North America, and is co-convened by the American Council on Education (ACE); the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC); the Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior (ANUIES); the Association of Canadian Community Colleges/Association des collèges communautaires du Canada (ACCC); and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada/Association des universités et collèges du Canada (AUCC). Our host institution is the Universidad de Guadalajara, and our co-hosts are the Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara; Universidad del Valle de Atemajac; ITESM-Campus Guadalajara; Universidad Panamericana; and, Universidad Tecnológica de Jalisco. EXTENDED CONFERENCE REGISTRATION DEADLINE If you haven't registered yet, register online at our conference Web site TODAY! As an early holiday present, we have extended the deadline for "early bird" registration through Friday, January 9, 2004. Alternatively, if you don't have online access, you can register by calling Stefan Baumann at (520) 621-7761. Conference Hotel Rates and Deadline The Fiesta Americana Guadalajara is offering our group a special rate of $890 pesos per night - approximately $80 USD or $105 CAD (single/double, not including taxes). To get the special rate, reserve your room by Friday, January 30, 2004 and use the code "CONAHE" (no final "c"). We encourage you to reserve your room *TODAY*. To make your reservation, call Fiesta Americana at 1-800-FIESTA1 (1-800-343-7821) from the U.S. or Canada. From Mexico you can call 01-800-504-5000 or (55) 5326-6900 (from Mexico City). You can also call the hotel directly at (011-52) (33) 3825-3434. After January 30th, these low rates are no longer guaranteed, and the room price may rise significantly. DON'T WAIT -- call today! SPEAKERS AND PROGRAM We have assembled a superb program for the conference. Some of our featured invited speakers include: * Reyes Tamez Guerra, Secretary of Public Education, MEXICO * Julio Rubio, Undersecretary for Higher Education, MEXICO * Silvia Alvarez, Deputy Director, Mexican Science and Technology Council (CONACYT), MEXICO * Leonard Haynes, Director, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, USA * Madeleine Green, Vice President for International Initiatives, American Council on Education, USA * Christiane Boulanger, Human Resources Development Canada * Jamil Salmi, Education Sector Manager, Human Development Network, World Bank * Sally Johnstone, Executive Director, Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, WICHE, USA * Robert A. Pastor, Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of International Relations, American University, USA * Julio Millan, President, Future Society Chapter Mexico. * Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, Governor of the State of Guanajuato, MEXICO * David W. Strangway, President and CEO, Canada Foundation for Innovation, CANADA For an updated version of the program, visit our conference Web site regularly. Other features of our program include: * Two optional post-conference workshops on internationalization of the curriculum and institutions. * 30 concurrent sessions delivered by experts from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada on topics related to quality assurance, building competencies, internationalization, model projects, student and faculty mobility, North American studies, and higher education's role in economic development. * Working sessions with funding agencies supporting mobility programs in North America. * Presentation of CONAHEC's Award of Distinction and the Manuel T. Pacheco Award. * Not-to-be-missed networking tours in historic Guadalajara and Tequila. * Optional visits to Guadalajara's finest universities and colleges. * Joint events and sessions with members of the Student Organization of North America (SONA), a student-led organization sponsored by CONAHEC. We look forward to seeing you in Guadalajara! Francisco Marmolejo Executive Director Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) University of Arizona 220 W. 6th St. University Services Annex, Bldg. 300A Rm. 108 PO Box 210300 Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA Phone: (520) 621-9080 Fax: (520) 626-2675 E-mail: fmarmole at u.arizona.edu http://conahec.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 286475 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jan 10 17:52:07 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:52:07 -0700 Subject: SSILA 2003-04 Annual Meeting (fwd link) Message-ID: Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas 2003-04 Annual Meeting http://www.ssila.org/ Session 11 Language Documentation and Revitalization. 9:00     Anna Berge & Gary Holton, Community Language Documentation: Collaborative Approaches to Fieldwork with Alaskan Languages  9:20     Michal Brody, Meandering toward a common alphabet: Truce, tolerance, and the unique case of Yucatec Maya 9:40     Cathy Moser Marlett & Stephen A. Marlett, Principles guiding the choice of illustrations for the Seri dictionary  10:00   Juliette Blevins & Monica V. Arellano, Chochenyo language revitalization: A first report 10:20   Discussion and break 10:40   Susan J. Blake, Ulrich Teucher & Larry Grant, Meanings of Musqueam Personal Names: The Capilano Tradition 11:00   William J. Poser, The Barkerville Jail Text: The Earliest Known Carrier Text 11:20   Roy Wright-Tekastiaks, Acceptability judgment and extrinsic rule ordering in a missionary grammar 11:40   David L. Shaul, Language Teaching as a Data Source for Pragmatics: an O’odham Example    From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 12 17:05:50 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:05:50 -0700 Subject: Remembering the old ways (fwd) Message-ID: Remembering the old ways 2004-01-12 by Mike Archbold Journal Reporter http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/153432 The little girl, a third-grader, carefully leaned forward and whispered in Arthur Ballard's ear. She stepped back and looked him square in the face, as if expecting a reply. Then she whispered again in his ear before following her classmates into the museum. Patricia Cosgrove, executive director of the White River Valley Museum in Auburn, tells that story, delighting in the interaction fostered by the museum's newest acquisition: ``Listen My Nephew,'' life-size bronze statues of Ballard and his friend, Big John, a Muckleshoot tribal elder. A large group of Muckleshoot tribal members attended the unveiling late last year. Cosgrove said the rendering by New Mexico sculptor Reynaldo Rivera brought tears to their eyes. The two men greet visitors just inside the museum entrance. Ballard is sitting. He wears a hat and balances a tablet on his knee; a pen poised in his hand. His head is tilted upward at an angle as he waits intently for Big John standing in front of him to speak. Big John, who was born around 1840, is a big man with a regal head. His features are heavy, especially his nose, which dominates his face. A cane is hooked over his right arm. He is gazing into the distance or perhaps into the past. The sculptor was helped by photographs of Big John's great grandson, Harold Moses, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Big John. Moses, the last fluent native speaker in the Muckleshoot tribe, died last February. Preserving tribe's culture The sculpture's message is clear: Big John is the teacher; Ballard the student. Working together, the two helped preserve a portion of the complex and highly developed culture and spirituality of the Muckleshoot Tribe, whose villages once dotted the rivers banks of the Green and White rivers before white men arrived. Ballard's work became the foundation for much of the knowledge about Puget Sound Salish Indian traditions and life before the settlers arrived. He also testified in court from the 1920s to the 1960s on behalf of Indian land and resource claims. The Salish Indian culture was an oral tradition carried on the wings of their shared language -- Lushootseed. When winter came, the families retreated to their longhouses or smokehouses to tell stories and legends, dance and sing. The stories taught morality, geography, history and behavior. To read what Ballard translated is to realize how developed and intricate was the history and culture of what he termed ``the elder race.'' Both men took a risk Valerie Bellack, who heads the Muckleshoot Tribe's language program and teaches, said both men took a risk that is not easy to take: ``Asking to learn from a person so different than yourself or just to get along together can be scary. It is risky for both sides. We today need to know that and remember these men's efforts. ``Without the materials that resulted from their shared work, the Muckleshoot would not have any significant historical records. I just can't say how thankful I am for what Arthur Ballard did and his friendship to the Muckleshoot people.'' Ballard had to learn the language before he could talk to Big John or many of the other Puget Sound Indians he listened to called ``informants.'' It is not too much of a stretch to imagine Big John patiently teaching the words to his younger companion. And they were friends. They met in the winter of 1911-12, according to Greg Watson, when Ballard walked from his home in Auburn up the hill several miles to the Muckleshoot Reservation to talk with Sukwa'lAsxt (Big John). Big John, who was born around 1840 and was a teenager when white men first arrived in the Puget Sound country, was a well-known orator among the Muckleshoots and knew the old stories and the old ways intimately. He died in the late 1920s or 1930s. Watson, who teaches at the Auburn School District's Virginia Cross Native American Education Center on the Muckleshoot reservation and is former director of the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum, profiled Ballard in the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum's reprint of Ballard's 1929 publication, ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound, Legends Shared by Tribal Members.'' An endangered way of life Ballard, who developed an interest in Indians as a teenager, knew as did Big John that the culture of the Puget Sound Salish tribes was in danger of being lost forever, he said. Ballard also understood what had happened to the tribes, particularly his neighbors, the Muckleshoots. ``In the olden times, before civilization came to blight and destroy,'' Ballard wrote in an Auburn newspaper article in 1912, ``there were nearly a dozen villages, some of them containing hundreds of souls, on streams above named points convenient for trapping the ever needed salmon. ``Their populations have faded and their names are all but forgotten. A new race has established itself in their place, little mindful of them and their life and they were little aware of its coming.'' The Muckleshoots liked and trusted Ballard, who would trek up to the reservation to talk with them in their homes and opened his house to any Muckleshoot who needed help. He came not to take or steal what was theirs but to share what he discovered for no gain, for the sheer importance of knowledge. When the museum proposed the ``Listen My Nephew'' project, the tribe agreed to pay $22,000 for the statue of Big John. The sculptor went ahead and created Ballard also, but there was no money yet to pay for it. With a week to go before the sculptor was to bring Big John to the museum, Bellack went to the Tribal Council to ask if they could pay for Ballard, too. The Council said yes immediately, cut the check and both statues arrived together. Bernice White, 87, and a Muckleshoot tribal member who helped unveil the statues, remembered Ballard coming up to their house every day for two weeks to talk to her ``I remember him as a child. He came to my mother's home to see my grandfather, James Daniel. My grandfather was close to 90. He went every day for two weeks.'' Anthropology was a night job Of Ballard and Big John, she said: ``They established a right for use that the white people don't try to understand. It sets us firmly in the ground that we were who we were.'' Anthropology was Ballard's night job. Though a graduate of the University of Washington, he graduated with a degree in Latin. There was no anthropology program. His meticulous work later earned him respect and recognition in academic circles. One of his original publications is in the archives of the Royal Anthropological Society in London. Thomas Talbot Waterman, the first anthropologist hired by the UW, said of Ballard in his 1973 ``Notes on the Ethnology of the Indians of Puget Sound:'' ``Mr. Ballard may be regarded as the leading authority on the Indians of the state of Washington. His acquaintance with them and with their mode of life has extended over a long period and is extremely intimate.'' By day, Ballard worked variously as a school teacher, postal worker and city clerk of the city of Auburn. The son of Dr. Levi Ballard, a physician who recorded the first plat in what would become Auburn, Arthur was a member of the town's gentry. Final manuscript locked up While Ballard published a number of papers before he died in 1962, the bulk of his legacy is locked up by a family member in California. No one has seen all of it. It includes original tribal items such as handmade fish weirs like Big John used to make, as well as photographs and tapes. It also includes his final manuscript, a summation of his work with Puget Sound tribes, which was about to be published when he died. The family took the manuscript back before it could be published. A copy of the book that was in the safe at the museum also disappeared. Both the museum, anthropologists and Puget Sound tribes hope that someday that the material Ballard so painstakingly collected will be made public. The story of Blanket Rock The following was told to Native American historian Arthur Ballard by Ann Jack, born about 1840, who lived on the Green River.Blanket Rock The young wife of a member of the Taitida'pabc, a tribe near Squally, became homesick and wished to go back to her parents who lived on the shore of Puget Sound near Three Tree Point. When she got there, her people had set off with their camp equipment in a canoe. The young woman hastened along the shore until she caught sight of the boat in the distance. Crying to her mother, ``Wait for me,'' she sank down exhausted. There she is to this day in the form of a white rock. Her husband was dressed in a blanket of whistling-marmot skins. He was turned into another boulder, down the beach. The surface of the boulder looks like a wrinkled blanket. The white people call it Blanket Rock (qoiqwi'ltse or qoqoi/ltse.) It now stands on the beach near Buenna. The boat and cargo were turned to stone and the poles to trees.Crow, who was the slave of the old people, was carrying water in a basket. This she hid. It turned into a spring on the south slope of Three Tree Point. That spring is hard to find and brings back luck to those who drink it. We call Three Tree Point, Sqe'leb, which means ``loading things into a canoe.'' -- from Arthur Ballard's ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound,'' 1929. * * * Blanket Rock is an example of a story that explains a specific geographic place in Puget Sound that Salish Indians knew well. ``This is the kind of legend that makes me reflect on the tremendous intimacy the native people had with their surroundings,'' said Patricia Cosgrove, director of the White River Valley Museum. ``A large rock would be named and have its own legend. ``To me that is very intimate. You have to have been in that place so long that every little feature in the place has significance. It makes sense for communities that have been in this place for thousands of years.'' Therein lies part of the value of the Salish Indian stories that Ballard translated to non-Indians today, she said. They can give a sense of time and place about the land and the people who were here and thriving when white men arrived. Greg Watson, who wrote an introduction to a 1999 reprint of Ballard's ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound'' said the stories, when translated as well as Ballard did, give a reader an insight into the Salish language, its grammar and how it organized thought. ``These particular narratives have a great deal of spiritual content,'' Watson said. They are akin to the Koran or Bible for a people with their oral tradition.'' The stories were told over and over and heard by both young and old. Figuring out the point of a story and applying it to one's own life is an important part of the educational process, he explained. One of Watson's favorite stories that young people like a lot is the tale of Elk woman and the flea people. He likes it because there really was a place between Kent and Des Moines called the Flea House. It tells the story of Elk woman, who is captured by the flea people who plan to kill her. But she relies on her own resources and discovery of supernatural powers to dispatch them all, turning them from monsters into tiny fleas that can no longer kill. Fleas as monsters? ``Have you ever looked at flea under a microscope?'' Watson asked. -- Mike Archbold From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jan 13 19:33:35 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:33:35 -0800 Subject: Wiyott Sacred Sites Message-ID: NEWS RELEASE An evening filled with live musical performances featuring a combination of local and national Native American musicians and artists will be held February 7, 2004. Tickets will be $15 in advance or $20 at the door. This drug and alcohol free event will include Native American vendors, opportunities to talk with tribal leaders, Indian Tacos and refreshments. The concert will be held at the College of the Redwoods Gym, just 7 miles South of Eureka. ß Charlie Hill renowned Native American stand-up comedian has been on the comedy circuit since the 1970~Rs. Hill has earned the respect of comedians Jay Leno, George Lopez, and Richard Pryor. Some may remember him from his many appearances on ~SThe Tonight Show~T with Johnny Carson while a younger crowd may recognize him from his appearances on ~SThe Tonight Show~T with Jay Leno. Charlie was a staff writer for the Roseanne show and was featured on Moeshe. In 2000 director Sandra Osawa released a 60-minute documentary on Charlie~Rs career titled ~SOn & Off the Res~R with Charlie Hill~T. Charlie recently appeared on ~SThe David Letterman Show~T (January 9, 2004). ß Floyd Redcrow Westerman legendary folk singer, speaker and respected Indian activist, and star of the silver screen, released his first album ~SCuster Died for Your Sins~T in 1970, followed by another album, ~S The Land Is Your Mother .~T Since the early 1980~Rs he has traveled the world in support of Human Rights for Indigenous People of the World. In the early 1990~Rs he toured with Sting to raise funds for the Rain Forest Foundation Project. Red Crow is also known for his rolls in a variety of films including ~SRenegades,~T ~SDances With Wolves,~T ~SThe Doors,~T ~SBuffalo Girls,~T ~SLakota Woman,~T ~SClearcut,~T and most recently ~SGrey Owl.~T Red Crow has also been seen on a variety of television series including; ~SWalker Texas Ranger,~T ~SNorthern Exposure,~T ~SThe Pretender,~T ~SL.A. Law,~T ~SX-Files,~T ~SMillennium,~T ~SRoseanne,~T and ~SDharma and Greg.~T ß Keith Secola whose music is described as Alter-native has won awards at 5 straight Native American Music Awards. This accomplished artist is a master guitarist, native flute player, singer songwriter, composer and producer. His most famous song ~SNDN Kars~T is considered the contemporary Native American Anthem and is the most requested song on Native radio in the US and Canada. Keith performed at the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002. Keith Secola and his ~SWild Band of Indians~T have performed with the likes of Jerry Garcia, Jim Cregan of Barenaked Ladies, Doors~R drummer John Densmore, and other major rock performers. Also Performing: ß 7th Generation Rise this locally famous indigenous funk band rocked the show in 2003. Song stylings range from acoustic to rock and funk. ß Goodshield, Soldier Blue, and Sara Rose Wasson Goodshield (lead singer of 7th Generation Rise) has teamed with Soldier Blue (native poet) and Sara Rose Wasson (Native flutist) for a multi-media show combining poetry, acoustic guitar, and native flute into a one of a kind performance. ß Melange this melodically oriented, alternative, groove-pop/rock foursome have emerged from the hidden reaches of Humboldt County's Redwood Forests to captivate listeners with unique, original songs. The Wiyot Sacred Site Fund is a non-profit organization created by Table Bluff Reservation Wiyot Tribe in an effort to reacquire and environmentally and culturally restore Wiyot sacred sites (areas that are culturally and religiously significant to the cultural survival of Wiyot People). One such place is Indian Island in Humboldt Bay, California. Funds raised through this event will add to the on-going fundraising effort to clean up this site. For more information about the Indian Island Cultural and Environmental Project visit http://www.wiyot.com/island_intro.html For other ways to support the Wiyot Sacred Site Fund visit: http://www.wiyot.com/Site_fund.htm Contact Information: Michelle Blankenship or Marnie Atkins at Table Bluff Reservation-Wiyot Tribe (707) 733-5055, fax: (707) 733-5601, online: www.wiyot.com or email: wssf at wiyot.com To schedule interviews: Contact Michelle Blankenship or Marnie Atkins at (707) 733-5055 or email wssf at wiyot.com From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Wed Jan 14 18:40:17 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:40:17 -0800 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smile_n.gif Type: image/gif Size: 144 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 14 18:41:41 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:41:41 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. phil cash cash wrote: > Linguistics > > Babel's children > > Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG > From The Economist print edition > > Corbis > > > Languages may be more different from each other than is currently > supposed. That may affect the way people think > > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 > > IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that > is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher > at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. > Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he > says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard > Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he > had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, > grammatically the same. For example, the phrase "the chicken is > eating" translates into colloquial Riau as "ayam makan". Literally, > this is "chicken eat". But the same pair of words also have meanings > as diverse as "the chicken is making somebody eat", or "somebody is > eating where the chicken is". There are, he says, no modifiers that > distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns > that distinguish the definite from the indefinite ("the", as opposed > to "a"). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that > distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed > because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. > > This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom > about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of > Noam Chomsky--in particular, his theory of "deep grammar". According > to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in > their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a > language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what > is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of > children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to > impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, "I > dided it" instead of "I did it"). There is also the ability of the > children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles > out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. > Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a > basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its > minimum requirements. > > Plumbing the grammatical depths > > Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias > leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in > an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to > discover extra features in foreign languages--for example tones that > change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not > exist in European languages--than to realise that elements which are > taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from > another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to > fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, > that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. > > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias > is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most > widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern > linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek. As a consequence, > English was often described until well into the 20th century as having > six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how > that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject > or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a > debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not > have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the > possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain > that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative > (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and > the genitive (to indicate possession). > > The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the > language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a > painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "informants" who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about > their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be > better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than > one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal > setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as > possible), can systematically distort the results. While such > interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr > Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit > linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry > terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches > of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with > shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would > describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. > > The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys > realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This > experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting > authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those > differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian > deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very > way in which people think. > > Word, words, words > > A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration > with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of > Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are > expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages > think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee > Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of > language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell > into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a > revival. > > Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, > one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just > kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a > ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. > Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the > same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the > two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked--an emphasis on the > temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal > objects in the picture. > > Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an > integral grammatical concept--every verb must have a tense, be it > past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a > verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's > idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem > to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For > example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall > between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes > that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both > English and Indonesian grammar. > > Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. > Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are > to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers > do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering > questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove > to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of > whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that > influences their conception of time, or vice versa. > > Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to > ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, > unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. > Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages > also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural > nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a > special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of > something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with > languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts > of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people > think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are > confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do > exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the > difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar > itself shapes at least some thoughts. > > > Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All > rights reserved. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 14 18:44:18 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:44:18 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: Now THAT is a cool idea! I'm not joking--I think it would be a real value to program the AIBO in your traditional language, so that your children would have to use the language to communicate with it. Andre Cramblit wrote: >monigarr at yahoo.com >Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > >I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with >voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all >compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > >Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language >A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > >I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent >brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or >newer) too. > >Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an >extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > >Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their >ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new >year for innovative natives :) > >Skennen, > > -- > > > André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org is the > Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council > NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the > development needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: > IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: > http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 144 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jan 14 18:47:47 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:47:47 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is In-Reply-To: <40058D11.3000304@ncidc.org> Message-ID: FYI, here is an AIBO link describing what it is... http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci536171,00.html phil ILAT On Jan 14, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Andre Cramblit wrote: > monigarr at yahoo.com > Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > > I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with > voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all > compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > > Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language > A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > > I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent > brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or > newer) too. > > Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an > extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > > Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their > ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new > year for innovative natives > > Skennen, > -- >   > > André Cramblit:andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.orgis the Operations > Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC > (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development > needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email > to:IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.comor go > to:http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/? > location=listinfo From mlb211f at SMSU.EDU Wed Jan 14 19:22:16 2004 From: mlb211f at SMSU.EDU (Buckner, Margaret L) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:22:16 -0600 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: "Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time." Would you please cite the article and page number where that statement is made? I don't recall Whorf ever stating that. Margaret Buckner Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology Southwest Missouri State University 901 S. National Ave. Springfield, MO 65804 (417) 836-6165 mlb211f at smsu.edu > ---------- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Matthew Ward > Reply To: Indigenous Languages and Technology > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:41 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: Babel's Children (fwd) > > Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? > > This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? > > As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. > > It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. > > Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? > Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" > > To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) > > In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. > > > phil cash cash wrote: > > > Linguistics > > Babel's children > > Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG > From The Economist print edition > > Corbis > > > Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think > > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 > > IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase > "> the chicken is eating> "> translates into colloquial Riau as > "> ayam makan> "> . Literally, this is > "> chicken eat> "> . But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as > "> the chicken is making somebody eat> "> , or > "> somebody is eating where the chicken is> "> . There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (> "> the> "> , as opposed to > "> a> "> ). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. > > This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky> -> in particular, his theory of > "> deep grammar> "> . According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, > "> I dided it> "> instead of > "> I did it> "> ). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. > > Plumbing the grammatical depths > > Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages> -> for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages> -> than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. > > > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek> . As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). > > The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "> informants> "> who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. > > The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. > > Word, words, words > > A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. > > Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked> -> an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. > > Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept> -> every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. > > > Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. > > Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. > > > Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. > > > > > From miakalish at REDPONY.US Thu Jan 15 14:58:09 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:58:09 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: Seems to me that at a stripped down price of $1,500, and a "deluxe" price of $2,800 (carrying case, charging station, extra software and batteries), this is still on the level of "cute". . . unless people have a lot more bucks and time that I do. The people I know are struggling to get computers, internet access, to learn how to write simple letters, notes and emails. . . Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "phil cash cash" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 11:47 AM Subject: Re: Anyone Know What AIBO is FYI, here is an AIBO link describing what it is... http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci536171,00.html phil ILAT On Jan 14, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Andre Cramblit wrote: > monigarr at yahoo.com > Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > > I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with > voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all > compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > > Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language > A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > > I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent > brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or > newer) too. > > Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an > extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > > Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their > ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new > year for innovative natives > > Skennen, > -- > > > André Cramblit:andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.orgis the Operations > Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC > (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development > needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email > to:IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.comor go > to:http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/? > location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 15 17:27:29 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:27:29 -0700 Subject: European news (fwd) Message-ID: Christa Prets MEP Report on cultural diversity adopted in the European Parliament by Davyth Hicks The European Parliament adopted yesterday by 369 votes in favour, 15 against with 68 abstentions, an own initiative report from Christa Prets (PES, A) on the protection and promotion of cultural diversity. MEPs also welcomed the recent UNESCO decision (October 2003) to launch a process leading to an international convention on cultural diversity. http://www.agencebretagnepresse.com/fetch.php?id=696 From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 15 19:31:01 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:31:01 -0800 Subject: One Nation Issue Message-ID: Article Link: http://www.reznetnews.org/news/031124_onenation According to the Sunday, July 13 edition of the Tahlequah Daily Press, Gary Fisher, who has served as the Cherokee County Farm Bureau president for the past 23 years resigned in protest over FB's alliance with One Nation. Mr. Fisher is to be applauded for his courage in standing up to the racist leadership of Farm Bureau which obviously has not been open with its members about what FB is doing with member's money and in members' names. Let's keep the heat on and make Mr. Fisher's resignation very high-profile. Remember, we need to reach the grassroots membership of Farm Bureau and encourage them to switch insurance companies. Great work to everyone standing up to One Nation! Kudos to Gary Fisher! Peace and justice, JoKay Dowell +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ONE NATION = Corporate KKK. BOYCOTT FARM BUREAU INSURANCE AND QUIK TRIP STORES! BOTH ARE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE ANTI-INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY GROUP, ONE NATION! (www.onenationok.com) Your Money in the hands of Farm Bureau and QT will help to destroy Indian tribal governments, Indian business development and Indian social services. Do not let them tell you otherwise! Even their name, ONE NATION, is a statement in opposition to Indian tribes' legal standing as MANY NATIONS! http://www.onewhitenation.com/ "The issues in Oklahoma are real-- corporate hegemony has reached a brick wall; we haven't cheated the tribes out of all of their minerals yet. We made a bad deal in 1889; we haven't taken their water rights yet. They're providing for their own citizens thru economic development. They're acting like governments... It is time to undercut their success." PLEASE NOTE: This website is intended as a joke, spoof and exposee of ONE NATION, INC. http://www.onenationok.com In Oklahoma, hate and ignorance are driving a purported "fairness" agenda to attack 39 Native American Indian Tribes. One Nation Co-Chairmen Jeramy Rich, Director of Public Policy, Oklahoma Farm Bureau Jeramy_Rich at okfb.org Rusty Shaw, Owner, Shaw's Gulf, Inc. (405) 372-3579 shaws_snb at ionet.net One Nation National Director Barb Lindsey barb.onenationca at earthlink.net One Nation goes public Group opposed to Indian rights http://www.okit.com/news/2003/may/onenationgrows.html TULSA OK SAM LEWIN 5/2/2003 ~SOne Nation~T, an organization recently formed to fight tribal sovereignty, said this week they are concerned over water and land rights that, they say, favor Indians over other groups. The Native American Times has been reporting on One Nation since they sent out a flyer in March soliciting contributions. Until this week, they have laid low: repeated calls to all listed members of the organization went unreturned. Thursday, several One Nation figures spoke to an Oklahoma newspaper. CONTACT THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF ONE NATION: Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association 3555 NW 58th St. Suite 400 Oklahoma City, OK 73112 Local - (405) 942-2334 Toll Free - 1-800-838-OIPA (6472) Fax - (405) 942-4636 Mickey Thompson Executive Vice-President (405) 942-2334 ext. 218 mthompson at oipa.com Mark Monroe OIPA President (405) 340-5809 memonroe at cox.net Oklahoma Petroleum Marketers Association & Oklahoma Association of Convenience Stores 5115 North Western Ave. Oklahoma City , Oklahoma 73118 Telephone: (405) 842-6625 or (800) 256-5013 Fax: (405) 842-9564 E-mail: vance at opma-oacs.com Association Executive Vance McSpadden Oklahoma Farm Bureau http://www.okfarmbureau.org/contact/ Southern Oklahoma Water Alliance Charlette Hearne, Director SOWA BOX 1129 BROKEN BOW, OK 74728 Oklahoma Grocers Association Jim Hopper President & CEO PO Box 18716 Oklahoma City OK 73154-0716 405/525-9419 FAX: 405/525-0962 jhopper at okgrocers.com One Nation Co-Chairmen Jeramy Rich, Director of Public Policy, Oklahoma Farm Bureau Jeramy_Rich at okfb.org Rusty Shaw, Owner, Shaw's Gulf, Inc. (405) 372-3579 shaws_snb at ionet.net One Nation National Director Barb Lindsey barb.onenationca at earthlink.net To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 15 23:13:06 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:13:06 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Whorf wrote that the Hopi language contains "no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call "time", or to past, present, or future, or to enduring or lasting..." (p. 57, Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1956) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Cambridge, Mass,: MIT Press.) In my experience, this is possibly the most famous and influencial statement Whorf ever made, and has created a rather widespread urban myth. Sometimes, the language in question becomes an African or Pacific language; it is always the language of a people considered "primitive" by the retellers of the myth. It is very unfortunate that this statement has become so widely repeated, especially since it is not even remotely true. If you happen to, as I do, live in the SW, you can check the accuracy of the statement simply by asking any member of the Hopi tribe. Actually, it is well-documented that Hopi does indeed contain tense, numerous time words, as well as a very complicated calendar, as well as traditions which contain a great deal of explicit references to events which are clearly either recorded past events or predicted future events. Hopi ceremonial days are very strictly adhered to, something which requires a very extensive concept of time. No-one is really sure where Whorf's claims about the Hopi language and time came from. Buckner, Margaret L wrote: >"Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time." > >Would you please cite the article and page number where that statement is made? I don't recall Whorf ever stating that. > >Margaret Buckner > >Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology >Southwest Missouri State University >901 S. National Ave. >Springfield, MO 65804 >(417) 836-6165 >mlb211f at smsu.edu > > > > > >>---------- >>From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Matthew Ward >>Reply To: Indigenous Languages and Technology >>Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:41 PM >>To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU >>Subject: Re: Babel's Children (fwd) >> >>Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? >> >>This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? >> >>As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. >> >>It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. >> >>Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? > Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" >> >>To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) >> >>In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. >> >> >>phil cash cash wrote: >> >> >> Linguistics >> >> Babel's children >> >> Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG >> From The Economist print edition >> >> Corbis >> >> >> Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think >> >> http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 >> >> IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase > "> the chicken is eating> "> translates into colloquial Riau as > "> ayam makan> "> . Literally, this is > "> chicken eat> "> . But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as > "> the chicken is making somebody eat> "> , or > "> somebody is eating where the chicken is> "> . There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (> "> the> "> , as opposed to > "> a> "> ). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. >> >> This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky> -> in particular, his theory of > "> deep grammar> "> . According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, > "> I dided it> "> instead of > "> I did it> "> ). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. >> >> Plumbing the grammatical depths >> >> Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages> -> for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages> -> than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. >> >> > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek> . As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). >> >> The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "> informants> "> who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. >> >> The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. >> >> Word, words, words >> >> A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. >> >> Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked> -> an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. >> >> Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept> -> every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. > >> >> Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. >> >> Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. >> >> >> Copyright © 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 16 16:17:39 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:17:39 -0700 Subject: Ara Irititja (link) Message-ID: Ara Irititja: protecting the past, accessing the future - Indigenous memories in a digital age examines the way Anangu (Pitjantjatjara & Yankunytjatjara people) are using digitally-based information technology to protect and secure their past. http://www.irititja.com/ ~~~ note: this site is quite interesting for a number of reasons and shows the direction many indigenous are moving towards in the use of digital-based technology. in particular are such issues as software design which take into account cultural senitivities, etc. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jan 18 10:34:40 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:34:40 -0700 Subject: Sisseton Wahpeton College looking toward bright future (fwd) Message-ID: Sisseton Wahpeton College looking toward bright future School in midst of remodeling project, massive campus expansion By Mike Corpos American News Writer http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/7740532.htm Building projects and program improvements mean a high-tech learning environment is taking shape for students at one South Dakota tribal college. The ongoing work to the infrastructure and educational approach at Sisseton Wahpeton College carries a price tag of more than $2 million and will hopefully result in academic achievement and more students attending there. The Sisseton school is in the midst of a massive campus expansion and remodeling project, said the college's director of development, Pam Wynia. "We're working right now on the whole campus," Wynia said. "It started with a 12,000-foot addition to our original building." That $977,800 addition, Wynia said, increased classroom space and allowed for faculty members to have individual offices. It was completed last year and marked the first time since the college opened in 1979 that its facilities were improved. The addition also includes a student lounge, alternative study area to the library and Early Childhood Center. "It gives the students a place where they can gather and make a little noise or study in groups, since you have to be so quiet in the library," Wynia said about the addition. "We try to foster a family type of atmosphere since so many of our students are tribal, and for them their first priority is always family. This gives them a place where they can feel at home." Wynia said the school is working to make it so the infrastructure of the school is not a factor, so that students don't have to worry about going to school in classrooms without amenities such as air conditioning. Wynia also said, with recent grant funding, the school has been able to update much of its technology to include state-of-the-art computers, software and classrooms. Perhaps the most notable project on the campus is the construction of the new $1.6 million vocational education building. The 13,831-square-foot two-story building will allow the college to add classes such as carpentry, electronics, plumbing, jewelry-making and home economics. When finished, the new building, which was designed by Aberdeen's Vic Runnels and Dean Marske, will look like a giant drum surrounded by four singers. The building will house classrooms, a smart lab with enough computers for each student in the room, and the school's vocational training programs. The roof of the building was designed to hold about 300 people and could be used for banquets and graduations, while the interior will be used to build pre-fabricated single-family houses indoors. The homes will be lifted out of the building via an overhead door. During the next few weeks, the new building will begin to take shape. "Suddenly we will go from a hole in the ground to having a building," Wynia said. The concrete foundation is currently in place and the walls, being built off-site, will be delivered later this week. The building is expected to be completed by July 4, when a dedication ceremony is planned. But construction is not the only way the school is looking to grow. New programs are being added and some of the college's existing programs are being updated. The South Dakota State Nursing Board voted unanimously to reinstate the college's Licensed Practical Nursing Program on an interim basis last January, and the program will be considered for permanent approval after the first two classes graduate. Wynia said the school is trying to expand the Early Childhood Center's Dakota Language immersion program to include adults, and further a slow revitalization of the Dakota language. It's feared the dialect will become extinct if not made available to tribal members. "Currently most of the people who speak the language are over the age of 55," Wynia said. "We're starting to see a bit of a resurgence, and now is the time it needs to happen, before (we lose the people who speak it)." Overall, the college has seen a significant increase in enrollment in recent years - 25 percent from spring 2001 to fall 2001. That put the school's enrollment at around 290, which has remained steady since. Wynia said she hopes the improvements at the campus will further increase the number of students being educated there. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jan 18 10:41:50 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:41:50 -0700 Subject: $1.2M grant helps tribes preserve traditions (fwd) Message-ID: $1.2M grant helps tribes preserve traditions By MARY PICKETT Billings Gazette http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2004/01/17/build/tribal/tribe-project.php?nnn%20=%205 BILLINGS – With the help of a new $1.2 million grant, a history project is “reawakening the memory of the Northern Cheyenne,” a member of the tribe said Friday. The American Indian Tribal Histories Project at the Western Heritage Center will help preserve threatened culture and traditions of several Montana tribes. Instead of disappearing, that knowledge now can be passed on to future generations, said Rubie Sootkis, a field director for the project. The project is rescuing traditional and contemporary tribal history by transferring it into books, educational DVDs and museum exhibits. The project was recently awarded the $1.2 million by the U.S. Department of Interior to fund its second year. Last year, the project received $1 million to start work on Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. The new grant will help the project expand to the Fort Belknap Reservation home to Gros Ventre and Assiniboine-Sioux tribes, said Francine Bear Dont Walk, director of the program. During its first months, the project hired two field directors, Sooktis, a writer and filmmaker who has spent years documenting Northern Cheyenne culture, and Mardell Plainfeather, a Crow historian who has worked for the National Park Service and Little Bighorn College at Crow Agency. Six students from Montana State University-Billings, Rocky Mountain College, Little Bighorn College and Chief Dull Knife College have been hired as interns. The students are being trained in interview and research techniques and in how to use audio and video equipment. Interviews with current tribal members, “the meat of the project,” will begin in February, Bear Dont Walk said. The tribal members interviewed will be those who are knowledgeable in many areas including lullabies, classic stories, art, music and traditional skills such as tanning hides. The information will be used to create a DVD for each tribe that can be used in schools both on and off reservations. The DVD, which may be available as soon as November, will be an encyclopedia of primary sources of Indian traditions. If a teacher wants students to learn about a sun dance, for example, students can listen to a tribal expert talk about the ceremony. Because each tribe’s culture is continuing to evolve, information about 21st century music, athletics and rodeo will be included. Interviews and music recorded in the past that Sooktis and Plainfeather have tracked down also may be incorporated into each DVD. Exhibits of each tribe’s unique history and culture will be presented at the Western Heritage Center in February 2005. A book on contemporary members of each tribe is expected to be published in November 2005. The book will be a snapshot of “who we are today,” said Bear Dont Walk. The tribal history project has been a dream come true for Bear Dont Walk. Less and less cultural information is being passed down to younger generations each year. Bear Dont Walk, who is in her 30s, doesn’t speak Northern Cheyenne and knows of few young people who speak it fluently. Even the Crow language, considered one of healthiest among all tribes in the United States, is in danger of disappearing, Plainfeather said. Many parents now work and don’t have time to talk about traditions with their children, Sooktis said. Extended, multigenerational families, once the norm in Indian country, are beginning to disappear. Not only is the project helping American Indians learn more about their own tribes, but about other tribes as well. Even though Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribes have lived side by side on neighboring reservations, Sooktis is learning new things about Crow history and culture. Jona Charette, a Northern Cheyenne who is the administrative officer for the project, said it has special meaning for her family. Charette’s 7-year-old daughter, Savannah, is half Crow and will be able to learn of about both sides of her family with the project’s help. Saturday, January 17, 2004 From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 19 19:06:10 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 12:06:10 -0700 Subject: Language Learning & Technology (link) Message-ID: fyi, the latest online issue of Language Learning & Technology, Vol 8 No. 1 January 2004, is now available. just follow the link. http://llt.msu.edu/default.html phil cash cash UofA, ILAT From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 19 23:11:26 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:11:26 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) Message-ID: fyi, this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well done. take a look... http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends phil cash cash UofA, ILAT From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jan 20 22:11:27 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:11:27 -0800 Subject: California Indian Education Message-ID: Corrected PDF of Call To the 2004 California Indian Education Conference (April 22-24 LA Westin Hotel) is avaiable @: http://www.ncidc.org/ -- André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org is the Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs of American Indians To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 21 21:26:07 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:26:07 -0700 Subject: Linguist Discovers New Language in Siberia on the Brink of Extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Linguist Discovers New Language in Siberia on the Brink of Extinction http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/502861/ Newswise — Although the exact number of human languages spoken today remains unknown, most estimates put the number at about 6,800. A Swarthmore College linguist has found another one that was previously unknown to the scientific community and says its approaching extinction illustrates the problem of language endangerment. K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics, will present his findings on the language spoken by an indigenous community in a remote part of central Siberia at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting in Seattle on Feb. 15. "The Chulym people have a unique way of talking about the local ecosystem," he says. "When they lose it, they will lose all the specialized knowledge the language contains." In July, Harrison was accompanied on his expedition to Siberia by a small documentary film crew, who present his discovery in their forthcoming film "Vanishing Voices." "We went looking for a language we weren’t sure even existed," he says. "It had been misidentified and falsely lumped together with other languages in Russia for convenience and political reasons, and we didn’t know if any speakers were left. No scientists had visited them in 30 years, and no one had ever recorded a single word of the language." Harrison says the Chulym people continue to practice their ancestral lifeways of hunting, gathering, and fishing, but because of a variety of social, political, and demographic factors are now clearly losing their ancestral language. "They live in six small, isolated villages, often intermixed with a majority Russian population," he says. "Only 35 people out of a community of 426 still speak it fluently, and we didn’t find any fluent speakers under age 52. The remainder of the Chulym have switched to speaking only Russian. It’s now considered a moribund language." Harrison says the unique Chulym number systems, grammatical structures, and classification systems may be lost with the language. Their highly specialized knowledge of medicinal plants, animal behavior, weather signs, and hunting and gathering technologies is also threatened. "Not least of all," he says, "their rich pre-literate oral tradition, including religious beliefs, stories, and songs, will soon be completely lost, both to themselves and to science." Harrison hopes to preserve some of that tradition by returning in 2005 to produce a grammar of the language and a children’s storybook. "Each language that vanishes without being documented leaves an enormous gap in our understanding of some of the many complex structures the human mind is capable of producing," Harrison says. "As a field linguist, the excitement of going out and identifying and recording a language that was never previously documented is much like that of a zoologist finding a new species." Harrison, a specialist in Tuvan and other Siberian languages whose work is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, has conducted field research on endangered languages of South Siberia and Western Mongolia since 1996. During field expeditions, he lives and travels with nomadic people, accompanying them on their seasonal migrations as they herd camels, horses, yaks, and sheep. He has also worked with one of the last speakers of the Karaj language in Lithuania and documented language and ethnography in the Philippine highland rice terraces. Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college whose mission combines academic rigor with social responsibility. Swarthmore, with an enrollment of 1,450, is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country. © 2004 Newswise.  All Rights Reserved. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 06:58:34 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:58:34 +0100 Subject: International Mother Language Day, 21 Feb. Message-ID: Less than a month now from International Mother Language Day observance (2/21). Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a webpage up yet for it. Previous years' pages have info that may be of interest or use: http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2003 http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002 It seems to be a worthwhile educational event that could use a little more advance publicity (I've made suggestions to that effect). Don Osborn Bisharat.net From miakalish at REDPONY.US Thu Jan 22 16:26:13 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:26:13 -0700 Subject: SAIL manuscript reviewers Message-ID: SAIL manuscript reviewersI thought people and (their) students would be interested in either participating as reviewers, sending in manuscripts, or receiving the journal. "Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL) is the only scholarly journal in the United States that focuses exclusively on American Indian literatures. With a wide scope of scholars and creative contributors, the journal is always on the cutting edge of activity in the field. " http://unp.unl.edu/sail.html Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: Malea Powell To: AMEINDIANCAUCUS-L at LIST.UNM.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 8:30 AM Subject: [AMEINDIANCAUCUS-L] SAIL manuscript reviewers SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures is currently expanding its list of manuscript reviewers and we invite you to add your expertise to an already established community of Native Studies scholars whose generous efforts make SAIL a critical forum for the study of Native literatures. Reviewers should have a strong background in Native Studies, especially in the area of Native literature and/or Native textual production. If you're interested in joining the SAIL reviewer community, please contact us at sail2 at msu.edu -- be sure to include complete contact information as well as specific areas of specialization. -- Malea Powell Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures American Indian Studies Program Michigan State University Editor, SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures 273 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033 517-432-2577 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:11:20 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:11:20 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: Saving Darma A dying language brings a UT scholar to India and the edge of the inhabited world http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-23/pols_feature.html [photo inset] The Panchachuli Range, forming the western boundary of the Darma Valley photo by Dan Oko The goats were the first sign that the spring migration had started once again for the Darma people of the Indian Himalayas. All along the winding mountain road that runs alongside the Kali River, separating India from Nepal, families on their way to their summer homes tended herds of shaggy, curly-horned goats, wooly sheep, and supplely laden donkeys. The Darma have followed this route for generations. If modern life in the form of racing jeeps, motor scooters, and garishly painted "Public Carriers" -- India's ubiquitous trucking fleet -- steadily encroach on this annual resettlement, the vehicles have no choice but to idle at pedestrian speeds until the livestock can be herded to the shoulder. For most of last year, Christina Willis and I lived among the Darma in the remote town of Dharchula in northern India. Unlike Hindi, the dominant language of the area, the Darma language remains strictly oral, with no writing system, and in linguistics circles is considered endangered. Christina is a doctoral candidate in linguistics at UT-Austin, and her research work focuses on helping this ethnically distinct indigenous people record their language. We would follow the migrating Darma to their villages in the high basins of the Darma Valley on the border of Chinese-occupied Tibet. Even to a casual observer, Darma appears in serious trouble. Of an estimated population of 4,000 individuals in the community, less than half speak Darma, a Tibeto-Burman dialect, and linguists say generally that any language with so few speakers is likely to vanish within two generations. Darma children are educated in Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language -- and the young adults we've met are more concerned with picking up some English and job prospects in the West than with maintaining the culture of their grandparents. "Development is coming" is a favorite refrain in Dharchula. Hardly anyone considers the potential costs of that progress. Christina first learned Hindi for conversation and now, using tapes and direct observation, has been transcribing spoken Darma into the international phonetic alphabet, with the goal of producing a dictionary and written grammar. Her research focuses primarily on recording songs, stories, and ceremonies as windows into both the speech and traditions of the Darma people. She has been attending weddings and funerals, observing ritual activities, and hanging around with a digital recorder to capture day-to-day conversations. "There's no way to do the research I do without getting into peoples homes to record conversations and stories," she says. "So even though it's sometimes been difficult to meet just the right people, I'm feeling pretty lucky to have chosen the topic." Language documentation often deals with languages that are, like Darma, on the verge of extinction. It's work that many linguists at UT pursue, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. Contact with foreign cultures -- Europeans in the Americas, for instance -- and economic pressure are two of the most likely culprits for this phenomenon, although as with all living things, the death of some languages is to be expected. As globalization continues to take effect, some linguists fear as many as 90% of the world's languages could be eliminated over the next 50 years, with potentially unprecedented cultural impacts. Beyond language-preservation efforts, language documentation provides linguists with the ability to look at the interaction and development of languages worldwide. For members of the Darma community, there's a growing interest in creating a permanent record of their language and culture. "I've wanted to make a project like this happen for some time," says tribal member B.S. Bonal, director of the National Zoo in Delhi. "But we're happy to have outside help if that's what it takes to get this job done." Peace, Charm, and Poverty The haul to Dharchula from the Indian capital of New Delhi takes 24 hours of straight travel, although only the desperate or insane attempt it in less than two days. Heading out from the New Delhi Train Station, we catch an overnight coach and then schlep 15 or so hours in local "share taxis," bare-tired, diesel jeeps crowded with as many as 15 passengers. The drivers are poor young Indian men paid about 100 Indian rupees (roughly $2) per day to negotiate the roads carved into the mountainsides, navigating switchbacks overlooking drops of a thousand feet or more. I suppose this hair-raising trip -- along with the constant blare of bootleg Bollywood film music tapes -- could be considered part and parcel of the charm of relocating to the Himalayas. [photo inset] Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula photo by Dan Oko Living in this remote corner of the world, Christina and I have had to reckon with all sorts of new rules for the road. From the crushing poverty of India's megacities to the ringing temple bells in our back yard at evening prayer time, it's always obvious we're not in Texas anymore. The sound of people breaking rock to eke out a few extra rupees each day provides the rhythm of our mornings. The hourly bellow of cows in the alley reminds us that whatever industrial development has come to this nation of a billion people, we have landed in a predominantly agrarian community where ancient traditions continue to echo throughout daily life. Following the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the Indian government classified Darma and two closely related tribes -- the Byans and Chaudangs -- as descendents of Tibetan ancestors. Prior to that time, local people say, the Indian government hadn't even recognized the territory as part of the country. Today the region's three indigenous groups, including the Darma, resist their official categorization, noting that their religious practices are an amalgam of animism and Hinduism, emphatically not Buddhist as in Tibet. They also reject the Indian government's tribal label of "Bhotia," derived from the Hindu words for Buddhist and Tibetan. They prefer to call themselves "Rang"; the Darma are believed to be the largest of the Rang tribes. With about 30,000 residents, Dharchula forms the business and population center along our stretch of the Kali River. In addition to the Rang people, Dharchula's population includes Indian army and paramilitary squads stationed to protect the international borders and scores of workers, including a handful of Europeans and Koreans, employed by the hydroelectric dam being built at the base of the Darma Valley. The rest of the Kali River corridor is dotted with small communities where the main highway remains the only street in town. Small storefront groceries provide necessities, such as laundry soap, rice, beans, and fresh fruit trucked up from the plains, as well as an array of consumer items such as plastic furniture and Chinese-made handbags and sneakers. Away from the road, villages persist where locals tend small farms and orchards on terraced hillsides, growing citrus, potatoes, and grains. In Dharchula proper, you'll find some semblance of indoor plumbing, but throughout the area most people rely on public spigots and natural springs for their water. Open sewers run through town, while on the outskirts public latrines remain the norm. Our water flows only for a couple of hours twice a day, when we fill buckets for everything from washing dishes to taking showers. Electricity is also sporadic, but we have enough energy to keep the laptop charged, and many families have satellite television. A Slower Place in Time Despite the availability of Coca Cola, Levi's, and even popular American TV shows such as Friends and Alias, the cultural divide persists between East and West, especially beyond such metropolises as Delhi, Madras, and Bombay. I have had to give up longnecks and cheeseburgers, but there are many compensations. Christina and I have come to appreciate the joys of a fine cup of well-spiced chai -- sweet tea with cardamom, ginger, and black pepper -- not to mention well-seasoned plates of rice and lentils, served with heaping side orders of cauliflower, potatoes, eggplant, and okra, known in these parts as "subzi masala." [photo inset] The Darma Valley, Kali River, and Dharchula -- across the river is western Nepal photo by Dan Oko Not only the food but also the pace of life, social niceties, and religious practices never once let you forget this is an exotic destination. We find a certain quietude lost in many Indian and foreign cities (not to mention modern-day Austin), but day-to-day living can be a real challenge. Thankfully, our Byans landlady operates by a Rang social code called "nocksum": treating most strangers as guests and guests -- even paying ones -- as family. Our shared house is made of brick and cement, a thoroughly modern dwelling by Dharchula standards with its marble floors and indoor toilet, nestled between several houses made of stone and wood. These older homes beyond our glassless windows give a feel for what this place must have been like before development began in earnest. The two-story structures are not much taller than our single-story abode. Most of the neighbors' living areas are accessed via a narrow wooden ladder-type staircase. The lower rooms once housed cattle, but now are most often used for storage. Fewer of these traditional houses linger as brick-and-cement structures replace them, but they are infinitely more charming to our eyes. As befits a community barely a generation removed from village life, hollering for your neighbors is still more common than ringing them on the phone. In our crowded back-alley neighborhood, nearly everyone is related to our landlady, and she has frequent visitors, often before we are even out of bed. Their calls -- somewhat intelligible to Christina but totally opaque to me -- often wake us up. A notable consolation is that we happily receive our daily quotient of "bed tea" while still drowsy and indeed still in bed. It's a ritual we will miss when we return to Texas. While some old ways still linger, other traditions have been mingled with Hindu practices. Within our first few weeks of arriving in Dharchula, I had discovered a trail off the main road, and along the path there stood a small whitewashed, open-air temple. Similar structures dot the hillsides near and far. One day we were taking our daily walk when we noticed we were being trailed by a group of local men leading a goat. We stopped to watch as they entered the temple. When they reached the interior shrine, the men threw some rice in the air, said a prayer, and then chopped the goat's head off with a single blow from a sickle, capturing its blood in a cup. They waved when they noticed us watching, shouldered the wooly carcass, and headed home again. Darma Nocksum After a winter in Dharchula, we were more than ready to explore the Darma Valley, the tribe's historic summer home. After spending a month watching idly while friends and neighbors packed their bags and saddled their livestock, we finally hoisted our own backpacks, loaded with camping gear, dehydrated noodles, and Christina's high tech recording equipment. It takes us two days of hard walking to reach the open plateau where we spent most of our time in the Darma Valley. There are 14 villages in the valley, located at altitudes of 8,000 to 14,000 feet (everything isn't bigger in Texas). They have no roads, no power lines, no phones, and are occupied only from May to October. To get there, we follow the path of the roiling Dhauli River that helped carve the valley, skirting massive granite cliffs, and inch our way across icy glaciers, crossing wobbly bridges over rushing white water. We pass through broadleaf forests where oak, Himalayan walnut, and rhododendron trees provide plenty of shade, eventually ascending to subalpine evergreen forests where the air smells like vanilla. We share the trail with goatherds, military patrols keeping a wary eye on China, and families joining the migration. Many want to know where we've been; our time in Dharchula has made us a little famous. [photo inset] Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula photo by Dan Oko We establish a five-day base in the village of Baun. Across the valley stand the five massive peaks of the Panchachuli Range, towering to heights of about 25,000 feet. It's the season of offerings, sacrifice, and feasting, and we join the Darma as they visit temples and shrines, wolfing down goat meat and rice. At each stop, they share sweets and a fried flatbread called "puri." The hills are sprinkled with blooming wildflowers, and every morning we make our way to the river and bathe in the brisk snowmelt. Christina carries her digital recorder everywhere, taping Darma folk songs, old men telling stories, and housewives gossiping. She takes time to learn the local name for mountain iris and forget-me-nots, as well as wild strawberries and various medicinal plants. By the end of our stay, she has collected a dictionary of nearly 1,000 words and has begun to parse the grammatical rules of Darma. After leaving the valley, she will sit down with consultants to transcribe more tapes and translate more words into Hindi and English. It's work that will continue this winter, when we return. The record will form the basis for future generations to learn their language, if it comes to that. In the meantime, we enjoy the Darma nocksum in this astoundingly rural setting. Many of the descendents of Baun have been away for 15 to 20 years, and this is the first time they've had a chance to come back. Most children don't speak much Darma. We trade stories and snack on blood sausage, made from goat intestine, and other delicacies. I'm invited to participate in a strength contest involving a small boulder, and when I muscle it onto a platform, I'm offered a sweet local alcoholic brew that tastes a little like Mexican mescal. Again and again, people tell us they're so happy Christina has taken an interest in their language and culture. When we've had our fill, we take the recording equipment a little further into the backcountry -- to the last village in the valley, about 15 miles away. Past Baun, the villages are more sparsely populated and many of the small stone houses have been abandoned. The schoolyards boast volleyball nets, but the schools themselves have no teachers. In some cases the roofs have caved in, evidence of heavy winter snows. Those who spend the summer there farm small plots of land, and a lucky few supervise workers who have been brought in to help with this subsistence-level agriculture. In the fall, they will carry the grain to trade depots and collect their pay. I take these images home with me, when Christina's work returns us to Austin. We're heading back to India this month, so that she can complete the dictionary and continue her work studying the grammar of Darma. "It's a never-ending project really," she says. "I mean, I can keep doing this for the rest of my life, and probably there will still be a lot that escapes me. So my goal is to get enough that somebody in the community can eventually take over." Dan Oko writes frequently for the Chronicle. He has a weblog devoted to his travels in India and invites readers to visit www.danoko2.blogspot.com. An earlier version of this story was published in the Montanan magazine. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:19:51 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:19:51 -0700 Subject: Tlingit Shakespeare (fwd link) Message-ID: Review: Tlingit Shakespeare Dressing 'Macbeth' in borrowed robes http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/012204/thi_tlingit.shtml [note: this was too good to pass up...phil, UofA, ILAT] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:27:22 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:27:22 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages SANDHYA IYER The Times of India TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today’s global village. Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom’s hometown. Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn’t even gather a smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that there is no ‘native’ element to look up to. At the same time, it isn’t so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards life," she reasons. Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for children to know a regional language. Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a regional language is encouraged. To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she opines. That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation in families where the parents are from different regions. Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. "There’s little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, so he gets very little time with Ishaan. I’m am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents come over," says Jyotsna. Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak Marwari quite well. But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn’t speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the language. >From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn’t want her talking only in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade away," he warns. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 18:57:07 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:57:07 +0100 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by international bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children could be used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The situation described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual societies. In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic approach to teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez faire, with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), except in isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or English only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So in linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' language education, especially in the cities. Don Osborn Bisharat.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Cash-Cash" To: Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Regional languages dying in mixed marriages SANDHYA IYER The Times of India TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today�~Rs global village. Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom�~Rs hometown. Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn�~Rt even gather a smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that there is no �~Qnative�~R element to look up to. At the same time, it isn�~Rt so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards life," she reasons. Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for children to know a regional language. Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a regional language is encouraged. To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she opines. That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation in families where the parents are from different regions. Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. "There�~Rs little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, so he gets very little time with Ishaan. I�~Rm am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents come over," says Jyotsna. Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak Marwari quite well. But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn�~Rt speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the language. >From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn�~Rt want her talking only in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade away," he warns. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 19:12:11 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:12:11 +0100 Subject: Fw: Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace Message-ID: FYI... ----- Original Message ----- From: Josep Cru To: joe.lobianco at languageaustralia.com.au Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 10:38 AM Subject: Congress on language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace Dear colleagues, This message is to inform you that the Linguapax Institute and the Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004 are organising a World Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace. The Congress will be held in Barcelona from May 20 to 23, 2004. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Introductory Speech: David Crystal (University of Wales) LANGUAGE DIVERSITY Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany) Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera (Autonomus University of Madrid) SUSTAINABILTY Suzanne Romaine (University of Oxford) Albert Bastardas (University of Barcelona) PEACE Fernand de Varennes (Murdoch University, Australia) Miquel Siguan (University of Barcelona). There will also be five parallel workshops dealing with the folllowing topics: Positive models of language policy and planning, Case studies of language revitalization and standardization, Evaluation of the current sociolingustic research, Language law and language rights and Agents in favour of language diversity (IGOs, NGOs, civil society organizations, etc.) A call for papers period is open until March 1st. More information in English, French, Spanish and Catalan at: http://www.linguapax.org -- Josep Cru Institut Linguapax C/Mallorca, 285 Barcelona 08037 Tel. 93 458 95 95 Fax. 457 58 51 info at linguapax.org www.linguapax.org From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 22 23:01:25 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:01:25 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: It's interesting how similar many of of stories in these articles are: large languages like Hindi, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, English and French swallowing smaller ones. But, if there is a silver lining, it is that with common issues, you can find common cause. From renee_holt at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Jan 23 01:19:43 2004 From: renee_holt at HOTMAIL.COM (Renee Holt) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:19:43 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 23 20:55:55 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:55:55 -0700 Subject: ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations (fwd) Message-ID: January 23, 2004 ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations Four national units talk about their daunting goals at Iqaluit gathering JANE GEORGE http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40123_04.html Immense distances, large problems, poor infrastructure, limited power, little cash, big dreams and high expectations. When the executive council of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference met in Iqaluit this week, the organization representing Inuit in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia grappled with the same challenges that confront Inuit organizations and governments throughout the circumpolar world. Until this week, when ICC's executive council inaugurated an office provided by Nunavut's Department of Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs, ICC couldn't find any reasonably-priced space in Iqaluit. At least, ICC's president, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, now has a place to work with her new assistant, Miali Coley, who is also head of ICC's youth council. And with help from offices in Ottawa and the other ICC member nations, the ICC will continue work in five priority areas: economic development, culture, language and communications, internal operations, human rights and sustainable development. ICC President Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Aqqaluk Lynge, the head of ICC Greenland. Lynge reported on the frustrations he's faced in trying to get compensation for the relocated Inuit of Thule. Over the past year, ICC has received international attention for its stand on global warming, POPs (persistent organic pollutants such as PCBs), and human rights, and continued its work in such organizations as the Arctic Council and the United Nations. However, as they met for three days in Iqaluit, ICC executives underlined their frustration in achieving all their goals. In Canada, the vexing matters include finding ways to provide leadership and visibility while doing justice to the pressing global issues of climate change and contaminant pollution. In Greenland, it's finding the energy to pursue their fight for the Thule Inuit who were relocated to Qaanaaq in 1953, while continuing international human rights work. ICC Greenland suffered a big blow in the Danish Supreme Court last November when they lost an appeal for more compensation and rights. "The power is in the attempt when you defend Inuit rights," Watt-Cloutier said in consoling ICC Greenland's president, Aqqaluk Lynge, about the efforts ICC Greenland, and, in particular, Lynge, have made on behalf of the Inughuit relocatees. In Alaska, the challenge is rallying the Inupiat and Yupik communities, and their development corporations, to see the relevance of ICC when they're already heavily involved in the powerful Alaskan Federation of Natives and over-burdened with local responsibilities. "One of the challenges we face is just to have a board meeting," said Chuck Greene, ICC Alaska's president. However, a board meeting must review and formally approve a resolution in favour of holding the next ICC general assembly, scheduled for June, 2006, in Barrow, Alaska. Greene and Alaskan ICC executive Mic hael Pederson said ICC Alaska plans more education about ICC's role and purpose. "You are really a strong foothold for us, and we can't permit it to waver," Duane Smith, ICC Canada's president, told the Alaskans. In Russia, survival is the main obstacle that ICC must overcome. ICC Chukotka has to find something just to hang on to in a region plagued by high unemployment, alcoholism, poor communication and cultural disinterest. That's not to say that ICC isn't trying hard. ICC Chukotka is cooperating with the local association for sobriety. Last December, a store opened in the city Anadyr to sell ivory products, under a joint Canadian-Russian project called "Marketing modern arts and crafts of Chukotka's indigenous peoples." The store's opening was "a miracle," said ICC Chukotka's president, Natalia Rodionova, but, in spite of the new outlet, artists have trouble with transportation and getting enough raw material, so the store is often closed. Rodionova, a linguist and teacher, is working on a textbook on the Yupik language and writes a Yupik column every month in the local paper, Krainy Sever, The Far North. ICC Chukotka held a party in December to commemorate the 115th anniversary of the first teacher in the Providenya district, who compiled the first Russia-Yupik dictionary. ICC has also asked the World Bank for money to publish a newspaper in the Yupik language as another way to increase awareness of language and culture. But Rodionova, who teaches Yupik, said through an interpreter that there's not much interest in learning the Yupik language. A resident of Anadyr, far removed from the Chukotkan Yupik-speaking villages, Rodionova said she speaks to her children in Russian. But ICC Chukotka isn't giving up - there was to be a traditional feast for youth this month, and there are plans to have an ICC Chukotka sports team. Apart from the many hurdles that make ICC's work difficult, the executive council looked at a variety of programs such as "Future of children and youth in the Arctic," the international meetings ICC attends, as well as special projects. Anders Berndtsson from the Nordic Institute of Greenland, a cultural arm of the Nordic Council of Ministers, was in Iqaluit to seek support from the ICC for a joint dance production that would combine traditional Norse, Saami and Greenlandic elements. The production would premier at the next ICC assembly and then tour the circumpolar world. The ICC executives also heard from elders' representative David Angnakak of Pangnirtung and youth president Coley, who both underlined the need for better communication. The council will meet again in Nuuk, Greenland on June 21, the Greenland home rule government's 25th anniversary. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Sat Jan 24 08:39:49 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:39:49 +0100 Subject: Of multilingualism & common causes (Re: Saving Darma...) Message-ID: Good point, Matthew. The effect is more complex, of course, with in some places less-spoken indigenous tongues losing ground to more widely spoken ones (spread of Hausa in parts of Nigeria, Bambara in Mali, Wolof in Senegal). It's hard to say what is inevitable or avoidable in these dynamics. What kind of strategies could favor people's retention of maternal languages during the current generation and passing it on to the next? What kind of alliances to achieve that? The notion that each person learn three languages (put forth by, perhaps among others, a past senior UNESCO official) would be a framework for that in the ideal world - i.e., mother tongue, regional or official language, international lingua franca - but that would require a lot of time, effort, and resources on individual and collective levels (though creative use of new technologies could facilitate unifying themes and potentially have a big impact at lower cost). In any event, although it would certainly be a better set of preoccupations for communities and nations than building car bombs or smart bombs, it is hard to see that happening. Another proposal that in effect everyone learn two languages - maternal and auxiliary - would in theory be a lot easier, but would imply some difficult choices: either regional languages cede their role to maternal languages on one hand & an international lingua franca on the other, or indigenous languages would cease to function as maternal languages with more widely spoken languages or linguae francae assuming the role of maternal languages (which has happened in the case of Swahili in parts of Tanzania). Both of these proposals are of course simplified abstractions. The reality, gets a lot more complex, as illustrated by the article Phil forwarded about the linguistically mixed couples in India. The background of effects of mass media, role of new technologies, economic & cultural penetration, and even changes within dominant languages, are among the other factors. But one element emerges at least in my mind that people making common cause about indigenous/maternal languages would do well to consider more: that of an international auxiliary language. It is easy to dismiss as utopian the efforts of Ludwig Zamenhof (creator of Esperanto) and various others that one French book title uncharitably dubbed "Les fous de langue" [crazy ones of language], but - without intending to plead the cause of constructed language (let alone any of those proposed) - I do think that the spread of use of English demonstrates an organic need of humanity at this time in its history for some kind of international second language. And where "les fous de langue" were right on is that we do have a choice in this matter. What does this have to do with indigenous language? Two things. First, the dynamic & choices relating to language internationally need to be understood. Obviously things cannot go back to the way they were linguistically (even if we wanted that), but the manifold process of globalization can end up with different outcomes. I've been given to think that existence of a de jure (as opposed to de facto/default) international auxiliary language could preserve space for indigenous/maternal languages. It probably is more complex than that, but one could work towards that end - recognizing both humanity's unavoidable need at this time for a common language and the unacceptably high cost of loss of its maternal languages. the possibility that what might seem on the face of it to be opposites are actually natural allies. Second, there are many sensible and committed people interested in the topic of an international language, some of whom are decicated to particular outcomes (such as Esperanto, which by way of disclaimer I respect but am not part of). Let me hasten to add that the idea of an international language does *not* presuppose an invented one, although in theory at least that is one possibility. In any event, what would be the possibility of communicating more with communities interested one way or another in the principle of an international auxiliary language? There is/was an effort in this direction among some NGOs represented at the UN in the form of a "Coalition for an International Auxiliary Language" (CIAL) that also is concerned with "Linguistic Human Rights and Democracy in Communication"; see http://www.geocities.com/ueango/ . If the "common cause" is found in preserving or even revitalizing maternal languages of indigenous and minority peoples, that is compelling; but if the cause is for a world where people would both have their language of heritage (i.e., encompassing the forementioned) and a chosen common world tongue for communication, understanding, and cultural and commercial exchange, that could be transforming. I realize this strays a bit from the main group purpose, so I'll leave the issue there unless others want to take it up (perhaps offline). Don ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Ward" To: Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 12:01 AM Subject: Re: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) > It's interesting how similar many of of stories in these articles are: > large languages like Hindi, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, English and > French swallowing smaller ones. But, if there is a silver lining, it is > that with common issues, you can find common cause. From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sun Jan 25 01:34:59 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:34:59 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) Message-ID: that was good. too bad more people don't do that for teaching. . . language, for example. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil CashCash" To: Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 4:11 PM Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > fyi, > > this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well done. > take a look... > > http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends > > phil cash cash > UofA, ILAT > > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 26 15:52:34 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:52:34 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind By MIKE CHAMBERS Associated Press Writer Monday, January 26, 2004 - JUNEAU, Alaska Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass federal tests written in English. In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control that the rural villages treasure. "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education Commissioner Roger Sampson. Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades 3-8 and again in high school. States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take English-only tests. Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages spoken by students, Sampson said. Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests into more than 100 languages, education officials said. And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English words have no Yupik counterparts. The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into English fluency. Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages dwindle. "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social well being." Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, produced by the district by permission of their English-language publishers. While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth grade. Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking instruction. Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to the language barrier, Ferguson said. Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all schools are expected to have such tests in place. Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman Zollie Stevenson. States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. ___ On the Net: No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ State Department of Education and Early Development: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 26 15:56:06 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:56:06 -0700 Subject: Indian schools struggle to improve performance (fwd) Message-ID: Date posted online: Monday, January 26, 2004 Indian schools struggle to improve performance http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2004/01/26/news/education/d3b03aa0485ad60886256e270018e657.txt SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act has called for sweeping education reform in the nation's schools. But the heightened standards are putting more pressure on American Indian schools in South Dakota, where students already struggle to succeed. In South Dakota, more than 7,000 students attend 21 reservation schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Collectively, these students have the lowest test scores in the state. Economic conditions, a shortage of preschool opportunities, rural locations and funding shortfalls contribute to poor student performance in BIA schools. While the 2-year-old No Child Left Behind Act requires all children to meet standards in reading and math by 2014, the federal government does not have the same leverage to force change at BIA schools as it does with low-performing public schools. "If the federal government is holding states' feet to the fire on achievement for Native American students, is it holding the same standards to itself?" asked Kevin Carey, policy analyst with the Education Trust, a nonprofit group. BIA schools educate about 47,000 students, nearly 10 percent of the total school-age Indian population. Educators predict that many of those schools are not going to meet the proficiency standards. It will take more time and a different approach if Indian schools are going to catch up, school officials say. "There are some qualities of that law that are unattainable," said Larry Gauer, superintendent at St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. "Some of those kids aren't going to be proficient. It's our job to educate them as much as we can. And we will do that." At the Wounded Knee School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, officials are taking corrective actions that are required under the No Child Left Behind Act. School officials are planning changes that include aligning their course offerings with South Dakota's state curriculum standards. They hope to offer more teacher training if they get financial help. For a while, school staff members worried that they would be replaced under a complete restructuring, but they have since found out they will stay. The Wounded Knee school is one of three BIA schools in South Dakota, and 19 around the nation, that are listed in the worst performance category. That means the school has failed to make the prescribed academic progress for five years in a row, including failures under a previous school accountability law. The BIA plans to provide additional money and technical assistance to its lowest-performing schools, said Sharon Wells, special assistant to the director of the Office of Indian Education in Washington. When money becomes available, Wounded Knee could get more than $200,000, said John Cedarface, education supervisor at Wounded Knee School. With an enrollment of about 150, Wounded Knee struggles with high teacher turnover and a lack of continuity in the classrooms, Cedarface said. In the 1960s and 1970s, Black Hills State University offered a program to train Indian teachers, but the program was ended, Cedarface said. Wells agreed that it is difficult for BIA schools to recover from high staff turnover, which is 30 percent or higher at some. In order to make adequate progress next year, nearly one-fourth of Wounded Knee students have to show improvement. That is unlikely, as is attaining a required 90 percent attendance rate. Currently, attendance rates of 70 or 80 percent are typical. "We are going to make improvements," Cedarface said. "We're just pressed for time. "It's kind of like a losing game," he said. "It's like being a bull rider and the bull is already down inside the chute before you come out." Poverty is the biggest factor preventing Indian children from achieving at a higher level, said William Demmert Jr., education professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. Poor children do not have an opportunity to develop a language base. They have less access to preschools and fewer learning opportunities. Combine that with a native language other than English, and those children start out behind, he said. Demmert, a former director of the Office of Indian Education in the BIA, has been researching Indian learning for decades. One of the most successful education models, he said, is to allow children to learn in their native language. Educators at schools such as St. Francis are trying to do that. All students learn about Indian culture and language, and one elementary class is taught in Lakota. The consequences for public schools that fall short of the new federal standards are serious. The schools can be taken over by the state or by a private company if test scores do not improve. But there is no similar provision for BIA-funded schools, said Carol Barbero, a Washington lawyer representing tribes. Without the threat of takeover, Barbero asked, how will there be true accountability? What happens if the BIA schools run by the tribes do not improve? Will their federal funding be held up? "I don't know. A lot of these things may have to go to court," Barbero said. "There's nothing in the law that says the state can come in." That either leaves the law open to interpretation or means there simply is a hole in it, she said. It's a question that will need to be answered soon. Nineteen of the BIA schools already are in the second year of corrective action, a point at which public schools face the prospect of restructuring. Education department officials say no matter how daunting the task, the new law aims to deliver a quality education to every child. Even though Indian children in BIA and public schools have not performed well historically on standardized tests, they are capable, said Darla Marburger of the U.S. Department of Education's elementary and secondary education office. Progress starts with clear and rigorous standards followed by accountability, Marburger said. BIA schools can meet the prescribed goals by 2014 but might have to ask for help, she said. "When it says No Child Left Behind, that's exactly what it means," she said. "They are in no way forgotten schools." From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon Jan 26 20:04:59 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 12:04:59 -0800 Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) Message-ID: 01/24/2004 - JUNEAU AK By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass federal tests written in English. In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control that the rural villages treasure. "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education Commissioner Roger Sampson. Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades 3-8 and again in high school. States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take English-only tests. Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages spoken by students, Sampson said. Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests into more than 100 languages, education officials said. And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English words have no Yupik counterparts. The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into English fluency. Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages dwindle. "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social well being." Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, produced by the district by permission of their English-language publishers. While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth grade. Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking instruction. Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to the language barrier, Ferguson said. Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all schools are expected to have such tests in place. Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman Zollie Stevenson. States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. On the Net: No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ State Department of Education and Early Development: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ Copyright by The Associated Press. From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Tue Jan 27 17:26:36 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:26:36 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) In-Reply-To: <1075132354.ba695e81e5e8b@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Dear ILAT, It seems that the NCLB is in direct conflict with the 'intent' of PUBLIC LAW 101-477 NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES ACT of 1990 in that federal policies are being implemented with out recognition to the "special status" of NA languages. For example, in section 6 Congress found: "(6) there is convincing evidence that student achievement and performance, community and school pride, and educational opportunity is clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first language of the child or student;" Further, in SEC. 104. It is the policy of the United States to-- "7) support the granting of comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a Native American language the same academic credit as comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a foreign language, with recognition of such Native American language proficiency by institutions of higher education as fulfilling foreign language entrance or degree requirements; and" What is even more troubling is the statement that Education Secretary Paige is making no exemptions to Native American or Alaskan Native populations. This is disturbing news and I hope it will be resolved fairly in favor of Indigenous languages. Phil Cash Cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:52 AM, Phil Cash-Cash wrote: > Fairbanks Daily News-Miner > http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# > > Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind > By MIKE CHAMBERS > Associated Press Writer > > Monday, January 26, 2004 - > > JUNEAU, Alaska > > Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped > preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new > federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. > > In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught > almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass > federal tests written in English. > > In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, > meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, > conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control > that the rural villages treasure. > > "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education > Commissioner Roger Sampson. > > Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades > 3-8 > and again in high school. > > States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three > years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take > English-only tests. > > Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public > schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages > spoken by students, Sampson said. > > Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests > into more than 100 languages, education officials said. > > And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of > Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as > completely as Spanish or other European languages. > > For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, > where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English > words have no Yupik counterparts. > > The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel > and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program > for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. > > A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier > years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into > English fluency. > > Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain > their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages > dwindle. > > "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state > Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an > academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social > well being." > > Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students > enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum > similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. > > But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, > produced by the district by permission of their English-language > publishers. > > While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs > don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth > grade. > > Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay > testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that > time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking > instruction. > > Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly > progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to > the language barrier, Ferguson said. > > Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will > fare > well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all > schools are expected to have such tests in place. > > Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to > accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of > Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. > > Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from > Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. > > "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the > fact > that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any > requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman > Zollie Stevenson. > > States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing > materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be > available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. > > ___ > > On the Net: > > No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ > > State Department of Education and Early Development: > http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ > > Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jan 27 18:25:52 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:25:52 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) In-Reply-To: <012301c3e2e3$7272b700$6500a8c0@computer> Message-ID: it initially started out in Inuit but then it switched to English. but the format is very pleasing visually and the drama-based audio mixing is engaging. i wish i could do this. phil UofA, ILAT > ----- Message from miakalish at REDPONY.US --------- > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:34:59 -0700 > From: Mia - Main Red Pony > Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology > Subject: Re: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > > that was good. too bad more people don't do that for teaching. . . > language, for example. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Phil CashCash" > To: > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 4:11 PM > Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > > > > fyi, > > > > this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well > done. > > take a look... > > > > http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends > > > > phil cash cash > > UofA, ILAT > > > > > > > ----- End message from miakalish at REDPONY.US ----- From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jan 27 18:49:12 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:49:12 -0700 Subject: Finding Our Talk (links) Message-ID: fyi, some of you may already know about this fyi. it is in regard to an ongoing documentary on the state of Aboriginal languages in Canada called, "Finding Our Talk." it is initiating new 2004 television season with new documentary segments in Finding Our Talk II. you can find general information and links at: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network http://www.aptn.ca/en/scheduling/singleProgramDetailPage?theSeries=A00847&theBeginDate=2004-01-19&theEndDate=2004-02-02 the actual footage and clips are at: Finding Our Talk: a Journey Through Aboriginal Languages http://www.mushkeg.ca/ this site may have some html coding problems but if you can get in it is well worth it to view the documentary video clips of Native speakers and activists. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT From bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 28 05:52:45 2004 From: bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:52:45 -0700 Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) In-Reply-To: <401572EB.2090009@ncidc.org> Message-ID: It's a shame there isn't a well organized/funded 'linguistic advocacy' organization to help in situations such as this -- or is there??? shannon Quoting Andre Cramblit : > 01/24/2004 - JUNEAU AK > By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer > > Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped > preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new > federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. > > In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught > almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass > federal tests written in English. > > In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, > meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, > conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control > that the rural villages treasure. > > "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education > Commissioner Roger Sampson. > > Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades > 3-8 and again in high school. > > States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after > three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to > take English-only tests. > > Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural > public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 > languages spoken by students, Sampson said. > > Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests > into more than 100 languages, education officials said. > > And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands > of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not > translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. > > For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of > 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous > English words have no Yupik counterparts. > > The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel > and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program > for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. > > A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in > earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native > children into English fluency. > > Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain > their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages > dwindle. > > "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said > state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an > academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social > well being." > > Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students > enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western > curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. > > But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, > produced by the district by permission of their English-language > publishers. > > While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the > programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until > fourth grade. > > Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay > testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that > time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking > instruction. > > Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly > progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed > to the language barrier, Ferguson said. > > Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will > fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when > all schools are expected to have such tests in place. > > Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to > accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of > Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. > > Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from > Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. > > "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the > fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any > requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman > Zollie Stevenson. > > States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing > materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not > be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. > > On the Net: > No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ > > State Department of Education and Early Development: > http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ > > Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ > > Copyright by The Associated Press. > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 28 16:47:20 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:47:20 -0700 Subject: Keeping a Culture Afloat (fwd) Message-ID: http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-easter28jan28,1,4229585.story Keeping a Culture Afloat A revival of the Rapa Nui tongue is energizing the small community of Easter Island natives, whose heritage is at risk of being overrun. By Héctor Tobar Times Staff Writer January 28, 2004 EASTER ISLAND — Evelyn Hucke wants her son to speak in the language of the king who settled this remote island more than a millennium ago, the same Polynesian tongue spoken by the people who carved the totemic statues that rise above the powder-blue waters of the South Pacific. Hucke, 30, grew up speaking that language, known as Rapa Nui. But as she walks the streets of Hanga Roa, Easter Island's only town, she hears the Polynesian-faced children chattering and arguing in Spanish, the language of the island's current rulers, the Chileans. Every day is a linguistic battle for Hucke as she fights the cartoons beamed in from South America, and the Spanish repartee at the grocery store and in the island's only schoolyard. "Ko ai a Hotu Matu'a?" she asks her 7-year-old. Obediently, he answers in the same language: "He was the first king who came here." Often called the loneliest place on Earth, Easter Island is now caught up in the swirling changes of globalization and is on the front line of a broader effort to preserve the world's endangered languages. Every year, more languages pass into extinction. In the Chilean archipelago north of the Strait of Magellan, the last dozen or so speakers of the Kawesqar Indian language are aged. Inevitably, Kawesqar will join Kunza and Selknam on the list of Chile's dead languages. Only an end to "Chileanization," local leaders here say, can rescue Rapa Nui — the term applies to the language, the 2,000 people who speak it and the island itself. Rapa Nui leaders want political autonomy from Chile or independence so they can control the migration of Spanish-speaking "Continentals" to the island. Saving Rapa Nui has become an obsession for a handful of people here, including a pair of California linguists who've spent nearly three decades helping create a Rapa Nui literature and a former medical worker who became a schoolteacher and launched the island's first Rapa Nui "immersion" program. "You realize something of your people is being lost, the spirit of our people," says Virginia Haoa, who runs the immersion classes for students from kindergarten through fourth grade. For Haoa and others, saving Rapa Nui means saving Easter Island's uniqueness — "our culture, our cosmology, our way of being," Haoa says. If Rapa Nui dies, so will a living connection to ancestors who built an exotic, mysterious civilization on an island just a few miles wide in a vast, otherwise empty stretch of the Pacific, 2,300 miles from the South American mainland. For now, there are still Easter Islanders who can tell you, in Rapa Nui, stories that have been passed down for generations about Hotu Matu'a, who, around AD 400, arrived with seven explorers from the land called Hiva to settle this place. You can still talk to people whose grandfathers were part of the Birdman cult that raised one of the last of the island's 800 famed, imposing moai statues. It was later shipped off to the British Museum in London. "What we've kept alive [of our culture] has been entirely on our own initiative," says Alfonso Rapu, 61, who, in the 1960s, led one of the most important protests against Chilean rule, escaping an arrest warrant by hiding in the island's caves. Intermarriage with Chilean Continentals, he says, might soon do away with many of the 39 surnames associated with the island's tribes. Chile has ruled the island since one of its admirals arrived here in 1888, signing a treaty with its last king, who residents believe was later poisoned in the Chilean city of Valparaiso. Until recently, geographic isolation kept alive the Rapa Nui language — a rhythmic tongue with few hard consonants — despite the small number of people speaking it. But these days, the peak of tourist season brings four daily flights from Santiago, Chile's capital. Taxi drivers who've relocated from Santiago cruise up and down Atamu Tekena Avenue in Hanga Roa, in search of fares. "Word has gotten out in Chile that you can make dollars easy on Easter Island," explains Hucke, a member of the self-appointed "Rapa Nui parliament," which is pushing to have the island's status placed on the agenda of a United Nations committee on colonization. "They come to try their luck. They aren't interested when we tell them our culture is being destroyed." Of the 3,000 or so residents here, about a third are transplants from the Chilean mainland. Last year, Easter Island had its first armed robbery — committed by a youth from the mainland. "It's not that we are against the people coming from the continent," says Enrique Pakarati Ika, the island's Chilean-appointed governor. "The people of Rapa Nui are very hospitable, and many times they invite Continental people to come." In the process, however, Hanga Roa risks becoming just another Chilean town. Chileans are currently as free to come to Easter Island as Americans are to move to Hawaii. "The Constitution of Chile is killing my culture and my identity," says Petero Edmunds, the mayor of Hanga Roa and the island's only popularly elected official. "We are a millenarian culture that existed long before Chile did. And the only way to protect that culture is by regulating migration." Edmunds and other leaders head to Santiago several times a year to negotiate autonomy with the authorities. Islanders hope to eventually achieve a status similar to their oceanic neighbors in French Polynesia, which was granted self-rule in 1984. "We are Polynesians," says activist Mario Tuki Hey, expressing an opinion shared by most anthropologists. "It's only an accident that makes us part of Chile." There is a growing consensus on the mainland that Easter Island deserves a different status than other isolated corners of the Chilean state. "There is unanimity in the idea that certain places, like an island located in the middle of the Pacific, should receive special treatment," said Sen. Jaime Orpis, a member of the conservative Independent Democratic Union who was part of a Chilean Senate commission that visited the island in September. "They should have autonomy." Sen. Carlos Ominami of the Socialist Party said such a status would probably be based on that of the Galapagos Islands, which are allowed to control migration from Ecuador and charge a visitor's fee to raise money for development. The Easter Island negotiations have dragged on for at least a year. For the time being, the island remains simply another administrative subdivision of the city of Valparaiso, Chile's main Pacific port. "We are as far from Valparaiso as Los Angeles is from Miami," Edmunds says. "It does not make sense that I have to call Valparaiso to get the money to fill a pothole or to have a Chilean bureaucrat tell me in what language I should educate my children." In fact, the island's school established its Rapa Nui immersion program four years ago in defiance of Chile's education laws, which mandate instruction primarily in Spanish. The educators and linguists behind the program say Rapa Nui was in such desperate straits, they couldn't afford to wait any longer. "For anyone under 25, Rapa Nui is not their primary language," says Nancy Weber, a linguist who has worked on the island with her husband, Robert, since the mid-1970s. Back then, things were different. "When we came, probably the greatest percentage of Rapa Nui children spoke Rapa Nui as their primary language," she says. Television arrived on Easter Island about the same time the Webers did. In those days, the linguists had great fun listening to the island's schoolchildren talk — in Rapa Nui — about the strange and exotic happenings on shows such as "Daniel Boone." The beaver-capped explorers and tomahawk-wielding Indians on the series were speaking dubbed Spanish, and the children weren't entirely sure what they were saying or doing. "None of them agreed with each other about what they had seen on TV the night before," Robert says. "And none of their stories seemed to match the 'Daniel Boone' I had seen." At the same time, the Webers set out to create Rapa Nui texts, inviting local residents to writing workshops and publishing mimeographed anthologies of poetry and family narratives. If Rapa Nui was to be taught in school, they felt, it needed a literature — writing that reflected its cultural reality. "People were moved to tears when they produced their first books," Nancy recalls. Rapa Nui, it seemed, was on the rebound. But as time passed, Rapa Nui began to slip behind Spanish, especially after Chilean TV expanded to a daylong schedule. By 1997, a sociolinguistic survey of the school found that no exclusive Rapa Nui speakers were left and that only a handful of students were "coordinate bilingual," or equally fluent in Spanish and Rapa Nui. In public places, Rapa Nui is being replaced by Chilean-accented Spanish laced with Rapa Nui structure, the Webers say. For example, Rapa Nui uses frequent "reduplication" of sounds. So you might hear an Easter Islander greet someone with "Hola, hola" in Spanish. "Eventually, Rapa Nui will be lost," Robert says. "If Rapa Nui were on the mainland, it would have disappeared long ago. If we're really honest, all we're doing is delaying the inevitable." If true, it will happen despite the long history of resistance and perseverance of the Rapa Nui people. Against long odds, Easter Islanders have kept their language alive through their tragic encounters with the outside world. The Chileans are only the most recent in a long line of Europeans and South Americans to control the island. For centuries, colonialists and slavers decimated the population. The small group of elders who could read Easter Island's rongo rongo writing system — preserved in 28 carved wooden tablets — all died as slaves in 19th century Peru. By the time the Chileans arrived, the Rapa Nui people numbered fewer than 200. In the 20th century, Chile ruled the island with a mixture of paternalism and benign neglect. Older residents remember an island without electricity or running water, run by Chilean naval officers "as if the island were a ship and we were all sailors." Chilean educators encouraged the parents of Easter Island's "best and brightest" to send their children to mainland boarding schools. Haoa, the Rapa Nui teacher, was sent off to Chile when she was 9. She suffered an unbearable loneliness for months on end, rarely hearing a word of her native language. "The nuns told my parents I was too smart, that it would be a waste to let me stay on the island," she says. As an adult with a Chilean university degree, she returned to the island to work at the local clinic — until the day her oldest daughter started kindergarten at Easter Island's elementary school. "I had always spoken to her in Rapa Nui because I knew when she grew up there would be pressure to speak in Spanish," Haoa remembers. After that first day of kindergarten, Haoa discovered that Rapa Nui was being treated "like an alien language" in her daughter's class, which was conducted entirely in Spanish. Soon Haoa was volunteering to organize Rapa Nui workshops at the school. Eventually, she became a full-time teacher there. "It was urgent that we have our children speaking our language," she says. Because Rapa Nui has no equivalents for modern words like "computer," Haoa and other teachers have coined new terms. A computer, for example, is a makimi roro uira, which literally means "brilliant mind machine." Creating new words helps encourage invention and creativity in a language, an essential part of keeping it alive. "We've proved that it's possible to teach science in Rapa Nui," Haoa says. But more important, she adds, "we're preparing our children for the outside world by giving them a stronger sense of who they are and where they come from." Mauricio Valdebenito, a Chilean and a cabdriver, is among the parents whose children will start the Rapa Nui immersion program soon, when the next kindergarten class begins. His wife is Rapa Nui, but she and their 5-year-old daughter speak mostly Spanish at home. "To me, all learning is a good thing. The more the better," Valdebenito says. "I wouldn't mind hearing her speak it more. It's part of her culture." Haoa tries to spread the same message outside the classroom. On her kitchen door there is a sign asking visitors to speak in Rapa Nui. "Hare vanaga i te reio henua," it says. "In this house we speak the voice of the people." Haoa believes she's making progress. The other day, she was walking across the playground when she heard something she hadn't heard for many years, a sound that transported her to her own childhood. A group of small children were arguing in Rapa Nui. "They were starting to scream, but they weren't hurting each other," she says. So for a moment or two, all she did was listen. From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Wed Jan 28 16:49:31 2004 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:49:31 EST Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) Message-ID: Parents can refuse to have their children tested in English (or tested period!) -- like they have done in Hawaii at Punana Leo. Organizations such as Punana Leo and Piegan Institute have brought this issue of the contradiction in federal legislation between NCLB and the Native American Languages Act to the attention of our national leaders, our congressional representatives, and our state educational offices. We both testified at the Senate Committe on Indian Affairs to this effect. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 28 16:30:50 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:30:50 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: I wonder how they deal with this issue in Puerto Rico? Or, perhaps Puerto Rico doesn't have to operate by the same rules, being a territory. phil cash cash wrote: > Dear ILAT, > > It seems that the NCLB is in direct conflict with the 'intent' of > PUBLIC LAW 101-477 NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES ACT of 1990 in that > federal policies are being implemented with out recognition to the > "special status" of NA languages. For example, in section 6 Congress > found: > > "(6) there is convincing evidence that student achievement and > performance, community and school pride, and educational opportunity is > clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first > language of the child or student;" > > Further, in SEC. 104. It is the policy of the United States to-- > > "7) support the granting of comparable proficiency achieved through > course work in a Native American language the same academic credit as > comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a foreign > language, with recognition of such Native American language proficiency > by institutions of higher education as fulfilling foreign language > entrance or degree requirements; and" > > What is even more troubling is the statement that Education Secretary > Paige is making no exemptions to Native American or Alaskan Native > populations. > > This is disturbing news and I hope it will be resolved fairly in favor > of Indigenous languages. > > Phil Cash Cash (cayuse/nez perce) > UofA, ILAT > > > On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:52 AM, Phil Cash-Cash wrote: > >> Fairbanks Daily News-Miner >> http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# >> >> Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind >> By MIKE CHAMBERS >> Associated Press Writer >> >> Monday, January 26, 2004 - >> >> JUNEAU, Alaska >> >> Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped >> preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new >> federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. >> >> In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught >> almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass >> federal tests written in English. >> >> In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, >> meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, >> conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control >> that the rural villages treasure. >> >> "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education >> Commissioner Roger Sampson. >> >> Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades >> 3-8 >> and again in high school. >> >> States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three >> years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take >> English-only tests. >> >> Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public >> schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages >> spoken by students, Sampson said. >> >> Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests >> into more than 100 languages, education officials said. >> >> And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of >> Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as >> completely as Spanish or other European languages. >> >> For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, >> where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English >> words have no Yupik counterparts. >> >> The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel >> and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program >> for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. >> >> A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier >> years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into >> English fluency. >> >> Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain >> their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages >> dwindle. >> >> "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state >> Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an >> academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social >> well being." >> >> Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students >> enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum >> similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. >> >> But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, >> produced by the district by permission of their English-language >> publishers. >> >> While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs >> don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth >> grade. >> >> Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay >> testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that >> time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking >> instruction. >> >> Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly >> progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to >> the language barrier, Ferguson said. >> >> Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will >> fare >> well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all >> schools are expected to have such tests in place. >> >> Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to >> accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of >> Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. >> >> Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from >> Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. >> >> "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the >> fact >> that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any >> requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman >> Zollie Stevenson. >> >> States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing >> materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be >> available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. >> >> ___ >> >> On the Net: >> >> No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ >> >> State Department of Education and Early Development: >> http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ >> >> Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ >> > From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Wed Jan 28 17:26:35 2004 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:26:35 EST Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: Puerto Rico does not have to follow the same rules. It is written into NCLB that they can have their testing and curriculum in Spanish. This is also true for other federal education legislation. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From langendt at U.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 29 21:04:24 2004 From: langendt at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Terry Langendoen) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:04:24 -0700 Subject: New language discovered In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Massimo, David Harrison has made a TV documentary about his fieldwork in Siberia. A preliminary version was shown at LSA earlier this month. I didn't see it, but those who did said it is excellent. I don't know whether the language in question was "discovered". One way to check is to see if it's listed in the most current edition of Ethnologue. I don't know its typological properties either. I also can't give you a figure on how many languages have gone extinct in the past 10 years. I'm copying this reply to the ILAT list that Phil Cash Cash has set up. Perhaps someone on that list can answer the questions you have raised. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Good luck with your piece! Terry On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini wrote: > Dear Terry, > Tried to communicate with you by phone. I have been asked by Il Corriere to > write an article on the discovery of a new language in Siberia (Middle > Chulym, discovered by Swarthmore linguist David Harrison). Only a handful of > elderly speakers (about 35 individuals, all over 50). I would like to get > from you, either for quote or for my own elaboration, essential replies to > the following questions: > How many languages have disappeared already in the last, say, 10 years or > so? > > This new language (no details available on the press articles) may well have > some interesting novel features, but it will no doubt have the usual > universals. Can we make a quick list? > > What does it mean today, for linguists, to discover a new language? > > I have to send in my piece tomorrow (Friday), so a quick reply will be > highly appreciated > Thanks a lot > Massimo > > > Terry Langendoen, Dept of Linguistics, Univ of Arizona P O Box 210028, 1100 E University Blvd, Tucson AZ 85721-0028 USA Phone: +1 520.621.6898 Fax: +1 520.626.9014 http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~langendoen Editor, Linguistics Abstracts http://www.linguisticsabstracts.com http://www.linguistlistplus.com Book review editor, LINGUIST List http://linguistlist.org/reviews/index.html From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 29 21:40:51 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:40:51 -0800 Subject: Languages (event0 Message-ID: (Please send this message along to anyone else you think would be interested. The registration forms et al are attached to this email.) Call for Presentations Language is Life: the 11th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference at the University of California at Berkeley June 11-13, 2004 Hosted by The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley) The Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Steering committee invites interested individuals and groups to give presentations at SILC this year, either in the form of a 15-minute talk (or less), a 1 1/2 hour workshop, or else to join one of our suggested panels, which will be 1 1/2 hours in length. Suggested panels include: Master-apprentice programs Immersion schools Archives and intellectual property rights Developing and using new writing systems Revitalizing languages without speakers We will also make time and space for the showing of films on language loss and language revitalization, if you have anything you'd like to show. See either of the following websites for the registration and presentation forms www.aicls.org or http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/SIL9brochure.html -- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Prof. Leanne Hinton Chair, Dept. of Linguistics 1203 Dwinelle Hall University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 email: hinton at socrates.berkeley.edu fax: (510) 643-5688 phone: (510) 643-7621 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 29 22:20:08 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:20:08 -0700 Subject: Keeping a Culture Afloat (fwd) Message-ID: This issue: having a minority culture overrun with speakers of the dominant language, is very common. This is, for example, a potential great threat to the Tibetan language; as the Chinese government is encouraging Mandarin-speaking ethnic Han to move to Tibet--just a fraction of a fraction of the Chinese population could swamp the Tibetans in terms of numbers. The US territory of Guam is another example: the Chamorro natives now represent only about 47% of the population, which presents obvious challenges in terms of language preservation. Large, dominant cultures have shown that they can easily absorb immigrants without any threat of losing their culture and language (despite what we hear from the ignorant rhetoric of the English Only movement), but it is much more difficult for minority cultures to do this. In this case, I hope that the Chilean government halts migration to the Easter Islands, as well as changes their Spanish-only laws. phil cash cash wrote: >http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-easter28jan28,1,4229585.story > >Keeping a Culture Afloat > >A revival of the Rapa Nui tongue is energizing the small community of >Easter Island natives, whose heritage is at risk of being overrun. > >By Héctor Tobar >Times Staff Writer > >January 28, 2004 > >EASTER ISLAND �~W Evelyn Hucke wants her son to speak in the language of >the king who settled this remote island more than a millennium ago, the >same Polynesian tongue spoken by the people who carved the totemic >statues that rise above the powder-blue waters of the South Pacific. > >Hucke, 30, grew up speaking that language, known as Rapa Nui. But as she >walks the streets of Hanga Roa, Easter Island's only town, she hears >the Polynesian-faced children chattering and arguing in Spanish, the >language of the island's current rulers, the Chileans. > >Every day is a linguistic battle for Hucke as she fights the cartoons >beamed in from South America, and the Spanish repartee at the grocery >store and in the island's only schoolyard. > >"Ko ai a Hotu Matu'a?" she asks her 7-year-old. Obediently, he answers >in the same language: "He was the first king who came here." > >Often called the loneliest place on Earth, Easter Island is now caught >up in the swirling changes of globalization and is on the front line of >a broader effort to preserve the world's endangered languages. > >Every year, more languages pass into extinction. In the Chilean >archipelago north of the Strait of Magellan, the last dozen or so >speakers of the Kawesqar Indian language are aged. Inevitably, Kawesqar >will join Kunza and Selknam on the list of Chile's dead languages. > >Only an end to "Chileanization," local leaders here say, can rescue Rapa >Nui �~W the term applies to the language, the 2,000 people who speak it >and the island itself. Rapa Nui leaders want political autonomy from >Chile or independence so they can control the migration of >Spanish-speaking "Continentals" to the island. > >Saving Rapa Nui has become an obsession for a handful of people here, >including a pair of California linguists who've spent nearly three >decades helping create a Rapa Nui literature and a former medical >worker who became a schoolteacher and launched the island's first Rapa >Nui "immersion" program. > >"You realize something of your people is being lost, the spirit of our >people," says Virginia Haoa, who runs the immersion classes for >students from kindergarten through fourth grade. > >For Haoa and others, saving Rapa Nui means saving Easter Island's >uniqueness �~W "our culture, our cosmology, our way of being," Haoa says. >If Rapa Nui dies, so will a living connection to ancestors who built an >exotic, mysterious civilization on an island just a few miles wide in a >vast, otherwise empty stretch of the Pacific, 2,300 miles from the >South American mainland. > >For now, there are still Easter Islanders who can tell you, in Rapa Nui, >stories that have been passed down for generations about Hotu Matu'a, >who, around AD 400, arrived with seven explorers from the land called >Hiva to settle this place. You can still talk to people whose >grandfathers were part of the Birdman cult that raised one of the last >of the island's 800 famed, imposing moai statues. It was later shipped >off to the British Museum in London. > >"What we've kept alive [of our culture] has been entirely on our own >initiative," says Alfonso Rapu, 61, who, in the 1960s, led one of the >most important protests against Chilean rule, escaping an arrest >warrant by hiding in the island's caves. > >Intermarriage with Chilean Continentals, he says, might soon do away >with many of the 39 surnames associated with the island's tribes. > >Chile has ruled the island since one of its admirals arrived here in >1888, signing a treaty with its last king, who residents believe was >later poisoned in the Chilean city of Valparaiso. > >Until recently, geographic isolation kept alive the Rapa Nui language �~W >a rhythmic tongue with few hard consonants �~W despite the small number >of people speaking it. > >But these days, the peak of tourist season brings four daily flights >from Santiago, Chile's capital. Taxi drivers who've relocated from >Santiago cruise up and down Atamu Tekena Avenue in Hanga Roa, in search >of fares. > >"Word has gotten out in Chile that you can make dollars easy on Easter >Island," explains Hucke, a member of the self-appointed "Rapa Nui >parliament," which is pushing to have the island's status placed on the >agenda of a United Nations committee on colonization. "They come to try >their luck. They aren't interested when we tell them our culture is >being destroyed." > >Of the 3,000 or so residents here, about a third are transplants from >the Chilean mainland. Last year, Easter Island had its first armed >robbery �~W committed by a youth from the mainland. > >"It's not that we are against the people coming from the continent," >says Enrique Pakarati Ika, the island's Chilean-appointed governor. >"The people of Rapa Nui are very hospitable, and many times they invite >Continental people to come." > >In the process, however, Hanga Roa risks becoming just another Chilean >town. > >Chileans are currently as free to come to Easter Island as Americans are >to move to Hawaii. > >"The Constitution of Chile is killing my culture and my identity," says >Petero Edmunds, the mayor of Hanga Roa and the island's only popularly >elected official. "We are a millenarian culture that existed long >before Chile did. And the only way to protect that culture is by >regulating migration." > >Edmunds and other leaders head to Santiago several times a year to >negotiate autonomy with the authorities. Islanders hope to eventually >achieve a status similar to their oceanic neighbors in French >Polynesia, which was granted self-rule in 1984. > >"We are Polynesians," says activist Mario Tuki Hey, expressing an >opinion shared by most anthropologists. "It's only an accident that >makes us part of Chile." > >There is a growing consensus on the mainland that Easter Island deserves >a different status than other isolated corners of the Chilean state. > >"There is unanimity in the idea that certain places, like an island >located in the middle of the Pacific, should receive special >treatment," said Sen. Jaime Orpis, a member of the conservative >Independent Democratic Union who was part of a Chilean Senate >commission that visited the island in September. "They should have >autonomy." > >Sen. Carlos Ominami of the Socialist Party said such a status would >probably be based on that of the Galapagos Islands, which are allowed >to control migration from Ecuador and charge a visitor's fee to raise >money for development. > >The Easter Island negotiations have dragged on for at least a year. For >the time being, the island remains simply another administrative >subdivision of the city of Valparaiso, Chile's main Pacific port. > >"We are as far from Valparaiso as Los Angeles is from Miami," Edmunds >says. "It does not make sense that I have to call Valparaiso to get the >money to fill a pothole or to have a Chilean bureaucrat tell me in what >language I should educate my children." > >In fact, the island's school established its Rapa Nui immersion program >four years ago in defiance of Chile's education laws, which mandate >instruction primarily in Spanish. The educators and linguists behind >the program say Rapa Nui was in such desperate straits, they couldn't >afford to wait any longer. > >"For anyone under 25, Rapa Nui is not their primary language," says >Nancy Weber, a linguist who has worked on the island with her husband, >Robert, since the mid-1970s. > >Back then, things were different. "When we came, probably the greatest >percentage of Rapa Nui children spoke Rapa Nui as their primary >language," she says. > >Television arrived on Easter Island about the same time the Webers did. >In those days, the linguists had great fun listening to the island's >schoolchildren talk �~W in Rapa Nui �~W about the strange and exotic >happenings on shows such as "Daniel Boone." The beaver-capped explorers >and tomahawk-wielding Indians on the series were speaking dubbed >Spanish, and the children weren't entirely sure what they were saying >or doing. > >"None of them agreed with each other about what they had seen on TV the >night before," Robert says. "And none of their stories seemed to match >the 'Daniel Boone' I had seen." > >At the same time, the Webers set out to create Rapa Nui texts, inviting >local residents to writing workshops and publishing mimeographed >anthologies of poetry and family narratives. If Rapa Nui was to be >taught in school, they felt, it needed a literature �~W writing that >reflected its cultural reality. > >"People were moved to tears when they produced their first books," Nancy >recalls. > >Rapa Nui, it seemed, was on the rebound. > >But as time passed, Rapa Nui began to slip behind Spanish, especially >after Chilean TV expanded to a daylong schedule. By 1997, a >sociolinguistic survey of the school found that no exclusive Rapa Nui >speakers were left and that only a handful of students were "coordinate >bilingual," or equally fluent in Spanish and Rapa Nui. > >In public places, Rapa Nui is being replaced by Chilean-accented Spanish >laced with Rapa Nui structure, the Webers say. For example, Rapa Nui >uses frequent "reduplication" of sounds. So you might hear an Easter >Islander greet someone with "Hola, hola" in Spanish. > >"Eventually, Rapa Nui will be lost," Robert says. "If Rapa Nui were on >the mainland, it would have disappeared long ago. If we're really >honest, all we're doing is delaying the inevitable." > >If true, it will happen despite the long history of resistance and >perseverance of the Rapa Nui people. Against long odds, Easter >Islanders have kept their language alive through their tragic >encounters with the outside world. > >The Chileans are only the most recent in a long line of Europeans and >South Americans to control the island. For centuries, colonialists and >slavers decimated the population. > >The small group of elders who could read Easter Island's rongo rongo >writing system �~W preserved in 28 carved wooden tablets �~W all died as >slaves in 19th century Peru. By the time the Chileans arrived, the Rapa >Nui people numbered fewer than 200. > >In the 20th century, Chile ruled the island with a mixture of >paternalism and benign neglect. Older residents remember an island >without electricity or running water, run by Chilean naval officers "as >if the island were a ship and we were all sailors." > >Chilean educators encouraged the parents of Easter Island's "best and >brightest" to send their children to mainland boarding schools. > >Haoa, the Rapa Nui teacher, was sent off to Chile when she was 9. She >suffered an unbearable loneliness for months on end, rarely hearing a >word of her native language. "The nuns told my parents I was too smart, >that it would be a waste to let me stay on the island," she says. > >As an adult with a Chilean university degree, she returned to the island >to work at the local clinic �~W until the day her oldest daughter started >kindergarten at Easter Island's elementary school. > >"I had always spoken to her in Rapa Nui because I knew when she grew up >there would be pressure to speak in Spanish," Haoa remembers. After >that first day of kindergarten, Haoa discovered that Rapa Nui was being >treated "like an alien language" in her daughter's class, which was >conducted entirely in Spanish. > >Soon Haoa was volunteering to organize Rapa Nui workshops at the school. >Eventually, she became a full-time teacher there. "It was urgent that >we have our children speaking our language," she says. > >Because Rapa Nui has no equivalents for modern words like "computer," >Haoa and other teachers have coined new terms. A computer, for example, >is a makimi roro uira, which literally means "brilliant mind machine." > >Creating new words helps encourage invention and creativity in a >language, an essential part of keeping it alive. > >"We've proved that it's possible to teach science in Rapa Nui," Haoa >says. But more important, she adds, "we're preparing our children for >the outside world by giving them a stronger sense of who they are and >where they come from." > >Mauricio Valdebenito, a Chilean and a cabdriver, is among the parents >whose children will start the Rapa Nui immersion program soon, when the >next kindergarten class begins. His wife is Rapa Nui, but she and their >5-year-old daughter speak mostly Spanish at home. > >"To me, all learning is a good thing. The more the better," Valdebenito >says. "I wouldn't mind hearing her speak it more. It's part of her >culture." > >Haoa tries to spread the same message outside the classroom. On her >kitchen door there is a sign asking visitors to speak in Rapa Nui. >"Hare vanaga i te reio henua," it says. "In this house we speak the >voice of the people." > >Haoa believes she's making progress. The other day, she was walking >across the playground when she heard something she hadn't heard for >many years, a sound that transported her to her own childhood. > >A group of small children were arguing in Rapa Nui. > >"They were starting to scream, but they weren't hurting each other," she >says. > >So for a moment or two, all she did was listen. > > > From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 29 23:11:55 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:11:55 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: It's my understanding that there is indeed language shift going on in India, but it is mostly in the direction of Hindi or other major state languages. Hindi is now estimated by some to be the native language of fully one-third of the population, which means, with the population of India having recently passed one billion, that the number of Hindi native speakers in the world population (let alone in India) may have already caught up with that of English. In fact, in the next century Hindi is widely forecasted to pass both English and Spanish to become the world's second largest native tongue, second only to Mandarin Chinese. As for language shift to English, it probably does occur to a certain degree when you are dealing with people like those described in the article: children of members of the small upper-class elite, who are are products of mixed marriages, and whose parents both speak minority languages and are likely to be fluent in English. But, for the large majority of Indians who are not members of this elite, mixed marriages are far more likely to favor dominant indigenous languages like Hindi. At any rates, even liberal estimates put the native-English speaking population of India at a tiny fraction. A personal observation: for some reason, there are a number of Indian students in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I am living, and although they come from a variety of Indian states and speak a variety of Indian languages, they use Hindi as their lingua franca, although they are living in an English-speaking country and studying in English. Were two such people to marry, it seems clear that their children would be hearing mostly Hindi at home. There is also quite a large anti-English movement in India, and there have been a growing number of states which have eliminated English as one of their official languages in recent years. This is, in my mind, a positive development, but I have also read articles that argue that the focus on containing the national role of English sometimes obscures a more pressing issue: the widespread loss of minority languages to more dominant Indian languages. In the more populated north, especially, where most languages are related to Hindi, the spread of Hindi as the national languages has met with little resistance, as it is not seen as an alien language. Consequently, it puts minority languages at a great deal of risk. In the south, where people speak completely unrelated languages, there is more resistance to Hindi, which has allowed English to remain a lingua franca to a greater degree, arguably a negative development, but it also reduces the likehood that local languages will be replaced by Hindi. Certainly, it is a very good thing indeed that India has chosen for their national language an indigenous language over a colonial language, and I agree that they should continue to expand the role of Hindi at the expense of English, but it does necessarily make the position of minority languages any more secure. For an extreme example of this kind of thing, I think of France, which speaks one of the most dominant languages in the world. All of the French paranoia about English loan words (which have about as much potential of "harming" French as tens of thousands of French loan-words have "harmed" English) have obscured the reality that French-only policies, some of the most conservative in any modern democracy, have put traditional languages like Breton in great danger. I think that the world in general, and not only the people who live in the major English-speaking countries, have a good reason to be wary of the English language, but it is not good to let that wariness draw attention away from the reality that most of the endangered minority languages in the world are not being replaced by English. Don Osborn wrote: >It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by international >bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children could be >used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The situation >described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual societies. >In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic approach to >teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez faire, >with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), except in >isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or English >only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So in >linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' >language education, especially in the cities. > >Don Osborn >Bisharat.net > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Phil Cash-Cash" >To: >Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM >Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) > > >Regional languages dying in mixed marriages >SANDHYA IYER > >The Times of India >TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] >http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms > >When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the >bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. > >Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not >be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But >there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today�~Rs global >village. > >Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the >mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom�~Rs hometown. > >Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, >"My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they >mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn�~Rt even gather a >smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that >there is no �~Qnative�~R element to look up to. At the same time, it isn�~Rt >so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards >life," she reasons. > >Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class >populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for >children to know a regional language. > >Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire >cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a >regional language is encouraged. > >To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that >a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she >opines. > >That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation >in families where the parents are from different regions. > >Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their >five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. > >"There�~Rs little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, >so he gets very little time with Ishaan. > >I�~Rm am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. >The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents >come over," says Jyotsna. > >Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support >system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. > >Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both >mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak >Marwari quite well. > >But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn�~Rt >speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the >language. > >>>From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn�~Rt want her talking only >in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade >away," he warns. > > > From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jan 30 17:03:11 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 10:03:11 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) In-Reply-To: <4019933B.1010009@luna.cc.nm.us> Message-ID: the situation described by the article was quite interesting. in the southern Columbia Plateau region (OR, WA, ID), an undocumented language isolate--Cayuse--shifted to Nez Perce in the 18th century and the last vestiges of the language shift was complete by 1930 with its last speakers. this language shift event is unique because it is not a contemporary one like we now know, it is entirely an indigenous language shift. apparently, the Cayuse and Nez Perce allied themselves through intermarriage, political, and economic means. but more than anything, it is likely the intermarriage that facilitated the language shift. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT On Jan 29, 2004, at 4:11 PM, Matthew Ward wrote: > It's my understanding that there is indeed language shift going on in > India, but it is mostly in the direction of Hindi or other major state > languages. Hindi is now estimated by some to be the native language of > fully one-third of the population, which means, with the population of > India having recently passed one billion, that the number of Hindi > native speakers in the world population (let alone in India) may have > already caught up with that of English. In fact, in the next century > Hindi is widely forecasted to pass both English and Spanish to become > the world's second largest native tongue, second only to Mandarin > Chinese. > > As for language shift to English, it probably does occur to a certain > degree when you are dealing with people like those described in the > article: children of members of the small upper-class elite, who are > are products of mixed marriages, and whose parents both speak minority > languages and are likely to be fluent in English. But, for the large > majority of Indians who are not members of this elite, mixed marriages > are far more likely to favor dominant indigenous languages like Hindi. > At any rates, even liberal estimates put the native-English speaking > population of India at a tiny fraction. > > A personal observation: for some reason, there are a number of Indian > students in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I am living, and although they > come from a variety of Indian states and speak a variety of Indian > languages, they use Hindi as their lingua franca, although they are > living in an English-speaking country and studying in English. Were > two > such people to marry, it seems clear that their children would be > hearing mostly Hindi at home. > > There is also quite a large anti-English movement in India, and there > have been a growing number of states which have eliminated English as > one of their official languages in recent years. This is, in my mind, > a > positive development, but I have also read articles that argue that the > focus on containing the national role of English sometimes obscures a > more pressing issue: the widespread loss of minority languages to more > dominant Indian languages. In the more populated north, especially, > where most languages are related to Hindi, the spread of Hindi as the > national languages has met with little resistance, as it is not seen as > an alien language. Consequently, it puts minority languages at a great > deal of risk. In the south, where people speak completely unrelated > languages, there is more resistance to Hindi, which has allowed English > to remain a lingua franca to a greater degree, arguably a negative > development, but it also reduces the likehood that local languages will > be replaced by Hindi. Certainly, it is a very good thing indeed that > India has chosen for their national language an indigenous language > over > a colonial language, and I agree that they should continue to expand > the > role of Hindi at the expense of English, but it does necessarily make > the position of minority languages any more secure. > For an extreme example of this kind of thing, I think of France, which > speaks one of the most dominant languages in the world. All of the > French paranoia about English loan words (which have about as much > potential of "harming" French as tens of thousands of French loan-words > have "harmed" English) have obscured the reality that French-only > policies, some of the most conservative in any modern democracy, have > put traditional languages like Breton in great danger. > > I think that the world in general, and not only the people who live in > the major English-speaking countries, have a good reason to be wary of > the English language, but it is not good to let that wariness draw > attention away from the reality that most of the endangered minority > languages in the world are not being replaced by English. > > Don Osborn wrote: > >> It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by >> international >> bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children >> could be >> used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The >> situation >> described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual >> societies. >> In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic >> approach to >> teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez >> faire, >> with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), >> except in >> isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or >> English >> only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So >> in >> linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' >> language education, especially in the cities. >> >> Don Osborn >> Bisharat.net >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Phil Cash-Cash" >> To: >> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM >> Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) >> >> >> Regional languages dying in mixed marriages >> SANDHYA IYER >> >> The Times of India >> TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] >> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms >> >> When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the >> bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. >> >> Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may >> not >> be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But >> there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today’s global >> village. >> >> Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the >> mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom’s hometown. >> >> Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and >> 10, >> "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they >> mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn’t even gather a >> smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that >> there is no ‘native’ element to look up to. At the same time, it isn’t >> so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards >> life," she reasons. >> >> Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class >> populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for >> children to know a regional language. >> >> Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire >> cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a >> regional language is encouraged. >> >> To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important >> that >> a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she >> opines. >> >> That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing >> generation >> in families where the parents are from different regions. >> >> Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their >> five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. >> >> "There’s little we can do about it. My husband is constantly >> travelling, >> so he gets very little time with Ishaan. >> >> I’m am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. >> The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his >> grandparents >> come over," says Jyotsna. >> >> Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no >> support >> system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. >> >> Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both >> mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak >> Marwari quite well. >> >> But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn’t >> speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the >> language. >> >>> From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn’t want her talking >>> only >> in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade >> away," he warns. >> >> >> > From Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU Fri Jan 30 21:49:48 2004 From: Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:49:48 -0900 Subject: New language discovered In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Massimo, I joined this discussion late -- my apologies if this message is by now redundant. I did see the David Harrison documentary. It's wonderful. Just a "rough cut" at this point, but it shows much promise. You can view clips at http://ironboundfilms.com/ Chulym in definitely NOT a newly disovered language. It is rather an underdocumented language belonging to the Turkic family. Prior to Harrison's recent field work, there had been no work on the language for several decades. Harrison was not even sure whether he would any speakers remaining. He was pleasantly surprized to find several dozen speakers, some in their 50's. _____________________________ Gary Holton Alaska Native Language Center University of Alaska Box 757680 Fairbanks, AK 99775-7680 (907) 474-6585 [voice] (907) 474-6586 [fax] http://www.uaf.edu/anlc gary.holton at uaf.edu > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology > [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Terry Langendoen > Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 12:04 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: New language discovered > > > Hi Massimo, > > David Harrison has made a TV documentary about his fieldwork in > Siberia. A preliminary version was shown at LSA earlier this > month. I didn't see it, but those who did said it is excellent. > > I don't know whether the language in question was "discovered". > One way to check is to see if it's listed in the most current > edition of Ethnologue. I don't know its typological properties > either. I also can't give you a figure on how many > languages have > gone extinct in the past 10 years. I'm copying this > reply to the > ILAT list that Phil Cash Cash has set up. Perhaps someone on > that list can answer the questions you have raised. Sorry I > couldn't be of more help. Good luck with your piece! Terry > > On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini wrote: > > > Dear Terry, > > Tried to communicate with you by phone. I have been > asked by Il Corriere to > > write an article on the discovery of a new language > in Siberia (Middle > > Chulym, discovered by Swarthmore linguist David > Harrison). Only a handful of > > elderly speakers (about 35 individuals, all over > 50). I would like to get > > from you, either for quote or for my own > elaboration, essential replies to > > the following questions: > > How many languages have disappeared already in the > last, say, 10 years or > > so? > > > > This new language (no details available on the press > articles) may well have > > some interesting novel features, but it will no > doubt have the usual > > universals. Can we make a quick list? > > > > What does it mean today, for linguists, to discover > a new language? > > > > I have to send in my piece tomorrow (Friday), so a > quick reply will be > > highly appreciated > > Thanks a lot > > Massimo > > > > > > > > Terry Langendoen, Dept of Linguistics, Univ of Arizona > P O Box 210028, 1100 E University Blvd, Tucson AZ > 85721-0028 USA > Phone: +1 520.621.6898 Fax: +1 520.626.9014 > http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~langendoen > Editor, Linguistics Abstracts > http://www.linguisticsabstracts.com > > http://www.linguistlistplus.com > Book review editor, LINGUIST List > http://linguistlist.org/reviews/index.html > From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Sat Jan 3 01:04:53 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2004 17:04:53 -0800 Subject: Banned WOrds Message-ID: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=15&u=/ap/banished_words From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 5 18:06:40 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 11:06:40 -0700 Subject: Love of Creek language inspires teacher to share (fwd) Message-ID: [list manager note: i suspect this Jan. 2 article may be an old news item being revived, but i include it fyi.] ~~~ Love of Creek language inspires teacher to share By KEITH DINWIDDIE / The Norman Transcript http://www.okmulgeetimes.com/articles/2004/01/02/news/709.txt NORMAN, Okla. (AP) -- In the American Indian language of Creek, the word mvhayv (pronounced mu-high-ya) means teacher. On the University of Oklahoma campus, Margaret Mauldin is much more than that. Mauldin, affectionately known as "Mvhayv" to her students at OU, is one of the world's foremost authorities on the Creek language. In the fall of 1995, Mauldin became OU's first Creek language instructor. In her first semester as a university-level Creek instructor, Mauldin said she had only limited homemade materials to use. "OU had been experimenting with several tribal languages, such as Kiowa, Choctaw and Cherokee, but before that time there was no Creek language course offered for college credit," Mauldin said. "But all of these languages, including Creek, were at the beginning level." Mauldin's love affair with the Creek language can be traced to her childhood. As a Native American, Mauldin grew up in a home where English was not the first language. In Mauldin's childhood home in Okemah, Creek was the language spoken most frequently between family and friends. In fact, Mauldin's mother, who died two years ago at the age of 94, spoke only Creek her entire life. Mauldin, who is now 63, said growing up in a Creek-speaking home gave her an appreciation and love for the language she has carried with her throughout her life. Before becoming a teacher, Mauldin spent several years driving 18-wheelers across the United States. During her years on the road, Mauldin said she found herself missing the Creek language. Once she returned home to Okemah, she discovered fewer and fewer people were speaking Creek. "It struck me that I wasn't hearing the language as frequently as I used to," Mauldin said. "I kept wondering why 'they' weren't doing anything about it, and then I thought why aren't I doing anything about it. I decided then that I could make a difference, and I would make a difference." Mauldin said she gave up all employment and began working on a plan to keep the Creek language alive and growing. She said the first step in the process was evaluating how fluent she actually was in the language and finding out how well she could read what little written material there was available. She said the only real reading source she could find was the Creek version of the New Testament, making the book her source material of sorts when it came to spelling and grammar. In 1991, she began teaching Creek language classes in her home in Okemah. Mauldin said she was initially surprised at how many people wanted to learn the language. "I advertised the classes in the Okemah newspaper, and people just came," Mauldin said. "I originally wanted to teach the language to two people in the same family or two people who spoke to each other frequently. That way these people could practice the language together on a daily basis. I still believe language learning should be done by families. That's the most effective method of learning a language." Mauldin's first step in bringing the Creek language to the OU campus also came in 1991. After hearing Mauldin speak in Creek at a tribal meeting in Okemah, John Moore, OU anthropology chairperson at the time, contacted Mauldin and asked her to do some translation work for OU. Eventually, the translation job led to a position as a consultant for anthropological linguistics classes at the school. Realizing Mauldin's familiarity and knowledge of Creek language were virtually unparalleled, OU offered her a position as an instructor of curriculum development in the Creek language in the department of anthropology/Native American studies. Today, Mauldin is joined by her daughter Gloria McCarty as OU's two Creek language instructors. Together, the mother and daughter teach six courses at three levels. "The Creek language program today compared to what it was when we started it in 1995 is like night and day," Mauldin said. "While we've come a long way, we're really just now taking step two. We're now gathering data and materials for a textbook, and we want our textbook to be just as good, attractive and shiny as the textbooks for most other classes." While the Creek language program has operated without a textbook for its first eight years at OU, students in the curriculum do at least have access to a Creek dictionary, thanks to Mauldin. In 2000, Mauldin, along with linguist Jack Martin, published a Creek dictionary. It was only the second Creek language dictionary ever published and the first since 1890. As part of her Creek curriculum at OU, Mauldin teaches her students a number of classic Creek songs and hymns, giving students a chance to harken back to what it was like for Mauldin growing up in a Native American home in rural Oklahoma. All of the songs Mauldin includes in her classes have been transcribed entirely from her memory. From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jan 7 16:49:31 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 09:49:31 -0700 Subject: Focus stays on Aboriginal languages (fwd) Message-ID: Focus stays on Aboriginal languages By Education Reporter JEMMA CHAPMAN 08jan04 http://www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/ 0,5936,8345786%255E2682,00.html THE number of school students studying Aboriginal languages has more than doubled in the past four years, while interest in traditional languages, such as French and Italian, has declined. Education Department figures show the number studying Aboriginal languages has risen from 2000 in 1999 to 4118 in 2003. At the same time, the number of students studying French has dropped from 15,206 in 1999 to 13,341 in 2003. Pupils learning Italian have decreased from 13,583 to 13,305. Enrolments in German and Japanese have also declined, but numbers studying Greek and Indonesian have increased. SA Secondary Principals Association president Bob Heath said yesterday the increase in the study of Aboriginal languages reflected greater cultural and racial understanding in schools. "It's showing that our education programs are making students more culturally aware and more racially tolerant than in the past," he said. Of the 4118 students studying Aboriginal languages, 1653 were Aboriginal and 2465 were non-Aboriginal. Languages include Pitjantjatjara, Antikirinya, Kaurna, Arabana, Adnyamathanha, Ngarrindjeri, Yankunytjatjara and Narrunga. Demand for summer courses in Aboriginal languages has also increased. Nearly 50 students are enrolled in the Pitjantjatjara Language Summer School course at the University of South Australia's Underdale Campus, which started on Monday and runs until January 16. For the first time, a Kaurna language summer school course is being offered because of growing demand. About 40 students are enrolled in the course, which starts next Monday and finishes on January 23. Students include people of varied backgrounds, including public servants, community workers, lawyers, teachers, health professionals and indigenous people working in health and drug abuse areas. SA Association of State School Organisations president John White described the interest in Aboriginal languages as positive. "It's important that we keep as many languages as possible in our schools, so that present and future generations can communicate with the world at large," he said. Mr White questioned whether the decline in some more traditional subjects was due to insufficient specialist teachers or simply a lack of interest on the part of students. SA Primary Principals Association president Leonie Trimper said the increase in students learning Aboriginal languages could "only be a good thing for keeping our heritage alive". -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2921 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 8 01:04:10 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:04:10 -0800 Subject: Call To conference Message-ID: You are invited to attend the 27th Annual California Conference on American Indian Education, April 22-24th, 2004, at the Westin Hotel, in Los Angeles California. This years~R theme ~SSelf-Determination Through Education~T will showcase 27 years of the successes, growth and impact the American Indian Education Centers have had on the American Indian community in California. If you wopuld like the call to conference foms please email me for the pdf From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Thu Jan 8 17:09:17 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 10:09:17 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Linguistics Babel's children Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG From The Economist print edition Corbis -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 908 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 282032 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase ?the chicken is eating? translates into colloquial Riau as ?ayam makan?. Literally, this is ?chicken eat?. But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as ?the chicken is making somebody eat?, or ?somebody is eating where the chicken is?. There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (?the?, as opposed to ?a?). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky?in particular, his theory of ?deep grammar?. According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, ?I dided it? instead of ?I did it?). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. Plumbing the grammatical depths Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages?for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages?than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek. As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of ?informants? who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. Word, words, words A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked?an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept?every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 9461 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 224 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 224 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 185 bytes Desc: not available URL: From stonefbr at GSE.HARVARD.EDU Thu Jan 8 20:48:16 2004 From: stonefbr at GSE.HARVARD.EDU (Bruce Stonefish) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 15:48:16 -0500 Subject: Call To conference In-Reply-To: <3FFCAC8A.7060906@ncidc.org> Message-ID: Hello Could you send me a form Thanks Bruce Stonefish On Wed, 7 Jan 2004 17:04:10 -0800 Andre Cramblit wrote: >You are invited to attend the 27th Annual California Conference on >American Indian Education, April 22-24th, 2004, at the Westin Hotel, in >Los Angeles California. This years~R theme ~SSelf-Determination Through >Education~T will showcase 27 years of the successes, growth and impact >the American Indian Education Centers have had on the American Indian >community in California. > > >If you wopuld like the call to conference foms please email me for the pdf From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 8 22:19:09 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 14:19:09 -0800 Subject: California Indian Education Message-ID: Annual Conference Info can be downloaded @: http://www.ncidc.org From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jan 9 17:43:20 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 10:43:20 -0700 Subject: GRANT OPPORTUNITY (fwd) Message-ID: GRANT OPPORTUNITY Summary: Tribal Preservation Program The purpose of this program is to provide grants for tribes to protect their significant cultural and historic resources. Grant awards are made in five categories: Locating and Identifying Cultural Resources: A) Survey and Inventory of Historic or Significant Places projects are designed to be the first step toward protecting historic places by locating them through a survey. B) Survey of Traditional Skills and Information projects aim to determine the community's cultural needs in transmitting skills and traditions between generations. Preserving a Historic Property: A) Project Planning will be funded toresearch and plan the physical preservation of a site. B) Repair work on historic structures listed in the National Register of Historic Places will also be funded under this category. Comprehensive and Land-Use Preservation Planning projects will focus on planning for the preservation of previously identified cultural resources. Oral History and Documenting Cultural Traditions projects will focus on preserving culture for future generations. Education and Training for Building a Historic Preservation Program projects will focus on the development of a sustainable preservation program. For more information, visit the National Park Service site at http://www2.cr.nps.gov/tribal/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 1462 bytes Desc: not available URL: From fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 9 19:10:28 2004 From: fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Francisco Marmolejo) Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2004 12:10:28 -0700 Subject: North American Higher Education Conference Message-ID: Sorry for potential duplicates. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dear Colleague: Join leaders and practitioners of higher education, business, government and students in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico for CONAHEC's 9th North American Higher Education Conference! It is the premier networking and information sharing event for education leaders in Mexico, Canada and the United States. The theme of the March 17-20, 2004 conference is "Discovering North American Potential: Higher Education Charts a New Course." For complete information, visit http://conahec.org and follow the link to the conference Web site. The event is organized by CONAHEC, a trinational consortium linking higher education institutions in North America, and is co-convened by the American Council on Education (ACE); the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC); the Asociaci?n Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educaci?n Superior (ANUIES); the Association of Canadian Community Colleges/Association des coll?ges communautaires du Canada (ACCC); and the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada/Association des universit?s et coll?ges du Canada (AUCC). Our host institution is the Universidad de Guadalajara, and our co-hosts are the Universidad Aut?noma de Guadalajara; Universidad del Valle de Atemajac; ITESM-Campus Guadalajara; Universidad Panamericana; and, Universidad Tecnol?gica de Jalisco. EXTENDED CONFERENCE REGISTRATION DEADLINE If you haven't registered yet, register online at our conference Web site TODAY! As an early holiday present, we have extended the deadline for "early bird" registration through Friday, January 9, 2004. Alternatively, if you don't have online access, you can register by calling Stefan Baumann at (520) 621-7761. Conference Hotel Rates and Deadline The Fiesta Americana Guadalajara is offering our group a special rate of $890 pesos per night - approximately $80 USD or $105 CAD (single/double, not including taxes). To get the special rate, reserve your room by Friday, January 30, 2004 and use the code "CONAHE" (no final "c"). We encourage you to reserve your room *TODAY*. To make your reservation, call Fiesta Americana at 1-800-FIESTA1 (1-800-343-7821) from the U.S. or Canada. From Mexico you can call 01-800-504-5000 or (55) 5326-6900 (from Mexico City). You can also call the hotel directly at (011-52) (33) 3825-3434. After January 30th, these low rates are no longer guaranteed, and the room price may rise significantly. DON'T WAIT -- call today! SPEAKERS AND PROGRAM We have assembled a superb program for the conference. Some of our featured invited speakers include: * Reyes Tamez Guerra, Secretary of Public Education, MEXICO * Julio Rubio, Undersecretary for Higher Education, MEXICO * Silvia Alvarez, Deputy Director, Mexican Science and Technology Council (CONACYT), MEXICO * Leonard Haynes, Director, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, USA * Madeleine Green, Vice President for International Initiatives, American Council on Education, USA * Christiane Boulanger, Human Resources Development Canada * Jamil Salmi, Education Sector Manager, Human Development Network, World Bank * Sally Johnstone, Executive Director, Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, WICHE, USA * Robert A. Pastor, Vice President of International Affairs and Professor of International Relations, American University, USA * Julio Millan, President, Future Society Chapter Mexico. * Juan Carlos Romero Hicks, Governor of the State of Guanajuato, MEXICO * David W. Strangway, President and CEO, Canada Foundation for Innovation, CANADA For an updated version of the program, visit our conference Web site regularly. Other features of our program include: * Two optional post-conference workshops on internationalization of the curriculum and institutions. * 30 concurrent sessions delivered by experts from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada on topics related to quality assurance, building competencies, internationalization, model projects, student and faculty mobility, North American studies, and higher education's role in economic development. * Working sessions with funding agencies supporting mobility programs in North America. * Presentation of CONAHEC's Award of Distinction and the Manuel T. Pacheco Award. * Not-to-be-missed networking tours in historic Guadalajara and Tequila. * Optional visits to Guadalajara's finest universities and colleges. * Joint events and sessions with members of the Student Organization of North America (SONA), a student-led organization sponsored by CONAHEC. We look forward to seeing you in Guadalajara! Francisco Marmolejo Executive Director Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) University of Arizona 220 W. 6th St. University Services Annex, Bldg. 300A Rm. 108 PO Box 210300 Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA Phone: (520) 621-9080 Fax: (520) 626-2675 E-mail: fmarmole at u.arizona.edu http://conahec.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.gif Type: image/gif Size: 286475 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jan 10 17:52:07 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sat, 10 Jan 2004 10:52:07 -0700 Subject: SSILA 2003-04 Annual Meeting (fwd link) Message-ID: Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas 2003-04 Annual Meeting http://www.ssila.org/ Session 11 Language Documentation and Revitalization. 9:00???? Anna Berge & Gary Holton, Community Language Documentation:?Collaborative Approaches to Fieldwork with Alaskan Languages? 9:20???? Michal Brody, Meandering toward a common alphabet: Truce, tolerance, and the unique case of Yucatec Maya 9:40???? Cathy Moser Marlett & Stephen A. Marlett, Principles guiding the choice of?illustrations for the Seri dictionary? 10:00?? Juliette Blevins & Monica V. Arellano, Chochenyo language revitalization: A first report 10:20?? Discussion and break 10:40?? Susan J. Blake, Ulrich Teucher & Larry Grant, Meanings of Musqueam Personal Names: The Capilano Tradition 11:00?? William J. Poser, The Barkerville Jail Text: The Earliest Known Carrier Text 11:20?? Roy Wright-Tekastiaks, Acceptability judgment and extrinsic rule ordering in a missionary grammar 11:40?? David L. Shaul, Language Teaching as a Data Source for Pragmatics: an O?odham Example??? From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 12 17:05:50 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 10:05:50 -0700 Subject: Remembering the old ways (fwd) Message-ID: Remembering the old ways 2004-01-12 by Mike Archbold Journal Reporter http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/153432 The little girl, a third-grader, carefully leaned forward and whispered in Arthur Ballard's ear. She stepped back and looked him square in the face, as if expecting a reply. Then she whispered again in his ear before following her classmates into the museum. Patricia Cosgrove, executive director of the White River Valley Museum in Auburn, tells that story, delighting in the interaction fostered by the museum's newest acquisition: ``Listen My Nephew,'' life-size bronze statues of Ballard and his friend, Big John, a Muckleshoot tribal elder. A large group of Muckleshoot tribal members attended the unveiling late last year. Cosgrove said the rendering by New Mexico sculptor Reynaldo Rivera brought tears to their eyes. The two men greet visitors just inside the museum entrance. Ballard is sitting. He wears a hat and balances a tablet on his knee; a pen poised in his hand. His head is tilted upward at an angle as he waits intently for Big John standing in front of him to speak. Big John, who was born around 1840, is a big man with a regal head. His features are heavy, especially his nose, which dominates his face. A cane is hooked over his right arm. He is gazing into the distance or perhaps into the past. The sculptor was helped by photographs of Big John's great grandson, Harold Moses, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Big John. Moses, the last fluent native speaker in the Muckleshoot tribe, died last February. Preserving tribe's culture The sculpture's message is clear: Big John is the teacher; Ballard the student. Working together, the two helped preserve a portion of the complex and highly developed culture and spirituality of the Muckleshoot Tribe, whose villages once dotted the rivers banks of the Green and White rivers before white men arrived. Ballard's work became the foundation for much of the knowledge about Puget Sound Salish Indian traditions and life before the settlers arrived. He also testified in court from the 1920s to the 1960s on behalf of Indian land and resource claims. The Salish Indian culture was an oral tradition carried on the wings of their shared language -- Lushootseed. When winter came, the families retreated to their longhouses or smokehouses to tell stories and legends, dance and sing. The stories taught morality, geography, history and behavior. To read what Ballard translated is to realize how developed and intricate was the history and culture of what he termed ``the elder race.'' Both men took a risk Valerie Bellack, who heads the Muckleshoot Tribe's language program and teaches, said both men took a risk that is not easy to take: ``Asking to learn from a person so different than yourself or just to get along together can be scary. It is risky for both sides. We today need to know that and remember these men's efforts. ``Without the materials that resulted from their shared work, the Muckleshoot would not have any significant historical records. I just can't say how thankful I am for what Arthur Ballard did and his friendship to the Muckleshoot people.'' Ballard had to learn the language before he could talk to Big John or many of the other Puget Sound Indians he listened to called ``informants.'' It is not too much of a stretch to imagine Big John patiently teaching the words to his younger companion. And they were friends. They met in the winter of 1911-12, according to Greg Watson, when Ballard walked from his home in Auburn up the hill several miles to the Muckleshoot Reservation to talk with Sukwa'lAsxt (Big John). Big John, who was born around 1840 and was a teenager when white men first arrived in the Puget Sound country, was a well-known orator among the Muckleshoots and knew the old stories and the old ways intimately. He died in the late 1920s or 1930s. Watson, who teaches at the Auburn School District's Virginia Cross Native American Education Center on the Muckleshoot reservation and is former director of the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum, profiled Ballard in the Snoqualmie Valley Historical Museum's reprint of Ballard's 1929 publication, ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound, Legends Shared by Tribal Members.'' An endangered way of life Ballard, who developed an interest in Indians as a teenager, knew as did Big John that the culture of the Puget Sound Salish tribes was in danger of being lost forever, he said. Ballard also understood what had happened to the tribes, particularly his neighbors, the Muckleshoots. ``In the olden times, before civilization came to blight and destroy,'' Ballard wrote in an Auburn newspaper article in 1912, ``there were nearly a dozen villages, some of them containing hundreds of souls, on streams above named points convenient for trapping the ever needed salmon. ``Their populations have faded and their names are all but forgotten. A new race has established itself in their place, little mindful of them and their life and they were little aware of its coming.'' The Muckleshoots liked and trusted Ballard, who would trek up to the reservation to talk with them in their homes and opened his house to any Muckleshoot who needed help. He came not to take or steal what was theirs but to share what he discovered for no gain, for the sheer importance of knowledge. When the museum proposed the ``Listen My Nephew'' project, the tribe agreed to pay $22,000 for the statue of Big John. The sculptor went ahead and created Ballard also, but there was no money yet to pay for it. With a week to go before the sculptor was to bring Big John to the museum, Bellack went to the Tribal Council to ask if they could pay for Ballard, too. The Council said yes immediately, cut the check and both statues arrived together. Bernice White, 87, and a Muckleshoot tribal member who helped unveil the statues, remembered Ballard coming up to their house every day for two weeks to talk to her ``I remember him as a child. He came to my mother's home to see my grandfather, James Daniel. My grandfather was close to 90. He went every day for two weeks.'' Anthropology was a night job Of Ballard and Big John, she said: ``They established a right for use that the white people don't try to understand. It sets us firmly in the ground that we were who we were.'' Anthropology was Ballard's night job. Though a graduate of the University of Washington, he graduated with a degree in Latin. There was no anthropology program. His meticulous work later earned him respect and recognition in academic circles. One of his original publications is in the archives of the Royal Anthropological Society in London. Thomas Talbot Waterman, the first anthropologist hired by the UW, said of Ballard in his 1973 ``Notes on the Ethnology of the Indians of Puget Sound:'' ``Mr. Ballard may be regarded as the leading authority on the Indians of the state of Washington. His acquaintance with them and with their mode of life has extended over a long period and is extremely intimate.'' By day, Ballard worked variously as a school teacher, postal worker and city clerk of the city of Auburn. The son of Dr. Levi Ballard, a physician who recorded the first plat in what would become Auburn, Arthur was a member of the town's gentry. Final manuscript locked up While Ballard published a number of papers before he died in 1962, the bulk of his legacy is locked up by a family member in California. No one has seen all of it. It includes original tribal items such as handmade fish weirs like Big John used to make, as well as photographs and tapes. It also includes his final manuscript, a summation of his work with Puget Sound tribes, which was about to be published when he died. The family took the manuscript back before it could be published. A copy of the book that was in the safe at the museum also disappeared. Both the museum, anthropologists and Puget Sound tribes hope that someday that the material Ballard so painstakingly collected will be made public. The story of Blanket Rock The following was told to Native American historian Arthur Ballard by Ann Jack, born about 1840, who lived on the Green River.Blanket Rock The young wife of a member of the Taitida'pabc, a tribe near Squally, became homesick and wished to go back to her parents who lived on the shore of Puget Sound near Three Tree Point. When she got there, her people had set off with their camp equipment in a canoe. The young woman hastened along the shore until she caught sight of the boat in the distance. Crying to her mother, ``Wait for me,'' she sank down exhausted. There she is to this day in the form of a white rock. Her husband was dressed in a blanket of whistling-marmot skins. He was turned into another boulder, down the beach. The surface of the boulder looks like a wrinkled blanket. The white people call it Blanket Rock (qoiqwi'ltse or qoqoi/ltse.) It now stands on the beach near Buenna. The boat and cargo were turned to stone and the poles to trees.Crow, who was the slave of the old people, was carrying water in a basket. This she hid. It turned into a spring on the south slope of Three Tree Point. That spring is hard to find and brings back luck to those who drink it. We call Three Tree Point, Sqe'leb, which means ``loading things into a canoe.'' -- from Arthur Ballard's ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound,'' 1929. * * * Blanket Rock is an example of a story that explains a specific geographic place in Puget Sound that Salish Indians knew well. ``This is the kind of legend that makes me reflect on the tremendous intimacy the native people had with their surroundings,'' said Patricia Cosgrove, director of the White River Valley Museum. ``A large rock would be named and have its own legend. ``To me that is very intimate. You have to have been in that place so long that every little feature in the place has significance. It makes sense for communities that have been in this place for thousands of years.'' Therein lies part of the value of the Salish Indian stories that Ballard translated to non-Indians today, she said. They can give a sense of time and place about the land and the people who were here and thriving when white men arrived. Greg Watson, who wrote an introduction to a 1999 reprint of Ballard's ``Mythology of Southern Puget Sound'' said the stories, when translated as well as Ballard did, give a reader an insight into the Salish language, its grammar and how it organized thought. ``These particular narratives have a great deal of spiritual content,'' Watson said. They are akin to the Koran or Bible for a people with their oral tradition.'' The stories were told over and over and heard by both young and old. Figuring out the point of a story and applying it to one's own life is an important part of the educational process, he explained. One of Watson's favorite stories that young people like a lot is the tale of Elk woman and the flea people. He likes it because there really was a place between Kent and Des Moines called the Flea House. It tells the story of Elk woman, who is captured by the flea people who plan to kill her. But she relies on her own resources and discovery of supernatural powers to dispatch them all, turning them from monsters into tiny fleas that can no longer kill. Fleas as monsters? ``Have you ever looked at flea under a microscope?'' Watson asked. -- Mike Archbold From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jan 13 19:33:35 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:33:35 -0800 Subject: Wiyott Sacred Sites Message-ID: NEWS RELEASE An evening filled with live musical performances featuring a combination of local and national Native American musicians and artists will be held February 7, 2004. Tickets will be $15 in advance or $20 at the door. This drug and alcohol free event will include Native American vendors, opportunities to talk with tribal leaders, Indian Tacos and refreshments. The concert will be held at the College of the Redwoods Gym, just 7 miles South of Eureka. ? Charlie Hill renowned Native American stand-up comedian has been on the comedy circuit since the 1970~Rs. Hill has earned the respect of comedians Jay Leno, George Lopez, and Richard Pryor. Some may remember him from his many appearances on ~SThe Tonight Show~T with Johnny Carson while a younger crowd may recognize him from his appearances on ~SThe Tonight Show~T with Jay Leno. Charlie was a staff writer for the Roseanne show and was featured on Moeshe. In 2000 director Sandra Osawa released a 60-minute documentary on Charlie~Rs career titled ~SOn & Off the Res~R with Charlie Hill~T. Charlie recently appeared on ~SThe David Letterman Show~T (January 9, 2004). ? Floyd Redcrow Westerman legendary folk singer, speaker and respected Indian activist, and star of the silver screen, released his first album ~SCuster Died for Your Sins~T in 1970, followed by another album, ~S The Land Is Your Mother .~T Since the early 1980~Rs he has traveled the world in support of Human Rights for Indigenous People of the World. In the early 1990~Rs he toured with Sting to raise funds for the Rain Forest Foundation Project. Red Crow is also known for his rolls in a variety of films including ~SRenegades,~T ~SDances With Wolves,~T ~SThe Doors,~T ~SBuffalo Girls,~T ~SLakota Woman,~T ~SClearcut,~T and most recently ~SGrey Owl.~T Red Crow has also been seen on a variety of television series including; ~SWalker Texas Ranger,~T ~SNorthern Exposure,~T ~SThe Pretender,~T ~SL.A. Law,~T ~SX-Files,~T ~SMillennium,~T ~SRoseanne,~T and ~SDharma and Greg.~T ? Keith Secola whose music is described as Alter-native has won awards at 5 straight Native American Music Awards. This accomplished artist is a master guitarist, native flute player, singer songwriter, composer and producer. His most famous song ~SNDN Kars~T is considered the contemporary Native American Anthem and is the most requested song on Native radio in the US and Canada. Keith performed at the Olympics in Salt Lake City in 2002. Keith Secola and his ~SWild Band of Indians~T have performed with the likes of Jerry Garcia, Jim Cregan of Barenaked Ladies, Doors~R drummer John Densmore, and other major rock performers. Also Performing: ? 7th Generation Rise this locally famous indigenous funk band rocked the show in 2003. Song stylings range from acoustic to rock and funk. ? Goodshield, Soldier Blue, and Sara Rose Wasson Goodshield (lead singer of 7th Generation Rise) has teamed with Soldier Blue (native poet) and Sara Rose Wasson (Native flutist) for a multi-media show combining poetry, acoustic guitar, and native flute into a one of a kind performance. ? Melange this melodically oriented, alternative, groove-pop/rock foursome have emerged from the hidden reaches of Humboldt County's Redwood Forests to captivate listeners with unique, original songs. The Wiyot Sacred Site Fund is a non-profit organization created by Table Bluff Reservation Wiyot Tribe in an effort to reacquire and environmentally and culturally restore Wiyot sacred sites (areas that are culturally and religiously significant to the cultural survival of Wiyot People). One such place is Indian Island in Humboldt Bay, California. Funds raised through this event will add to the on-going fundraising effort to clean up this site. For more information about the Indian Island Cultural and Environmental Project visit http://www.wiyot.com/island_intro.html For other ways to support the Wiyot Sacred Site Fund visit: http://www.wiyot.com/Site_fund.htm Contact Information: Michelle Blankenship or Marnie Atkins at Table Bluff Reservation-Wiyot Tribe (707) 733-5055, fax: (707) 733-5601, online: www.wiyot.com or email: wssf at wiyot.com To schedule interviews: Contact Michelle Blankenship or Marnie Atkins at (707) 733-5055 or email wssf at wiyot.com From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Wed Jan 14 18:40:17 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 10:40:17 -0800 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smile_n.gif Type: image/gif Size: 144 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 14 18:41:41 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:41:41 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. phil cash cash wrote: > Linguistics > > Babel's children > > Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG > From The Economist print edition > > Corbis > > > Languages may be more different from each other than is currently > supposed. That may affect the way people think > > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 > > IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that > is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher > at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. > Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he > says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard > Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he > had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, > grammatically the same. For example, the phrase "the chicken is > eating" translates into colloquial Riau as "ayam makan". Literally, > this is "chicken eat". But the same pair of words also have meanings > as diverse as "the chicken is making somebody eat", or "somebody is > eating where the chicken is". There are, he says, no modifiers that > distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns > that distinguish the definite from the indefinite ("the", as opposed > to "a"). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that > distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed > because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. > > This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom > about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of > Noam Chomsky--in particular, his theory of "deep grammar". According > to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in > their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a > language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what > is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of > children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to > impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, "I > dided it" instead of "I did it"). There is also the ability of the > children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles > out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. > Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a > basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its > minimum requirements. > > Plumbing the grammatical depths > > Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias > leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in > an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to > discover extra features in foreign languages--for example tones that > change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not > exist in European languages--than to realise that elements which are > taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from > another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to > fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, > that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. > > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias > is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most > widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern > linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek. As a consequence, > English was often described until well into the 20th century as having > six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how > that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject > or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a > debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not > have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the > possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain > that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative > (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and > the genitive (to indicate possession). > > The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the > language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a > painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "informants" who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about > their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be > better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than > one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal > setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as > possible), can systematically distort the results. While such > interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr > Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit > linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry > terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches > of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with > shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would > describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. > > The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys > realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This > experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting > authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those > differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian > deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very > way in which people think. > > Word, words, words > > A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration > with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of > Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are > expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages > think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee > Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of > language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell > into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a > revival. > > Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, > one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just > kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a > ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. > Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the > same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the > two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked--an emphasis on the > temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal > objects in the picture. > > Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an > integral grammatical concept--every verb must have a tense, be it > past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a > verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's > idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem > to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For > example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall > between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes > that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both > English and Indonesian grammar. > > Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. > Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are > to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers > do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering > questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove > to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of > whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that > influences their conception of time, or vice versa. > > Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to > ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, > unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. > Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages > also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural > nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a > special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of > something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with > languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts > of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people > think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are > confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do > exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the > difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar > itself shapes at least some thoughts. > > > Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All > rights reserved. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 14 18:44:18 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:44:18 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: Now THAT is a cool idea! I'm not joking--I think it would be a real value to program the AIBO in your traditional language, so that your children would have to use the language to communicate with it. Andre Cramblit wrote: >monigarr at yahoo.com >Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > >I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with >voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all >compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > >Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language >A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > >I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent >brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or >newer) too. > >Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an >extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > >Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their >ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new >year for innovative natives :) > >Skennen, > > -- > > > Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org is the > Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council > NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the > development needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: > IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: > http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 144 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jan 14 18:47:47 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 11:47:47 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is In-Reply-To: <40058D11.3000304@ncidc.org> Message-ID: FYI, here is an AIBO link describing what it is... http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci536171,00.html phil ILAT On Jan 14, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Andre Cramblit wrote: > monigarr at yahoo.com > Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > > I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with > voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all > compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > > Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language > A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > > I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent > brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or > newer) too. > > Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an > extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > > Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their > ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new > year for innovative natives > > Skennen, > -- > ? > > Andr? Cramblit:andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.orgis the Operations > Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC > (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development > needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email > to:IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.comor go > to:http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/? > location=listinfo From mlb211f at SMSU.EDU Wed Jan 14 19:22:16 2004 From: mlb211f at SMSU.EDU (Buckner, Margaret L) Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 13:22:16 -0600 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: "Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time." Would you please cite the article and page number where that statement is made? I don't recall Whorf ever stating that. Margaret Buckner Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology Southwest Missouri State University 901 S. National Ave. Springfield, MO 65804 (417) 836-6165 mlb211f at smsu.edu > ---------- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Matthew Ward > Reply To: Indigenous Languages and Technology > Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:41 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: Babel's Children (fwd) > > Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? > > This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? > > As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. > > It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. > > Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? > Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" > > To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) > > In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. > > > phil cash cash wrote: > > > Linguistics > > Babel's children > > Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG > From The Economist print edition > > Corbis > > > Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think > > http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 > > IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase > "> the chicken is eating> "> translates into colloquial Riau as > "> ayam makan> "> . Literally, this is > "> chicken eat> "> . But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as > "> the chicken is making somebody eat> "> , or > "> somebody is eating where the chicken is> "> . There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (> "> the> "> , as opposed to > "> a> "> ). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. > > This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky> -> in particular, his theory of > "> deep grammar> "> . According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, > "> I dided it> "> instead of > "> I did it> "> ). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. > > Plumbing the grammatical depths > > Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages> -> for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages> -> than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. > > > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek> . As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). > > The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "> informants> "> who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. > > The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. > > Word, words, words > > A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. > > Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked> -> an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. > > Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept> -> every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. > > > Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. > > Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. > > > Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. > > > > > From miakalish at REDPONY.US Thu Jan 15 14:58:09 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:58:09 -0700 Subject: Anyone Know What AIBO is Message-ID: Seems to me that at a stripped down price of $1,500, and a "deluxe" price of $2,800 (carrying case, charging station, extra software and batteries), this is still on the level of "cute". . . unless people have a lot more bucks and time that I do. The people I know are struggling to get computers, internet access, to learn how to write simple letters, notes and emails. . . Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "phil cash cash" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 11:47 AM Subject: Re: Anyone Know What AIBO is FYI, here is an AIBO link describing what it is... http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci536171,00.html phil ILAT On Jan 14, 2004, at 11:40 AM, Andre Cramblit wrote: > monigarr at yahoo.com > Subject: AIBO with mohawk and any endangered languages > > I have just confirmed that my years of coding multimodal brains with > voice recognition for endangered languages... my codes are all > compatible with AIBO !!! This is wonderful news. > > Anyone with an AIBO can get me to put of my entire mohawk language > A.I. brains and voices in their AIBO for them. > > I can put any other endangered language artificially intelligent > brain with voice - voice recognition, in any of the AIBOS (110 or > newer) too. > > Languages other than the mohawk language dialects will require an > extra 4-14 days of work on the AIBO, from me though. > > Please share this news with anyone that needs to access their > ancestors' endangered language. This is going to be an exciting new > year for innovative natives > > Skennen, > -- > > > Andr? Cramblit:andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.orgis the Operations > Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC > (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development > needs of American Indians > > To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email > to:IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.comor go > to:http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/? > location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 15 17:27:29 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:27:29 -0700 Subject: European news (fwd) Message-ID: Christa Prets MEP Report on cultural diversity adopted in the European Parliament by Davyth Hicks The European Parliament adopted yesterday by 369 votes in favour, 15 against with 68 abstentions, an own initiative report from Christa Prets (PES, A) on the protection and promotion of cultural diversity. MEPs also welcomed the recent UNESCO decision (October 2003) to launch a process leading to an international convention on cultural diversity. http://www.agencebretagnepresse.com/fetch.php?id=696 From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 15 19:31:01 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 11:31:01 -0800 Subject: One Nation Issue Message-ID: Article Link: http://www.reznetnews.org/news/031124_onenation According to the Sunday, July 13 edition of the Tahlequah Daily Press, Gary Fisher, who has served as the Cherokee County Farm Bureau president for the past 23 years resigned in protest over FB's alliance with One Nation. Mr. Fisher is to be applauded for his courage in standing up to the racist leadership of Farm Bureau which obviously has not been open with its members about what FB is doing with member's money and in members' names. Let's keep the heat on and make Mr. Fisher's resignation very high-profile. Remember, we need to reach the grassroots membership of Farm Bureau and encourage them to switch insurance companies. Great work to everyone standing up to One Nation! Kudos to Gary Fisher! Peace and justice, JoKay Dowell +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ONE NATION = Corporate KKK. BOYCOTT FARM BUREAU INSURANCE AND QUIK TRIP STORES! BOTH ARE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE ANTI-INDIAN SOVEREIGNTY GROUP, ONE NATION! (www.onenationok.com) Your Money in the hands of Farm Bureau and QT will help to destroy Indian tribal governments, Indian business development and Indian social services. Do not let them tell you otherwise! Even their name, ONE NATION, is a statement in opposition to Indian tribes' legal standing as MANY NATIONS! http://www.onewhitenation.com/ "The issues in Oklahoma are real-- corporate hegemony has reached a brick wall; we haven't cheated the tribes out of all of their minerals yet. We made a bad deal in 1889; we haven't taken their water rights yet. They're providing for their own citizens thru economic development. They're acting like governments... It is time to undercut their success." PLEASE NOTE: This website is intended as a joke, spoof and exposee of ONE NATION, INC. http://www.onenationok.com In Oklahoma, hate and ignorance are driving a purported "fairness" agenda to attack 39 Native American Indian Tribes. One Nation Co-Chairmen Jeramy Rich, Director of Public Policy, Oklahoma Farm Bureau Jeramy_Rich at okfb.org Rusty Shaw, Owner, Shaw's Gulf, Inc. (405) 372-3579 shaws_snb at ionet.net One Nation National Director Barb Lindsey barb.onenationca at earthlink.net One Nation goes public Group opposed to Indian rights http://www.okit.com/news/2003/may/onenationgrows.html TULSA OK SAM LEWIN 5/2/2003 ~SOne Nation~T, an organization recently formed to fight tribal sovereignty, said this week they are concerned over water and land rights that, they say, favor Indians over other groups. The Native American Times has been reporting on One Nation since they sent out a flyer in March soliciting contributions. Until this week, they have laid low: repeated calls to all listed members of the organization went unreturned. Thursday, several One Nation figures spoke to an Oklahoma newspaper. CONTACT THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF ONE NATION: Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association 3555 NW 58th St. Suite 400 Oklahoma City, OK 73112 Local - (405) 942-2334 Toll Free - 1-800-838-OIPA (6472) Fax - (405) 942-4636 Mickey Thompson Executive Vice-President (405) 942-2334 ext. 218 mthompson at oipa.com Mark Monroe OIPA President (405) 340-5809 memonroe at cox.net Oklahoma Petroleum Marketers Association & Oklahoma Association of Convenience Stores 5115 North Western Ave. Oklahoma City , Oklahoma 73118 Telephone: (405) 842-6625 or (800) 256-5013 Fax: (405) 842-9564 E-mail: vance at opma-oacs.com Association Executive Vance McSpadden Oklahoma Farm Bureau http://www.okfarmbureau.org/contact/ Southern Oklahoma Water Alliance Charlette Hearne, Director SOWA BOX 1129 BROKEN BOW, OK 74728 Oklahoma Grocers Association Jim Hopper President & CEO PO Box 18716 Oklahoma City OK 73154-0716 405/525-9419 FAX: 405/525-0962 jhopper at okgrocers.com One Nation Co-Chairmen Jeramy Rich, Director of Public Policy, Oklahoma Farm Bureau Jeramy_Rich at okfb.org Rusty Shaw, Owner, Shaw's Gulf, Inc. (405) 372-3579 shaws_snb at ionet.net One Nation National Director Barb Lindsey barb.onenationca at earthlink.net To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 15 23:13:06 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 16:13:06 -0700 Subject: Babel's Children (fwd) Message-ID: Whorf wrote that the Hopi language contains "no words, grammatical forms, constructions or expressions that refer directly to what we call "time", or to past, present, or future, or to enduring or lasting..." (p. 57, Whorf, Benjamin Lee (1956) Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, Cambridge, Mass,: MIT Press.) In my experience, this is possibly the most famous and influencial statement Whorf ever made, and has created a rather widespread urban myth. Sometimes, the language in question becomes an African or Pacific language; it is always the language of a people considered "primitive" by the retellers of the myth. It is very unfortunate that this statement has become so widely repeated, especially since it is not even remotely true. If you happen to, as I do, live in the SW, you can check the accuracy of the statement simply by asking any member of the Hopi tribe. Actually, it is well-documented that Hopi does indeed contain tense, numerous time words, as well as a very complicated calendar, as well as traditions which contain a great deal of explicit references to events which are clearly either recorded past events or predicted future events. Hopi ceremonial days are very strictly adhered to, something which requires a very extensive concept of time. No-one is really sure where Whorf's claims about the Hopi language and time came from. Buckner, Margaret L wrote: >"Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time." > >Would you please cite the article and page number where that statement is made? I don't recall Whorf ever stating that. > >Margaret Buckner > >Dept. of Sociology and Anthropology >Southwest Missouri State University >901 S. National Ave. >Springfield, MO 65804 >(417) 836-6165 >mlb211f at smsu.edu > > > > > >>---------- >>From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Matthew Ward >>Reply To: Indigenous Languages and Technology >>Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:41 PM >>To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU >>Subject: Re: Babel's Children (fwd) >> >>Whenever I read something like this article, I think of Whorf's statement that Hopi has no words whatsoever for time--something that turned out to be a fantasy. Why are people still interested in proving Whorf right, when he himself seemed to be completely unable to get basis facts straight? >> >>This article writes of a language with no verb tenses and no articles, as if this were some amazing discovery. Actually, many languages lack verb tenses and articles. They usually have other features that perform many of the functions of verb tenses and articles, but that a linguist has discovered a language without verb tenses or articles per se--why is this news? >> >>As for having no part-of-speech, I suspect that what he really means is that the same word may represent different parts of speech, which, again, is quite common. I would guess that the language he is studying is an isolating language in which part-of-speech is indicated mostly by syntax, like thousands of other languages around the world. >> >>It's not difficult for me to believe his statement that linguists, when studying other language, are influenced by the languages they already know. However, this whole article seems to be feeding into the same tired, unscientific, and ultimately destructive myths, such as the Grammarless Language (why don't we get any details on the grammar this language DOES have, rather than does not have?), the Primitive Language which contains Ambigious Statements (as if the meaning of most sentences was not dependent in part upon context). Does the linguist suppose that the speakers of this language have to guess what others are talking about? That they have some kind of mystical communication system that allows them to understand anyway? That Indonesians are "always late" because their language does not require time to be marked? Funny, I've lived in Taiwan, which uses languages in which time-markets are optional, yet people are very timely, and I have relatives in Mexico, in which most people speak Spanish, a language where time-marking is required, and yet being late seems to be much more acceptable there than in Taiwan. OK, so the guy was joking when he said that, but the whole attitude betrays the same kind of "mystical savage" stereotype that Whorf was so fond of--they are late because their language doesn't allow them to think about time in a precise manner. >> >>Whorfism has not only fallen out of favor and has never been backed up by rigorous studies, it has also been used, again and again, to support the idea that indigenous languages are inprecise, incomplete means of communication which will never suffice for the modern world. Yes, I do know that Safir, Whorf's teacher, was trying to do exactly the opposite: point out the value of indigenous languages by pointing out their many complex and unique features, but Whorf completely warped what the legitimate point that Safir was trying to make. When I talk to people about language preservation, it amazes me how often they dredge up some half-remembered reference to Whorf that they read about during college "Isn't it true that Hopi can't refer to time in any way? > Well, really, it would be nice to preserve it, but how can they actually use it in today's world if they can't even talk about when something happened?" >> >>To be fair, whatever this linguist has actually written was probably distorted horribly by the writer of the article, as usual. Just look at the title: more Babelism (linguistic diversity = a curse of God!) >> >>In my opinion, the mainstream media is one of the biggest obstacles to language preservation. >> >> >>phil cash cash wrote: >> >> >> Linguistics >> >> Babel's children >> >> Jan 8th 2004 | LEIPZIG >> From The Economist print edition >> >> Corbis >> >> >> Languages may be more different from each other than is currently supposed. That may affect the way people think >> >> http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2329718 >> >> IT IS hard to conceive of a language without nouns or verbs. But that is just what Riau Indonesian is, according to David Gil, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, in Leipzig. Dr Gil has been studying Riau for the past 12 years. Initially, he says, he struggled with the language, despite being fluent in standard Indonesian. However, a breakthrough came when he realised that what he had been thinking of as different parts of speech were, in fact, grammatically the same. For example, the phrase > "> the chicken is eating> "> translates into colloquial Riau as > "> ayam makan> "> . Literally, this is > "> chicken eat> "> . But the same pair of words also have meanings as diverse as > "> the chicken is making somebody eat> "> , or > "> somebody is eating where the chicken is> "> . There are, he says, no modifiers that distinguish the tenses of verbs. Nor are there modifiers for nouns that distinguish the definite from the indefinite (> "> the> "> , as opposed to > "> a> "> ). Indeed, there are no features in Riau Indonesian that distinguish nouns from verbs. These categories, he says, are imposed because the languages that western linguists are familiar with have them. >> >> This sort of observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom about what language is. Most linguists are influenced by the work of Noam Chomsky> -> in particular, his theory of > "> deep grammar> "> . According to Dr Chomsky, people are born with a sort of linguistic template in their brains. This is a set of rules that allows children to learn a language quickly, but also imposes constraints and structure on what is learnt. Evidence in support of this theory includes the tendency of children to make systematic mistakes which indicate a tendency to impose rules on what turn out to be grammatical exceptions (eg, > "> I dided it> "> instead of > "> I did it> "> ). There is also the ability of the children of migrant workers to invent new languages known as creoles out of the grammatically incoherent pidgin spoken by their parents. Exactly what the deep grammar consists of is still not clear, but a basic distinction between nouns and verbs would probably be one of its minimum requirements. >> >> Plumbing the grammatical depths >> >> Dr Gil contends, however, that there is a risk of unconscious bias leading to the conclusion that a particular sort of grammar exists in an unfamiliar language. That is because it is easier for linguists to discover extra features in foreign languages> -> for example tones that change the meaning of words, which are common in Indonesian but do not exist in European languages> -> than to realise that elements which are taken for granted in a linguist's native language may be absent from another. Despite the best intentions, he says, there is a tendency to fit languages into a mould. And since most linguists are westerners, that mould is usually an Indo-European language from the West. >> >> > It need not, however, be a modern language. Dr Gil's point about bias is well illustrated by the history of the study of the world's most widely spoken tongue. Many of the people who developed modern linguistics had had an education in Latin and Greek> . As a consequence, English was often described until well into the 20th century as having six different noun cases, because Latin has six. (A noun case is how that noun's grammatical use is distinguished, for example as a subject or as an object.) Only relatively recently did grammarians begin a debate over noun cases in English. Some now contend that it does not have noun cases at all, others that it has two (one for the possessive, the other for everything else) while still others maintain that there are three or four cases. These would include the nominative (for the subject of a sentence), the accusative (for its object) and the genitive (to indicate possession). >> >> The difficulty is compounded if a linguist is not fluent in the language he is studying. The process of linguistic fieldwork is a painstaking one, fraught with pitfalls. Its mainstay is the use of > "> informants> "> who tell linguists, in interviews and on paper, about their language. Unfortunately, these informants tend to be better-educated than their fellows, and are often fluent in more than one language. This, in conjunction with the comparatively formal setting of an interview (even if it is done in as basic a location as possible), can systematically distort the results. While such interviews are an unavoidable, and essential, part of the process, Dr Gil has also resorted to various ruses in his attempts to elicit linguistic information. In one of them, he would sit by the ferry terminal on Batam, an Indonesian island near Singapore, with sketches of fish doing different things. He then struck up conversations with shoeshine boys hanging around the dock, hoping that the boys would describe what the fish were doing in a relaxed, colloquial manner. >> >> The experiment, though, was not entirely successful: when the boys realised his intention, they began to speak more formally. This experience, says Dr Gil, illustrates the difficulties of collecting authentic information about the ways in which people speak. But those differences, whether or not they reflect the absence of a Chomskian deep grammar, might be relevant not just to language, but to the very way in which people think. >> >> Word, words, words >> >> A project that Dr Gil is just beginning in Indonesia, in collaboration with Lera Boroditsky, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is examining correlations between the way concepts are expressed in languages and how native speakers of these languages think. This is a test of a hypothesis first made by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an early 20th-century American linguist, that the structure of language affects the way people think. Though Whorf's hypothesis fell into disfavour half a century ago, it is now undergoing something of a revival. >> >> Dr Boroditsky's experiment is simple. People are shown three pictures, one of a man about to kick a ball, one of the same man having just kicked a ball, and a third of a different man who is about to kick a ball. They are then asked which two of the three are the most similar. Indonesians generally choose the first two pictures, which have the same man in them, while English speakers are likely to identify the two pictures that show the ball about to be kicked> -> an emphasis on the temporal, rather than the spatial, relationship between the principal objects in the picture. >> >> Dr Gil believes that this might be because time is, in English, an integral grammatical concept> -> every verb must have a tense, be it past, present or future. By contrast, in Indonesian, expressing a verb's tense is optional, and not always done. In support of Whorf's idea, Dr Gil half-jokingly cites the fact that Indonesians always seem to be running late. But there is more systematic evidence, too. For example, native Indonesian speakers who also speak English fall between the two groups of monoglots in the experiment. Dr Gil supposes that their thought processes are influenced by their knowledge of both English and Indonesian grammar. > >> >> Demonstrating any sort of causal link would, nevertheless, be hard. Indeed, the first challenge the researchers must surmount if they are to prove Whorf correct is to show that English and Indonesian speakers do, in fact, think differently about time, and are not answering questions in different ways for some other reason. If that does prove to be the case, says Dr Gil, their remains the thorny question of whether it is the differences in language of the two groups that influences their conception of time, or vice versa. >> >> Dr Boroditsky and Dr Gil are not intending to restrict their study to ideas about time. They plan, for example, to study gender. English, unlike many other languages, does not assign genders to most nouns. Does this affect the way English-speakers think of gender? Languages also differ in the ways they distinguish between singular and plural nouns. Indeed, some do not distinguish at all, while others have a special case, called the dual, that refers only to a pair of something. Descriptions of spatial relations, too, vary, with languages dividing the world up differently by using different sorts of prepositions. The notion that grammar might affect the way people think may seem far-fetched, and even unappealing to those who are confident of their own free will. But if Dr Gil is right and there do exist languages, like Riau Indonesian, without nouns or verbs, the difficulty of conceiving just that fact points out how much grammar itself shapes at least some thoughts. >> >> >> Copyright ? 2004 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 16 16:17:39 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 09:17:39 -0700 Subject: Ara Irititja (link) Message-ID: Ara Irititja: protecting the past, accessing the future - Indigenous memories in a digital age examines the way Anangu (Pitjantjatjara & Yankunytjatjara people) are using digitally-based information technology to protect and secure their past. http://www.irititja.com/ ~~~ note: this site is quite interesting for a number of reasons and shows the direction many indigenous are moving towards in the use of digital-based technology. in particular are such issues as software design which take into account cultural senitivities, etc. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jan 18 10:34:40 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:34:40 -0700 Subject: Sisseton Wahpeton College looking toward bright future (fwd) Message-ID: Sisseton Wahpeton College looking toward bright future School in midst of remodeling project, massive campus expansion By Mike Corpos American News Writer http://www.aberdeennews.com/mld/aberdeennews/news/7740532.htm Building projects and program improvements mean a high-tech learning environment is taking shape for students at one South Dakota tribal college. The ongoing work to the infrastructure and educational approach at Sisseton Wahpeton College carries a price tag of more than $2 million and will hopefully result in academic achievement and more students attending there. The Sisseton school is in the midst of a massive campus expansion and remodeling project, said the college's director of development, Pam Wynia. "We're working right now on the whole campus," Wynia said. "It started with a 12,000-foot addition to our original building." That $977,800 addition, Wynia said, increased classroom space and allowed for faculty members to have individual offices. It was completed last year and marked the first time since the college opened in 1979 that its facilities were improved. The addition also includes a student lounge, alternative study area to the library and Early Childhood Center. "It gives the students a place where they can gather and make a little noise or study in groups, since you have to be so quiet in the library," Wynia said about the addition. "We try to foster a family type of atmosphere since so many of our students are tribal, and for them their first priority is always family. This gives them a place where they can feel at home." Wynia said the school is working to make it so the infrastructure of the school is not a factor, so that students don't have to worry about going to school in classrooms without amenities such as air conditioning. Wynia also said, with recent grant funding, the school has been able to update much of its technology to include state-of-the-art computers, software and classrooms. Perhaps the most notable project on the campus is the construction of the new $1.6 million vocational education building. The 13,831-square-foot two-story building will allow the college to add classes such as carpentry, electronics, plumbing, jewelry-making and home economics. When finished, the new building, which was designed by Aberdeen's Vic Runnels and Dean Marske, will look like a giant drum surrounded by four singers. The building will house classrooms, a smart lab with enough computers for each student in the room, and the school's vocational training programs. The roof of the building was designed to hold about 300 people and could be used for banquets and graduations, while the interior will be used to build pre-fabricated single-family houses indoors. The homes will be lifted out of the building via an overhead door. During the next few weeks, the new building will begin to take shape. "Suddenly we will go from a hole in the ground to having a building," Wynia said. The concrete foundation is currently in place and the walls, being built off-site, will be delivered later this week. The building is expected to be completed by July 4, when a dedication ceremony is planned. But construction is not the only way the school is looking to grow. New programs are being added and some of the college's existing programs are being updated. The South Dakota State Nursing Board voted unanimously to reinstate the college's Licensed Practical Nursing Program on an interim basis last January, and the program will be considered for permanent approval after the first two classes graduate. Wynia said the school is trying to expand the Early Childhood Center's Dakota Language immersion program to include adults, and further a slow revitalization of the Dakota language. It's feared the dialect will become extinct if not made available to tribal members. "Currently most of the people who speak the language are over the age of 55," Wynia said. "We're starting to see a bit of a resurgence, and now is the time it needs to happen, before (we lose the people who speak it)." Overall, the college has seen a significant increase in enrollment in recent years - 25 percent from spring 2001 to fall 2001. That put the school's enrollment at around 290, which has remained steady since. Wynia said she hopes the improvements at the campus will further increase the number of students being educated there. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jan 18 10:41:50 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 03:41:50 -0700 Subject: $1.2M grant helps tribes preserve traditions (fwd) Message-ID: $1.2M grant helps tribes preserve traditions By MARY PICKETT Billings Gazette http://www.montanaforum.com/rednews/2004/01/17/build/tribal/tribe-project.php?nnn%20=%205 BILLINGS ? With the help of a new $1.2 million grant, a history project is ?reawakening the memory of the Northern Cheyenne,? a member of the tribe said Friday. The American Indian Tribal Histories Project at the Western Heritage Center will help preserve threatened culture and traditions of several Montana tribes. Instead of disappearing, that knowledge now can be passed on to future generations, said Rubie Sootkis, a field director for the project. The project is rescuing traditional and contemporary tribal history by transferring it into books, educational DVDs and museum exhibits. The project was recently awarded the $1.2 million by the U.S. Department of Interior to fund its second year. Last year, the project received $1 million to start work on Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations. The new grant will help the project expand to the Fort Belknap Reservation home to Gros Ventre and Assiniboine-Sioux tribes, said Francine Bear Dont Walk, director of the program. During its first months, the project hired two field directors, Sooktis, a writer and filmmaker who has spent years documenting Northern Cheyenne culture, and Mardell Plainfeather, a Crow historian who has worked for the National Park Service and Little Bighorn College at Crow Agency. Six students from Montana State University-Billings, Rocky Mountain College, Little Bighorn College and Chief Dull Knife College have been hired as interns. The students are being trained in interview and research techniques and in how to use audio and video equipment. Interviews with current tribal members, ?the meat of the project,? will begin in February, Bear Dont Walk said. The tribal members interviewed will be those who are knowledgeable in many areas including lullabies, classic stories, art, music and traditional skills such as tanning hides. The information will be used to create a DVD for each tribe that can be used in schools both on and off reservations. The DVD, which may be available as soon as November, will be an encyclopedia of primary sources of Indian traditions. If a teacher wants students to learn about a sun dance, for example, students can listen to a tribal expert talk about the ceremony. Because each tribe?s culture is continuing to evolve, information about 21st century music, athletics and rodeo will be included. Interviews and music recorded in the past that Sooktis and Plainfeather have tracked down also may be incorporated into each DVD. Exhibits of each tribe?s unique history and culture will be presented at the Western Heritage Center in February 2005. A book on contemporary members of each tribe is expected to be published in November 2005. The book will be a snapshot of ?who we are today,? said Bear Dont Walk. The tribal history project has been a dream come true for Bear Dont Walk. Less and less cultural information is being passed down to younger generations each year. Bear Dont Walk, who is in her 30s, doesn?t speak Northern Cheyenne and knows of few young people who speak it fluently. Even the Crow language, considered one of healthiest among all tribes in the United States, is in danger of disappearing, Plainfeather said. Many parents now work and don?t have time to talk about traditions with their children, Sooktis said. Extended, multigenerational families, once the norm in Indian country, are beginning to disappear. Not only is the project helping American Indians learn more about their own tribes, but about other tribes as well. Even though Crow and Northern Cheyenne tribes have lived side by side on neighboring reservations, Sooktis is learning new things about Crow history and culture. Jona Charette, a Northern Cheyenne who is the administrative officer for the project, said it has special meaning for her family. Charette?s 7-year-old daughter, Savannah, is half Crow and will be able to learn of about both sides of her family with the project?s help. Saturday, January 17, 2004 From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 19 19:06:10 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 12:06:10 -0700 Subject: Language Learning & Technology (link) Message-ID: fyi, the latest online issue of Language Learning & Technology, Vol 8 No. 1 January 2004, is now available. just follow the link. http://llt.msu.edu/default.html phil cash cash UofA, ILAT From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 19 23:11:26 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil CashCash) Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 16:11:26 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) Message-ID: fyi, this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well done. take a look... http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends phil cash cash UofA, ILAT From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jan 20 22:11:27 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:11:27 -0800 Subject: California Indian Education Message-ID: Corrected PDF of Call To the 2004 California Indian Education Conference (April 22-24 LA Westin Hotel) is avaiable @: http://www.ncidc.org/ -- Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org is the Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs of American Indians To subscribe to a news letter of interest to Natives send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 21 21:26:07 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 14:26:07 -0700 Subject: Linguist Discovers New Language in Siberia on the Brink of Extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Linguist Discovers New Language in Siberia on the Brink of Extinction http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/502861/ Newswise ? Although the exact number of human languages spoken today remains unknown, most estimates put the number at about 6,800. A Swarthmore College linguist has found another one that was previously unknown to the scientific community and says its approaching extinction illustrates the problem of language endangerment. K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics, will present his findings on the language spoken by an indigenous community in a remote part of central Siberia at the American Association for the Advancement of Science?s annual meeting in Seattle on Feb. 15. "The Chulym people have a unique way of talking about the local ecosystem," he says. "When they lose it, they will lose all the specialized knowledge the language contains." In July, Harrison was accompanied on his expedition to Siberia by a small documentary film crew, who present his discovery in their forthcoming film "Vanishing Voices." "We went looking for a language we weren?t sure even existed," he says. "It had been misidentified and falsely lumped together with other languages in Russia for convenience and political reasons, and we didn?t know if any speakers were left. No scientists had visited them in 30 years, and no one had ever recorded a single word of the language." Harrison says the Chulym people continue to practice their ancestral lifeways of hunting, gathering, and fishing, but because of a variety of social, political, and demographic factors are now clearly losing their ancestral language. "They live in six small, isolated villages, often intermixed with a majority Russian population," he says. "Only 35 people out of a community of 426 still speak it fluently, and we didn?t find any fluent speakers under age 52. The remainder of the Chulym have switched to speaking only Russian. It?s now considered a moribund language." Harrison says the unique Chulym number systems, grammatical structures, and classification systems may be lost with the language. Their highly specialized knowledge of medicinal plants, animal behavior, weather signs, and hunting and gathering technologies is also threatened. "Not least of all," he says, "their rich pre-literate oral tradition, including religious beliefs, stories, and songs, will soon be completely lost, both to themselves and to science." Harrison hopes to preserve some of that tradition by returning in 2005 to produce a grammar of the language and a children?s storybook. "Each language that vanishes without being documented leaves an enormous gap in our understanding of some of the many complex structures the human mind is capable of producing," Harrison says. "As a field linguist, the excitement of going out and identifying and recording a language that was never previously documented is much like that of a zoologist finding a new species." Harrison, a specialist in Tuvan and other Siberian languages whose work is supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, has conducted field research on endangered languages of South Siberia and Western Mongolia since 1996. During field expeditions, he lives and travels with nomadic people, accompanying them on their seasonal migrations as they herd camels, horses, yaks, and sheep. He has also worked with one of the last speakers of the Karaj language in Lithuania and documented language and ethnography in the Philippine highland rice terraces. Located near Philadelphia, Swarthmore is a highly selective liberal arts college whose mission combines academic rigor with social responsibility. Swarthmore, with an enrollment of 1,450, is consistently ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the country. ? 2004 Newswise.??All Rights Reserved. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 06:58:34 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 07:58:34 +0100 Subject: International Mother Language Day, 21 Feb. Message-ID: Less than a month now from International Mother Language Day observance (2/21). Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a webpage up yet for it. Previous years' pages have info that may be of interest or use: http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2003 http://www.unesco.org/education/imld_2002 It seems to be a worthwhile educational event that could use a little more advance publicity (I've made suggestions to that effect). Don Osborn Bisharat.net From miakalish at REDPONY.US Thu Jan 22 16:26:13 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 09:26:13 -0700 Subject: SAIL manuscript reviewers Message-ID: SAIL manuscript reviewersI thought people and (their) students would be interested in either participating as reviewers, sending in manuscripts, or receiving the journal. "Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL) is the only scholarly journal in the United States that focuses exclusively on American Indian literatures. With a wide scope of scholars and creative contributors, the journal is always on the cutting edge of activity in the field. " http://unp.unl.edu/sail.html Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: Malea Powell To: AMEINDIANCAUCUS-L at LIST.UNM.EDU Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 8:30 AM Subject: [AMEINDIANCAUCUS-L] SAIL manuscript reviewers SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures is currently expanding its list of manuscript reviewers and we invite you to add your expertise to an already established community of Native Studies scholars whose generous efforts make SAIL a critical forum for the study of Native literatures. Reviewers should have a strong background in Native Studies, especially in the area of Native literature and/or Native textual production. If you're interested in joining the SAIL reviewer community, please contact us at sail2 at msu.edu -- be sure to include complete contact information as well as specific areas of specialization. -- Malea Powell Associate Professor of Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures American Indian Studies Program Michigan State University Editor, SAIL: Studies in American Indian Literatures 273 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1033 517-432-2577 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:11:20 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:11:20 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: Saving Darma A dying language brings a UT scholar to India and the edge of the inhabited world http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2004-01-23/pols_feature.html [photo inset] The Panchachuli Range, forming the western boundary of the Darma Valley photo by Dan Oko The goats were the first sign that the spring migration had started once again for the Darma people of the Indian Himalayas. All along the winding mountain road that runs alongside the Kali River, separating India from Nepal, families on their way to their summer homes tended herds of shaggy, curly-horned goats, wooly sheep, and supplely laden donkeys. The Darma have followed this route for generations. If modern life in the form of racing jeeps, motor scooters, and garishly painted "Public Carriers" -- India's ubiquitous trucking fleet -- steadily encroach on this annual resettlement, the vehicles have no choice but to idle at pedestrian speeds until the livestock can be herded to the shoulder. For most of last year, Christina Willis and I lived among the Darma in the remote town of Dharchula in northern India. Unlike Hindi, the dominant language of the area, the Darma language remains strictly oral, with no writing system, and in linguistics circles is considered endangered. Christina is a doctoral candidate in linguistics at UT-Austin, and her research work focuses on helping this ethnically distinct indigenous people record their language. We would follow the migrating Darma to their villages in the high basins of the Darma Valley on the border of Chinese-occupied Tibet. Even to a casual observer, Darma appears in serious trouble. Of an estimated population of 4,000 individuals in the community, less than half speak Darma, a Tibeto-Burman dialect, and linguists say generally that any language with so few speakers is likely to vanish within two generations. Darma children are educated in Hindi, an Indo-Aryan language -- and the young adults we've met are more concerned with picking up some English and job prospects in the West than with maintaining the culture of their grandparents. "Development is coming" is a favorite refrain in Dharchula. Hardly anyone considers the potential costs of that progress. Christina first learned Hindi for conversation and now, using tapes and direct observation, has been transcribing spoken Darma into the international phonetic alphabet, with the goal of producing a dictionary and written grammar. Her research focuses primarily on recording songs, stories, and ceremonies as windows into both the speech and traditions of the Darma people. She has been attending weddings and funerals, observing ritual activities, and hanging around with a digital recorder to capture day-to-day conversations. "There's no way to do the research I do without getting into peoples homes to record conversations and stories," she says. "So even though it's sometimes been difficult to meet just the right people, I'm feeling pretty lucky to have chosen the topic." Language documentation often deals with languages that are, like Darma, on the verge of extinction. It's work that many linguists at UT pursue, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. Contact with foreign cultures -- Europeans in the Americas, for instance -- and economic pressure are two of the most likely culprits for this phenomenon, although as with all living things, the death of some languages is to be expected. As globalization continues to take effect, some linguists fear as many as 90% of the world's languages could be eliminated over the next 50 years, with potentially unprecedented cultural impacts. Beyond language-preservation efforts, language documentation provides linguists with the ability to look at the interaction and development of languages worldwide. For members of the Darma community, there's a growing interest in creating a permanent record of their language and culture. "I've wanted to make a project like this happen for some time," says tribal member B.S. Bonal, director of the National Zoo in Delhi. "But we're happy to have outside help if that's what it takes to get this job done." Peace, Charm, and Poverty The haul to Dharchula from the Indian capital of New Delhi takes 24 hours of straight travel, although only the desperate or insane attempt it in less than two days. Heading out from the New Delhi Train Station, we catch an overnight coach and then schlep 15 or so hours in local "share taxis," bare-tired, diesel jeeps crowded with as many as 15 passengers. The drivers are poor young Indian men paid about 100 Indian rupees (roughly $2) per day to negotiate the roads carved into the mountainsides, navigating switchbacks overlooking drops of a thousand feet or more. I suppose this hair-raising trip -- along with the constant blare of bootleg Bollywood film music tapes -- could be considered part and parcel of the charm of relocating to the Himalayas. [photo inset] Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula photo by Dan Oko Living in this remote corner of the world, Christina and I have had to reckon with all sorts of new rules for the road. From the crushing poverty of India's megacities to the ringing temple bells in our back yard at evening prayer time, it's always obvious we're not in Texas anymore. The sound of people breaking rock to eke out a few extra rupees each day provides the rhythm of our mornings. The hourly bellow of cows in the alley reminds us that whatever industrial development has come to this nation of a billion people, we have landed in a predominantly agrarian community where ancient traditions continue to echo throughout daily life. Following the Sino-Indian war of 1962, the Indian government classified Darma and two closely related tribes -- the Byans and Chaudangs -- as descendents of Tibetan ancestors. Prior to that time, local people say, the Indian government hadn't even recognized the territory as part of the country. Today the region's three indigenous groups, including the Darma, resist their official categorization, noting that their religious practices are an amalgam of animism and Hinduism, emphatically not Buddhist as in Tibet. They also reject the Indian government's tribal label of "Bhotia," derived from the Hindu words for Buddhist and Tibetan. They prefer to call themselves "Rang"; the Darma are believed to be the largest of the Rang tribes. With about 30,000 residents, Dharchula forms the business and population center along our stretch of the Kali River. In addition to the Rang people, Dharchula's population includes Indian army and paramilitary squads stationed to protect the international borders and scores of workers, including a handful of Europeans and Koreans, employed by the hydroelectric dam being built at the base of the Darma Valley. The rest of the Kali River corridor is dotted with small communities where the main highway remains the only street in town. Small storefront groceries provide necessities, such as laundry soap, rice, beans, and fresh fruit trucked up from the plains, as well as an array of consumer items such as plastic furniture and Chinese-made handbags and sneakers. Away from the road, villages persist where locals tend small farms and orchards on terraced hillsides, growing citrus, potatoes, and grains. In Dharchula proper, you'll find some semblance of indoor plumbing, but throughout the area most people rely on public spigots and natural springs for their water. Open sewers run through town, while on the outskirts public latrines remain the norm. Our water flows only for a couple of hours twice a day, when we fill buckets for everything from washing dishes to taking showers. Electricity is also sporadic, but we have enough energy to keep the laptop charged, and many families have satellite television. A Slower Place in Time Despite the availability of Coca Cola, Levi's, and even popular American TV shows such as Friends and Alias, the cultural divide persists between East and West, especially beyond such metropolises as Delhi, Madras, and Bombay. I have had to give up longnecks and cheeseburgers, but there are many compensations. Christina and I have come to appreciate the joys of a fine cup of well-spiced chai -- sweet tea with cardamom, ginger, and black pepper -- not to mention well-seasoned plates of rice and lentils, served with heaping side orders of cauliflower, potatoes, eggplant, and okra, known in these parts as "subzi masala." [photo inset] The Darma Valley, Kali River, and Dharchula -- across the river is western Nepal photo by Dan Oko Not only the food but also the pace of life, social niceties, and religious practices never once let you forget this is an exotic destination. We find a certain quietude lost in many Indian and foreign cities (not to mention modern-day Austin), but day-to-day living can be a real challenge. Thankfully, our Byans landlady operates by a Rang social code called "nocksum": treating most strangers as guests and guests -- even paying ones -- as family. Our shared house is made of brick and cement, a thoroughly modern dwelling by Dharchula standards with its marble floors and indoor toilet, nestled between several houses made of stone and wood. These older homes beyond our glassless windows give a feel for what this place must have been like before development began in earnest. The two-story structures are not much taller than our single-story abode. Most of the neighbors' living areas are accessed via a narrow wooden ladder-type staircase. The lower rooms once housed cattle, but now are most often used for storage. Fewer of these traditional houses linger as brick-and-cement structures replace them, but they are infinitely more charming to our eyes. As befits a community barely a generation removed from village life, hollering for your neighbors is still more common than ringing them on the phone. In our crowded back-alley neighborhood, nearly everyone is related to our landlady, and she has frequent visitors, often before we are even out of bed. Their calls -- somewhat intelligible to Christina but totally opaque to me -- often wake us up. A notable consolation is that we happily receive our daily quotient of "bed tea" while still drowsy and indeed still in bed. It's a ritual we will miss when we return to Texas. While some old ways still linger, other traditions have been mingled with Hindu practices. Within our first few weeks of arriving in Dharchula, I had discovered a trail off the main road, and along the path there stood a small whitewashed, open-air temple. Similar structures dot the hillsides near and far. One day we were taking our daily walk when we noticed we were being trailed by a group of local men leading a goat. We stopped to watch as they entered the temple. When they reached the interior shrine, the men threw some rice in the air, said a prayer, and then chopped the goat's head off with a single blow from a sickle, capturing its blood in a cup. They waved when they noticed us watching, shouldered the wooly carcass, and headed home again. Darma Nocksum After a winter in Dharchula, we were more than ready to explore the Darma Valley, the tribe's historic summer home. After spending a month watching idly while friends and neighbors packed their bags and saddled their livestock, we finally hoisted our own backpacks, loaded with camping gear, dehydrated noodles, and Christina's high tech recording equipment. It takes us two days of hard walking to reach the open plateau where we spent most of our time in the Darma Valley. There are 14 villages in the valley, located at altitudes of 8,000 to 14,000 feet (everything isn't bigger in Texas). They have no roads, no power lines, no phones, and are occupied only from May to October. To get there, we follow the path of the roiling Dhauli River that helped carve the valley, skirting massive granite cliffs, and inch our way across icy glaciers, crossing wobbly bridges over rushing white water. We pass through broadleaf forests where oak, Himalayan walnut, and rhododendron trees provide plenty of shade, eventually ascending to subalpine evergreen forests where the air smells like vanilla. We share the trail with goatherds, military patrols keeping a wary eye on China, and families joining the migration. Many want to know where we've been; our time in Dharchula has made us a little famous. [photo inset] Scenes from a Darma-Hindu wedding outside Dharchula photo by Dan Oko We establish a five-day base in the village of Baun. Across the valley stand the five massive peaks of the Panchachuli Range, towering to heights of about 25,000 feet. It's the season of offerings, sacrifice, and feasting, and we join the Darma as they visit temples and shrines, wolfing down goat meat and rice. At each stop, they share sweets and a fried flatbread called "puri." The hills are sprinkled with blooming wildflowers, and every morning we make our way to the river and bathe in the brisk snowmelt. Christina carries her digital recorder everywhere, taping Darma folk songs, old men telling stories, and housewives gossiping. She takes time to learn the local name for mountain iris and forget-me-nots, as well as wild strawberries and various medicinal plants. By the end of our stay, she has collected a dictionary of nearly 1,000 words and has begun to parse the grammatical rules of Darma. After leaving the valley, she will sit down with consultants to transcribe more tapes and translate more words into Hindi and English. It's work that will continue this winter, when we return. The record will form the basis for future generations to learn their language, if it comes to that. In the meantime, we enjoy the Darma nocksum in this astoundingly rural setting. Many of the descendents of Baun have been away for 15 to 20 years, and this is the first time they've had a chance to come back. Most children don't speak much Darma. We trade stories and snack on blood sausage, made from goat intestine, and other delicacies. I'm invited to participate in a strength contest involving a small boulder, and when I muscle it onto a platform, I'm offered a sweet local alcoholic brew that tastes a little like Mexican mescal. Again and again, people tell us they're so happy Christina has taken an interest in their language and culture. When we've had our fill, we take the recording equipment a little further into the backcountry -- to the last village in the valley, about 15 miles away. Past Baun, the villages are more sparsely populated and many of the small stone houses have been abandoned. The schoolyards boast volleyball nets, but the schools themselves have no teachers. In some cases the roofs have caved in, evidence of heavy winter snows. Those who spend the summer there farm small plots of land, and a lucky few supervise workers who have been brought in to help with this subsistence-level agriculture. In the fall, they will carry the grain to trade depots and collect their pay. I take these images home with me, when Christina's work returns us to Austin. We're heading back to India this month, so that she can complete the dictionary and continue her work studying the grammar of Darma. "It's a never-ending project really," she says. "I mean, I can keep doing this for the rest of my life, and probably there will still be a lot that escapes me. So my goal is to get enough that somebody in the community can eventually take over." Dan Oko writes frequently for the Chronicle. He has a weblog devoted to his travels in India and invites readers to visit www.danoko2.blogspot.com. An earlier version of this story was published in the Montanan magazine. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:19:51 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:19:51 -0700 Subject: Tlingit Shakespeare (fwd link) Message-ID: Review: Tlingit Shakespeare Dressing 'Macbeth' in borrowed robes http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/012204/thi_tlingit.shtml [note: this was too good to pass up...phil, UofA, ILAT] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 22 17:27:22 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 10:27:22 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages SANDHYA IYER The Times of India TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today?s global village. Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom?s hometown. Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn?t even gather a smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that there is no ?native? element to look up to. At the same time, it isn?t so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards life," she reasons. Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for children to know a regional language. Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a regional language is encouraged. To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she opines. That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation in families where the parents are from different regions. Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. "There?s little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, so he gets very little time with Ishaan. I?m am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents come over," says Jyotsna. Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak Marwari quite well. But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn?t speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the language. >From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn?t want her talking only in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade away," he warns. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 18:57:07 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 19:57:07 +0100 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by international bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children could be used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The situation described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual societies. In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic approach to teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez faire, with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), except in isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or English only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So in linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' language education, especially in the cities. Don Osborn Bisharat.net ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil Cash-Cash" To: Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Regional languages dying in mixed marriages SANDHYA IYER The Times of India TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today?~Rs global village. Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom?~Rs hometown. Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn?~Rt even gather a smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that there is no ?~Qnative?~R element to look up to. At the same time, it isn?~Rt so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards life," she reasons. Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for children to know a regional language. Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a regional language is encouraged. To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she opines. That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation in families where the parents are from different regions. Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. "There?~Rs little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, so he gets very little time with Ishaan. I?~Rm am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents come over," says Jyotsna. Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak Marwari quite well. But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn?~Rt speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the language. >From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn?~Rt want her talking only in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade away," he warns. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Thu Jan 22 19:12:11 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 20:12:11 +0100 Subject: Fw: Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace Message-ID: FYI... ----- Original Message ----- From: Josep Cru To: joe.lobianco at languageaustralia.com.au Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 10:38 AM Subject: Congress on language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace Dear colleagues, This message is to inform you that the Linguapax Institute and the Forum of Cultures Barcelona 2004 are organising a World Congress on Language Diversity, Sustainability and Peace. The Congress will be held in Barcelona from May 20 to 23, 2004. Confirmed keynote speakers are: Introductory Speech: David Crystal (University of Wales) LANGUAGE DIVERSITY Bernard Comrie (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany) Juan Carlos Moreno Cabrera (Autonomus University of Madrid) SUSTAINABILTY Suzanne Romaine (University of Oxford) Albert Bastardas (University of Barcelona) PEACE Fernand de Varennes (Murdoch University, Australia) Miquel Siguan (University of Barcelona). There will also be five parallel workshops dealing with the folllowing topics: Positive models of language policy and planning, Case studies of language revitalization and standardization, Evaluation of the current sociolingustic research, Language law and language rights and Agents in favour of language diversity (IGOs, NGOs, civil society organizations, etc.) A call for papers period is open until March 1st. More information in English, French, Spanish and Catalan at: http://www.linguapax.org -- Josep Cru Institut Linguapax C/Mallorca, 285 Barcelona 08037 Tel. 93 458 95 95 Fax. 457 58 51 info at linguapax.org www.linguapax.org From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 22 23:01:25 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 16:01:25 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: It's interesting how similar many of of stories in these articles are: large languages like Hindi, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, English and French swallowing smaller ones. But, if there is a silver lining, it is that with common issues, you can find common cause. From renee_holt at HOTMAIL.COM Fri Jan 23 01:19:43 2004 From: renee_holt at HOTMAIL.COM (Renee Holt) Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2004 18:19:43 -0700 Subject: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jan 23 20:55:55 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 13:55:55 -0700 Subject: ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations (fwd) Message-ID: January 23, 2004 ICC council confronts challenges, frustrations Four national units talk about their daunting goals at Iqaluit gathering JANE GEORGE http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/40123_04.html Immense distances, large problems, poor infrastructure, limited power, little cash, big dreams and high expectations. When the executive council of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference met in Iqaluit this week, the organization representing Inuit in Canada, Greenland, Alaska and Russia grappled with the same challenges that confront Inuit organizations and governments throughout the circumpolar world. Until this week, when ICC's executive council inaugurated an office provided by Nunavut's Department of Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs, ICC couldn't find any reasonably-priced space in Iqaluit. At least, ICC's president, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, now has a place to work with her new assistant, Miali Coley, who is also head of ICC's youth council. And with help from offices in Ottawa and the other ICC member nations, the ICC will continue work in five priority areas: economic development, culture, language and communications, internal operations, human rights and sustainable development. ICC President Sheila Watt-Cloutier and Aqqaluk Lynge, the head of ICC Greenland. Lynge reported on the frustrations he's faced in trying to get compensation for the relocated Inuit of Thule. Over the past year, ICC has received international attention for its stand on global warming, POPs (persistent organic pollutants such as PCBs), and human rights, and continued its work in such organizations as the Arctic Council and the United Nations. However, as they met for three days in Iqaluit, ICC executives underlined their frustration in achieving all their goals. In Canada, the vexing matters include finding ways to provide leadership and visibility while doing justice to the pressing global issues of climate change and contaminant pollution. In Greenland, it's finding the energy to pursue their fight for the Thule Inuit who were relocated to Qaanaaq in 1953, while continuing international human rights work. ICC Greenland suffered a big blow in the Danish Supreme Court last November when they lost an appeal for more compensation and rights. "The power is in the attempt when you defend Inuit rights," Watt-Cloutier said in consoling ICC Greenland's president, Aqqaluk Lynge, about the efforts ICC Greenland, and, in particular, Lynge, have made on behalf of the Inughuit relocatees. In Alaska, the challenge is rallying the Inupiat and Yupik communities, and their development corporations, to see the relevance of ICC when they're already heavily involved in the powerful Alaskan Federation of Natives and over-burdened with local responsibilities. "One of the challenges we face is just to have a board meeting," said Chuck Greene, ICC Alaska's president. However, a board meeting must review and formally approve a resolution in favour of holding the next ICC general assembly, scheduled for June, 2006, in Barrow, Alaska. Greene and Alaskan ICC executive Mic hael Pederson said ICC Alaska plans more education about ICC's role and purpose. "You are really a strong foothold for us, and we can't permit it to waver," Duane Smith, ICC Canada's president, told the Alaskans. In Russia, survival is the main obstacle that ICC must overcome. ICC Chukotka has to find something just to hang on to in a region plagued by high unemployment, alcoholism, poor communication and cultural disinterest. That's not to say that ICC isn't trying hard. ICC Chukotka is cooperating with the local association for sobriety. Last December, a store opened in the city Anadyr to sell ivory products, under a joint Canadian-Russian project called "Marketing modern arts and crafts of Chukotka's indigenous peoples." The store's opening was "a miracle," said ICC Chukotka's president, Natalia Rodionova, but, in spite of the new outlet, artists have trouble with transportation and getting enough raw material, so the store is often closed. Rodionova, a linguist and teacher, is working on a textbook on the Yupik language and writes a Yupik column every month in the local paper, Krainy Sever, The Far North. ICC Chukotka held a party in December to commemorate the 115th anniversary of the first teacher in the Providenya district, who compiled the first Russia-Yupik dictionary. ICC has also asked the World Bank for money to publish a newspaper in the Yupik language as another way to increase awareness of language and culture. But Rodionova, who teaches Yupik, said through an interpreter that there's not much interest in learning the Yupik language. A resident of Anadyr, far removed from the Chukotkan Yupik-speaking villages, Rodionova said she speaks to her children in Russian. But ICC Chukotka isn't giving up - there was to be a traditional feast for youth this month, and there are plans to have an ICC Chukotka sports team. Apart from the many hurdles that make ICC's work difficult, the executive council looked at a variety of programs such as "Future of children and youth in the Arctic," the international meetings ICC attends, as well as special projects. Anders Berndtsson from the Nordic Institute of Greenland, a cultural arm of the Nordic Council of Ministers, was in Iqaluit to seek support from the ICC for a joint dance production that would combine traditional Norse, Saami and Greenlandic elements. The production would premier at the next ICC assembly and then tour the circumpolar world. The ICC executives also heard from elders' representative David Angnakak of Pangnirtung and youth president Coley, who both underlined the need for better communication. The council will meet again in Nuuk, Greenland on June 21, the Greenland home rule government's 25th anniversary. From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Sat Jan 24 08:39:49 2004 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 09:39:49 +0100 Subject: Of multilingualism & common causes (Re: Saving Darma...) Message-ID: Good point, Matthew. The effect is more complex, of course, with in some places less-spoken indigenous tongues losing ground to more widely spoken ones (spread of Hausa in parts of Nigeria, Bambara in Mali, Wolof in Senegal). It's hard to say what is inevitable or avoidable in these dynamics. What kind of strategies could favor people's retention of maternal languages during the current generation and passing it on to the next? What kind of alliances to achieve that? The notion that each person learn three languages (put forth by, perhaps among others, a past senior UNESCO official) would be a framework for that in the ideal world - i.e., mother tongue, regional or official language, international lingua franca - but that would require a lot of time, effort, and resources on individual and collective levels (though creative use of new technologies could facilitate unifying themes and potentially have a big impact at lower cost). In any event, although it would certainly be a better set of preoccupations for communities and nations than building car bombs or smart bombs, it is hard to see that happening. Another proposal that in effect everyone learn two languages - maternal and auxiliary - would in theory be a lot easier, but would imply some difficult choices: either regional languages cede their role to maternal languages on one hand & an international lingua franca on the other, or indigenous languages would cease to function as maternal languages with more widely spoken languages or linguae francae assuming the role of maternal languages (which has happened in the case of Swahili in parts of Tanzania). Both of these proposals are of course simplified abstractions. The reality, gets a lot more complex, as illustrated by the article Phil forwarded about the linguistically mixed couples in India. The background of effects of mass media, role of new technologies, economic & cultural penetration, and even changes within dominant languages, are among the other factors. But one element emerges at least in my mind that people making common cause about indigenous/maternal languages would do well to consider more: that of an international auxiliary language. It is easy to dismiss as utopian the efforts of Ludwig Zamenhof (creator of Esperanto) and various others that one French book title uncharitably dubbed "Les fous de langue" [crazy ones of language], but - without intending to plead the cause of constructed language (let alone any of those proposed) - I do think that the spread of use of English demonstrates an organic need of humanity at this time in its history for some kind of international second language. And where "les fous de langue" were right on is that we do have a choice in this matter. What does this have to do with indigenous language? Two things. First, the dynamic & choices relating to language internationally need to be understood. Obviously things cannot go back to the way they were linguistically (even if we wanted that), but the manifold process of globalization can end up with different outcomes. I've been given to think that existence of a de jure (as opposed to de facto/default) international auxiliary language could preserve space for indigenous/maternal languages. It probably is more complex than that, but one could work towards that end - recognizing both humanity's unavoidable need at this time for a common language and the unacceptably high cost of loss of its maternal languages. the possibility that what might seem on the face of it to be opposites are actually natural allies. Second, there are many sensible and committed people interested in the topic of an international language, some of whom are decicated to particular outcomes (such as Esperanto, which by way of disclaimer I respect but am not part of). Let me hasten to add that the idea of an international language does *not* presuppose an invented one, although in theory at least that is one possibility. In any event, what would be the possibility of communicating more with communities interested one way or another in the principle of an international auxiliary language? There is/was an effort in this direction among some NGOs represented at the UN in the form of a "Coalition for an International Auxiliary Language" (CIAL) that also is concerned with "Linguistic Human Rights and Democracy in Communication"; see http://www.geocities.com/ueango/ . If the "common cause" is found in preserving or even revitalizing maternal languages of indigenous and minority peoples, that is compelling; but if the cause is for a world where people would both have their language of heritage (i.e., encompassing the forementioned) and a chosen common world tongue for communication, understanding, and cultural and commercial exchange, that could be transforming. I realize this strays a bit from the main group purpose, so I'll leave the issue there unless others want to take it up (perhaps offline). Don ----- Original Message ----- From: "Matthew Ward" To: Sent: Friday, January 23, 2004 12:01 AM Subject: Re: Saving Darma (fwd - long article) > It's interesting how similar many of of stories in these articles are: > large languages like Hindi, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, English and > French swallowing smaller ones. But, if there is a silver lining, it is > that with common issues, you can find common cause. From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sun Jan 25 01:34:59 2004 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia - Main Red Pony) Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:34:59 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) Message-ID: that was good. too bad more people don't do that for teaching. . . language, for example. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Phil CashCash" To: Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 4:11 PM Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > fyi, > > this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well done. > take a look... > > http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends > > phil cash cash > UofA, ILAT > > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 26 15:52:34 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:52:34 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind By MIKE CHAMBERS Associated Press Writer Monday, January 26, 2004 - JUNEAU, Alaska Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass federal tests written in English. In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control that the rural villages treasure. "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education Commissioner Roger Sampson. Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades 3-8 and again in high school. States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take English-only tests. Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages spoken by students, Sampson said. Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests into more than 100 languages, education officials said. And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English words have no Yupik counterparts. The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into English fluency. Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages dwindle. "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social well being." Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, produced by the district by permission of their English-language publishers. While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth grade. Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking instruction. Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to the language barrier, Ferguson said. Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all schools are expected to have such tests in place. Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman Zollie Stevenson. States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. ___ On the Net: No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ State Department of Education and Early Development: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jan 26 15:56:06 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash-Cash) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 08:56:06 -0700 Subject: Indian schools struggle to improve performance (fwd) Message-ID: Date posted online: Monday, January 26, 2004 Indian schools struggle to improve performance http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2004/01/26/news/education/d3b03aa0485ad60886256e270018e657.txt SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act has called for sweeping education reform in the nation's schools. But the heightened standards are putting more pressure on American Indian schools in South Dakota, where students already struggle to succeed. In South Dakota, more than 7,000 students attend 21 reservation schools funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Collectively, these students have the lowest test scores in the state. Economic conditions, a shortage of preschool opportunities, rural locations and funding shortfalls contribute to poor student performance in BIA schools. While the 2-year-old No Child Left Behind Act requires all children to meet standards in reading and math by 2014, the federal government does not have the same leverage to force change at BIA schools as it does with low-performing public schools. "If the federal government is holding states' feet to the fire on achievement for Native American students, is it holding the same standards to itself?" asked Kevin Carey, policy analyst with the Education Trust, a nonprofit group. BIA schools educate about 47,000 students, nearly 10 percent of the total school-age Indian population. Educators predict that many of those schools are not going to meet the proficiency standards. It will take more time and a different approach if Indian schools are going to catch up, school officials say. "There are some qualities of that law that are unattainable," said Larry Gauer, superintendent at St. Francis Indian School on the Rosebud Indian Reservation. "Some of those kids aren't going to be proficient. It's our job to educate them as much as we can. And we will do that." At the Wounded Knee School on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, officials are taking corrective actions that are required under the No Child Left Behind Act. School officials are planning changes that include aligning their course offerings with South Dakota's state curriculum standards. They hope to offer more teacher training if they get financial help. For a while, school staff members worried that they would be replaced under a complete restructuring, but they have since found out they will stay. The Wounded Knee school is one of three BIA schools in South Dakota, and 19 around the nation, that are listed in the worst performance category. That means the school has failed to make the prescribed academic progress for five years in a row, including failures under a previous school accountability law. The BIA plans to provide additional money and technical assistance to its lowest-performing schools, said Sharon Wells, special assistant to the director of the Office of Indian Education in Washington. When money becomes available, Wounded Knee could get more than $200,000, said John Cedarface, education supervisor at Wounded Knee School. With an enrollment of about 150, Wounded Knee struggles with high teacher turnover and a lack of continuity in the classrooms, Cedarface said. In the 1960s and 1970s, Black Hills State University offered a program to train Indian teachers, but the program was ended, Cedarface said. Wells agreed that it is difficult for BIA schools to recover from high staff turnover, which is 30 percent or higher at some. In order to make adequate progress next year, nearly one-fourth of Wounded Knee students have to show improvement. That is unlikely, as is attaining a required 90 percent attendance rate. Currently, attendance rates of 70 or 80 percent are typical. "We are going to make improvements," Cedarface said. "We're just pressed for time. "It's kind of like a losing game," he said. "It's like being a bull rider and the bull is already down inside the chute before you come out." Poverty is the biggest factor preventing Indian children from achieving at a higher level, said William Demmert Jr., education professor at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. Poor children do not have an opportunity to develop a language base. They have less access to preschools and fewer learning opportunities. Combine that with a native language other than English, and those children start out behind, he said. Demmert, a former director of the Office of Indian Education in the BIA, has been researching Indian learning for decades. One of the most successful education models, he said, is to allow children to learn in their native language. Educators at schools such as St. Francis are trying to do that. All students learn about Indian culture and language, and one elementary class is taught in Lakota. The consequences for public schools that fall short of the new federal standards are serious. The schools can be taken over by the state or by a private company if test scores do not improve. But there is no similar provision for BIA-funded schools, said Carol Barbero, a Washington lawyer representing tribes. Without the threat of takeover, Barbero asked, how will there be true accountability? What happens if the BIA schools run by the tribes do not improve? Will their federal funding be held up? "I don't know. A lot of these things may have to go to court," Barbero said. "There's nothing in the law that says the state can come in." That either leaves the law open to interpretation or means there simply is a hole in it, she said. It's a question that will need to be answered soon. Nineteen of the BIA schools already are in the second year of corrective action, a point at which public schools face the prospect of restructuring. Education department officials say no matter how daunting the task, the new law aims to deliver a quality education to every child. Even though Indian children in BIA and public schools have not performed well historically on standardized tests, they are capable, said Darla Marburger of the U.S. Department of Education's elementary and secondary education office. Progress starts with clear and rigorous standards followed by accountability, Marburger said. BIA schools can meet the prescribed goals by 2014 but might have to ask for help, she said. "When it says No Child Left Behind, that's exactly what it means," she said. "They are in no way forgotten schools." From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon Jan 26 20:04:59 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 12:04:59 -0800 Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) Message-ID: 01/24/2004 - JUNEAU AK By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass federal tests written in English. In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control that the rural villages treasure. "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education Commissioner Roger Sampson. Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades 3-8 and again in high school. States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take English-only tests. Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages spoken by students, Sampson said. Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests into more than 100 languages, education officials said. And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English words have no Yupik counterparts. The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into English fluency. Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages dwindle. "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social well being." Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, produced by the district by permission of their English-language publishers. While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth grade. Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking instruction. Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to the language barrier, Ferguson said. Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all schools are expected to have such tests in place. Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman Zollie Stevenson. States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. On the Net: No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ State Department of Education and Early Development: http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ Copyright by The Associated Press. From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Tue Jan 27 17:26:36 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 10:26:36 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) In-Reply-To: <1075132354.ba695e81e5e8b@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Dear ILAT, It seems that the NCLB is in direct conflict with the 'intent' of PUBLIC LAW 101-477 NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES ACT of 1990 in that federal policies are being implemented with out recognition to the "special status" of NA languages. For example, in section 6 Congress found: "(6) there is convincing evidence that student achievement and performance, community and school pride, and educational opportunity is clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first language of the child or student;" Further, in SEC. 104. It is the policy of the United States to-- "7) support the granting of comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a Native American language the same academic credit as comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a foreign language, with recognition of such Native American language proficiency by institutions of higher education as fulfilling foreign language entrance or degree requirements; and" What is even more troubling is the statement that Education Secretary Paige is making no exemptions to Native American or Alaskan Native populations. This is disturbing news and I hope it will be resolved fairly in favor of Indigenous languages. Phil Cash Cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:52 AM, Phil Cash-Cash wrote: > Fairbanks Daily News-Miner > http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# > > Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind > By MIKE CHAMBERS > Associated Press Writer > > Monday, January 26, 2004 - > > JUNEAU, Alaska > > Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped > preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new > federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. > > In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught > almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass > federal tests written in English. > > In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, > meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, > conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control > that the rural villages treasure. > > "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education > Commissioner Roger Sampson. > > Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades > 3-8 > and again in high school. > > States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three > years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take > English-only tests. > > Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public > schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages > spoken by students, Sampson said. > > Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests > into more than 100 languages, education officials said. > > And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of > Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as > completely as Spanish or other European languages. > > For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, > where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English > words have no Yupik counterparts. > > The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel > and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program > for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. > > A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier > years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into > English fluency. > > Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain > their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages > dwindle. > > "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state > Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an > academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social > well being." > > Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students > enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum > similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. > > But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, > produced by the district by permission of their English-language > publishers. > > While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs > don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth > grade. > > Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay > testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that > time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking > instruction. > > Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly > progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to > the language barrier, Ferguson said. > > Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will > fare > well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all > schools are expected to have such tests in place. > > Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to > accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of > Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. > > Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from > Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. > > "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the > fact > that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any > requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman > Zollie Stevenson. > > States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing > materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be > available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. > > ___ > > On the Net: > > No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ > > State Department of Education and Early Development: > http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ > > Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jan 27 18:25:52 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:25:52 -0700 Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) In-Reply-To: <012301c3e2e3$7272b700$6500a8c0@computer> Message-ID: it initially started out in Inuit but then it switched to English. but the format is very pleasing visually and the drama-based audio mixing is engaging. i wish i could do this. phil UofA, ILAT > ----- Message from miakalish at REDPONY.US --------- > Date: Sat, 24 Jan 2004 18:34:59 -0700 > From: Mia - Main Red Pony > Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology > Subject: Re: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > > that was good. too bad more people don't do that for teaching. . . > language, for example. > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Phil CashCash" > To: > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 4:11 PM > Subject: An Inuit Journey: Tales from the Tundra (link) > > > > fyi, > > > > this Inuit multimedia presentation is quite interesting and well > done. > > take a look... > > > > http://artscanada.cbc.ca/artscanada.jsp?startingPieceLabel=legends > > > > phil cash cash > > UofA, ILAT > > > > > > > ----- End message from miakalish at REDPONY.US ----- From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jan 27 18:49:12 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:49:12 -0700 Subject: Finding Our Talk (links) Message-ID: fyi, some of you may already know about this fyi. it is in regard to an ongoing documentary on the state of Aboriginal languages in Canada called, "Finding Our Talk." it is initiating new 2004 television season with new documentary segments in Finding Our Talk II. you can find general information and links at: Aboriginal Peoples Television Network http://www.aptn.ca/en/scheduling/singleProgramDetailPage?theSeries=A00847&theBeginDate=2004-01-19&theEndDate=2004-02-02 the actual footage and clips are at: Finding Our Talk: a Journey Through Aboriginal Languages http://www.mushkeg.ca/ this site may have some html coding problems but if you can get in it is well worth it to view the documentary video clips of Native speakers and activists. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT From bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 28 05:52:45 2004 From: bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (bischoff at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:52:45 -0700 Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) In-Reply-To: <401572EB.2090009@ncidc.org> Message-ID: It's a shame there isn't a well organized/funded 'linguistic advocacy' organization to help in situations such as this -- or is there??? shannon Quoting Andre Cramblit : > 01/24/2004 - JUNEAU AK > By Mike Chambers, Associated Press Writer > > Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped > preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new > federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. > > In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught > almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass > federal tests written in English. > > In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, > meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, > conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control > that the rural villages treasure. > > "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education > Commissioner Roger Sampson. > > Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades > 3-8 and again in high school. > > States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after > three years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to > take English-only tests. > > Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural > public schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 > languages spoken by students, Sampson said. > > Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests > into more than 100 languages, education officials said. > > And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands > of Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not > translate as completely as Spanish or other European languages. > > For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of > 10, where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous > English words have no Yupik counterparts. > > The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel > and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program > for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. > > A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in > earlier years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native > children into English fluency. > > Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain > their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages > dwindle. > > "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said > state Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an > academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social > well being." > > Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students > enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western > curriculum similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. > > But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, > produced by the district by permission of their English-language > publishers. > > While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the > programs don't begin formal academic training in the language until > fourth grade. > > Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay > testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that > time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking > instruction. > > Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly > progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed > to the language barrier, Ferguson said. > > Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will > fare well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when > all schools are expected to have such tests in place. > > Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to > accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of > Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. > > Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from > Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. > > "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the > fact that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any > requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman > Zollie Stevenson. > > States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing > materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not > be available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. > > On the Net: > No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ > > State Department of Education and Early Development: > http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ > > Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ > > Copyright by The Associated Press. > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jan 28 16:47:20 2004 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:47:20 -0700 Subject: Keeping a Culture Afloat (fwd) Message-ID: http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-easter28jan28,1,4229585.story Keeping a Culture Afloat A revival of the Rapa Nui tongue is energizing the small community of Easter Island natives, whose heritage is at risk of being overrun. By H?ctor Tobar Times Staff Writer January 28, 2004 EASTER ISLAND ? Evelyn Hucke wants her son to speak in the language of the king who settled this remote island more than a millennium ago, the same Polynesian tongue spoken by the people who carved the totemic statues that rise above the powder-blue waters of the South Pacific. Hucke, 30, grew up speaking that language, known as Rapa Nui. But as she walks the streets of Hanga Roa, Easter Island's only town, she hears the Polynesian-faced children chattering and arguing in Spanish, the language of the island's current rulers, the Chileans. Every day is a linguistic battle for Hucke as she fights the cartoons beamed in from South America, and the Spanish repartee at the grocery store and in the island's only schoolyard. "Ko ai a Hotu Matu'a?" she asks her 7-year-old. Obediently, he answers in the same language: "He was the first king who came here." Often called the loneliest place on Earth, Easter Island is now caught up in the swirling changes of globalization and is on the front line of a broader effort to preserve the world's endangered languages. Every year, more languages pass into extinction. In the Chilean archipelago north of the Strait of Magellan, the last dozen or so speakers of the Kawesqar Indian language are aged. Inevitably, Kawesqar will join Kunza and Selknam on the list of Chile's dead languages. Only an end to "Chileanization," local leaders here say, can rescue Rapa Nui ? the term applies to the language, the 2,000 people who speak it and the island itself. Rapa Nui leaders want political autonomy from Chile or independence so they can control the migration of Spanish-speaking "Continentals" to the island. Saving Rapa Nui has become an obsession for a handful of people here, including a pair of California linguists who've spent nearly three decades helping create a Rapa Nui literature and a former medical worker who became a schoolteacher and launched the island's first Rapa Nui "immersion" program. "You realize something of your people is being lost, the spirit of our people," says Virginia Haoa, who runs the immersion classes for students from kindergarten through fourth grade. For Haoa and others, saving Rapa Nui means saving Easter Island's uniqueness ? "our culture, our cosmology, our way of being," Haoa says. If Rapa Nui dies, so will a living connection to ancestors who built an exotic, mysterious civilization on an island just a few miles wide in a vast, otherwise empty stretch of the Pacific, 2,300 miles from the South American mainland. For now, there are still Easter Islanders who can tell you, in Rapa Nui, stories that have been passed down for generations about Hotu Matu'a, who, around AD 400, arrived with seven explorers from the land called Hiva to settle this place. You can still talk to people whose grandfathers were part of the Birdman cult that raised one of the last of the island's 800 famed, imposing moai statues. It was later shipped off to the British Museum in London. "What we've kept alive [of our culture] has been entirely on our own initiative," says Alfonso Rapu, 61, who, in the 1960s, led one of the most important protests against Chilean rule, escaping an arrest warrant by hiding in the island's caves. Intermarriage with Chilean Continentals, he says, might soon do away with many of the 39 surnames associated with the island's tribes. Chile has ruled the island since one of its admirals arrived here in 1888, signing a treaty with its last king, who residents believe was later poisoned in the Chilean city of Valparaiso. Until recently, geographic isolation kept alive the Rapa Nui language ? a rhythmic tongue with few hard consonants ? despite the small number of people speaking it. But these days, the peak of tourist season brings four daily flights from Santiago, Chile's capital. Taxi drivers who've relocated from Santiago cruise up and down Atamu Tekena Avenue in Hanga Roa, in search of fares. "Word has gotten out in Chile that you can make dollars easy on Easter Island," explains Hucke, a member of the self-appointed "Rapa Nui parliament," which is pushing to have the island's status placed on the agenda of a United Nations committee on colonization. "They come to try their luck. They aren't interested when we tell them our culture is being destroyed." Of the 3,000 or so residents here, about a third are transplants from the Chilean mainland. Last year, Easter Island had its first armed robbery ? committed by a youth from the mainland. "It's not that we are against the people coming from the continent," says Enrique Pakarati Ika, the island's Chilean-appointed governor. "The people of Rapa Nui are very hospitable, and many times they invite Continental people to come." In the process, however, Hanga Roa risks becoming just another Chilean town. Chileans are currently as free to come to Easter Island as Americans are to move to Hawaii. "The Constitution of Chile is killing my culture and my identity," says Petero Edmunds, the mayor of Hanga Roa and the island's only popularly elected official. "We are a millenarian culture that existed long before Chile did. And the only way to protect that culture is by regulating migration." Edmunds and other leaders head to Santiago several times a year to negotiate autonomy with the authorities. Islanders hope to eventually achieve a status similar to their oceanic neighbors in French Polynesia, which was granted self-rule in 1984. "We are Polynesians," says activist Mario Tuki Hey, expressing an opinion shared by most anthropologists. "It's only an accident that makes us part of Chile." There is a growing consensus on the mainland that Easter Island deserves a different status than other isolated corners of the Chilean state. "There is unanimity in the idea that certain places, like an island located in the middle of the Pacific, should receive special treatment," said Sen. Jaime Orpis, a member of the conservative Independent Democratic Union who was part of a Chilean Senate commission that visited the island in September. "They should have autonomy." Sen. Carlos Ominami of the Socialist Party said such a status would probably be based on that of the Galapagos Islands, which are allowed to control migration from Ecuador and charge a visitor's fee to raise money for development. The Easter Island negotiations have dragged on for at least a year. For the time being, the island remains simply another administrative subdivision of the city of Valparaiso, Chile's main Pacific port. "We are as far from Valparaiso as Los Angeles is from Miami," Edmunds says. "It does not make sense that I have to call Valparaiso to get the money to fill a pothole or to have a Chilean bureaucrat tell me in what language I should educate my children." In fact, the island's school established its Rapa Nui immersion program four years ago in defiance of Chile's education laws, which mandate instruction primarily in Spanish. The educators and linguists behind the program say Rapa Nui was in such desperate straits, they couldn't afford to wait any longer. "For anyone under 25, Rapa Nui is not their primary language," says Nancy Weber, a linguist who has worked on the island with her husband, Robert, since the mid-1970s. Back then, things were different. "When we came, probably the greatest percentage of Rapa Nui children spoke Rapa Nui as their primary language," she says. Television arrived on Easter Island about the same time the Webers did. In those days, the linguists had great fun listening to the island's schoolchildren talk ? in Rapa Nui ? about the strange and exotic happenings on shows such as "Daniel Boone." The beaver-capped explorers and tomahawk-wielding Indians on the series were speaking dubbed Spanish, and the children weren't entirely sure what they were saying or doing. "None of them agreed with each other about what they had seen on TV the night before," Robert says. "And none of their stories seemed to match the 'Daniel Boone' I had seen." At the same time, the Webers set out to create Rapa Nui texts, inviting local residents to writing workshops and publishing mimeographed anthologies of poetry and family narratives. If Rapa Nui was to be taught in school, they felt, it needed a literature ? writing that reflected its cultural reality. "People were moved to tears when they produced their first books," Nancy recalls. Rapa Nui, it seemed, was on the rebound. But as time passed, Rapa Nui began to slip behind Spanish, especially after Chilean TV expanded to a daylong schedule. By 1997, a sociolinguistic survey of the school found that no exclusive Rapa Nui speakers were left and that only a handful of students were "coordinate bilingual," or equally fluent in Spanish and Rapa Nui. In public places, Rapa Nui is being replaced by Chilean-accented Spanish laced with Rapa Nui structure, the Webers say. For example, Rapa Nui uses frequent "reduplication" of sounds. So you might hear an Easter Islander greet someone with "Hola, hola" in Spanish. "Eventually, Rapa Nui will be lost," Robert says. "If Rapa Nui were on the mainland, it would have disappeared long ago. If we're really honest, all we're doing is delaying the inevitable." If true, it will happen despite the long history of resistance and perseverance of the Rapa Nui people. Against long odds, Easter Islanders have kept their language alive through their tragic encounters with the outside world. The Chileans are only the most recent in a long line of Europeans and South Americans to control the island. For centuries, colonialists and slavers decimated the population. The small group of elders who could read Easter Island's rongo rongo writing system ? preserved in 28 carved wooden tablets ? all died as slaves in 19th century Peru. By the time the Chileans arrived, the Rapa Nui people numbered fewer than 200. In the 20th century, Chile ruled the island with a mixture of paternalism and benign neglect. Older residents remember an island without electricity or running water, run by Chilean naval officers "as if the island were a ship and we were all sailors." Chilean educators encouraged the parents of Easter Island's "best and brightest" to send their children to mainland boarding schools. Haoa, the Rapa Nui teacher, was sent off to Chile when she was 9. She suffered an unbearable loneliness for months on end, rarely hearing a word of her native language. "The nuns told my parents I was too smart, that it would be a waste to let me stay on the island," she says. As an adult with a Chilean university degree, she returned to the island to work at the local clinic ? until the day her oldest daughter started kindergarten at Easter Island's elementary school. "I had always spoken to her in Rapa Nui because I knew when she grew up there would be pressure to speak in Spanish," Haoa remembers. After that first day of kindergarten, Haoa discovered that Rapa Nui was being treated "like an alien language" in her daughter's class, which was conducted entirely in Spanish. Soon Haoa was volunteering to organize Rapa Nui workshops at the school. Eventually, she became a full-time teacher there. "It was urgent that we have our children speaking our language," she says. Because Rapa Nui has no equivalents for modern words like "computer," Haoa and other teachers have coined new terms. A computer, for example, is a makimi roro uira, which literally means "brilliant mind machine." Creating new words helps encourage invention and creativity in a language, an essential part of keeping it alive. "We've proved that it's possible to teach science in Rapa Nui," Haoa says. But more important, she adds, "we're preparing our children for the outside world by giving them a stronger sense of who they are and where they come from." Mauricio Valdebenito, a Chilean and a cabdriver, is among the parents whose children will start the Rapa Nui immersion program soon, when the next kindergarten class begins. His wife is Rapa Nui, but she and their 5-year-old daughter speak mostly Spanish at home. "To me, all learning is a good thing. The more the better," Valdebenito says. "I wouldn't mind hearing her speak it more. It's part of her culture." Haoa tries to spread the same message outside the classroom. On her kitchen door there is a sign asking visitors to speak in Rapa Nui. "Hare vanaga i te reio henua," it says. "In this house we speak the voice of the people." Haoa believes she's making progress. The other day, she was walking across the playground when she heard something she hadn't heard for many years, a sound that transported her to her own childhood. A group of small children were arguing in Rapa Nui. "They were starting to scream, but they weren't hurting each other," she says. So for a moment or two, all she did was listen. From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Wed Jan 28 16:49:31 2004 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 11:49:31 EST Subject: No Rich Child Left Behind (language) Message-ID: Parents can refuse to have their children tested in English (or tested period!) -- like they have done in Hawaii at Punana Leo. Organizations such as Punana Leo and Piegan Institute have brought this issue of the contradiction in federal legislation between NCLB and the Native American Languages Act to the attention of our national leaders, our congressional representatives, and our state educational offices. We both testified at the Senate Committe on Indian Affairs to this effect. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed Jan 28 16:30:50 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 09:30:50 -0700 Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: I wonder how they deal with this issue in Puerto Rico? Or, perhaps Puerto Rico doesn't have to operate by the same rules, being a territory. phil cash cash wrote: > Dear ILAT, > > It seems that the NCLB is in direct conflict with the 'intent' of > PUBLIC LAW 101-477 NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES ACT of 1990 in that > federal policies are being implemented with out recognition to the > "special status" of NA languages. For example, in section 6 Congress > found: > > "(6) there is convincing evidence that student achievement and > performance, community and school pride, and educational opportunity is > clearly and directly tied to respect for, and support of, the first > language of the child or student;" > > Further, in SEC. 104. It is the policy of the United States to-- > > "7) support the granting of comparable proficiency achieved through > course work in a Native American language the same academic credit as > comparable proficiency achieved through course work in a foreign > language, with recognition of such Native American language proficiency > by institutions of higher education as fulfilling foreign language > entrance or degree requirements; and" > > What is even more troubling is the statement that Education Secretary > Paige is making no exemptions to Native American or Alaskan Native > populations. > > This is disturbing news and I hope it will be resolved fairly in favor > of Indigenous languages. > > Phil Cash Cash (cayuse/nez perce) > UofA, ILAT > > > On Jan 26, 2004, at 8:52 AM, Phil Cash-Cash wrote: > >> Fairbanks Daily News-Miner >> http://www.news-miner.com/Stories/0,1413,113~26794~1915402,00.html# >> >> Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind >> By MIKE CHAMBERS >> Associated Press Writer >> >> Monday, January 26, 2004 - >> >> JUNEAU, Alaska >> >> Some western Alaska schools that for decades have taught and helped >> preserve the Native Yupik language are in a quandary over meeting new >> federal testing requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act. >> >> In the Lower Kuskokwim School District, third grade children taught >> almost exclusively in the Yupik language may be required to pass >> federal tests written in English. >> >> In Alaska, where Natives speak 20 aboriginal languages and dialects, >> meeting a uniform federal law could ultimately be too expensive, >> conflict with Native cultural traditions as well as the local control >> that the rural villages treasure. >> >> "Not many states face the issues that we do," said state Education >> Commissioner Roger Sampson. >> >> Under the federal law, students would be tested annually from grades >> 3-8 >> and again in high school. >> >> States could make accommodations for language barriers, but after three >> years in U.S. public schools the children would be required to take >> English-only tests. >> >> Aside from the Heritage Language programs in more than 30 rural public >> schools, Alaska's largest city of Anchorage has more than 93 languages >> spoken by students, Sampson said. >> >> Already cash strapped, the state can little afford to translate tests >> into more than 100 languages, education officials said. >> >> And even if it could, the Yupik language, though spoken by thousands of >> Alaska Natives from Norton Sound to Bristol Bay, does not translate as >> completely as Spanish or other European languages. >> >> For instance, mathematics to American children is based on units of 10, >> where increments of 20 are used in Yupik math and numerous English >> words have no Yupik counterparts. >> >> The Lower Kuskokwim School District, which oversees schools in Bethel >> and surrounding villages has had an intensive Yupik language program >> for about 30 years, said Superintendent Bill Ferguson. >> >> A similar program instituted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in earlier >> years was seen as a progressive way to assimilate Native children into >> English fluency. >> >> Since then, it's become a way for Yupik-speaking Natives to sustain >> their language and culture just as other Alaska Native languages >> dwindle. >> >> "I feel strongly that our kids should speak Yupik fluently," said state >> Rep. Mary Kapsner, of Bethel. "I really feel this isn't just an >> academic issue about benchmark tests, but about cultural and social >> well being." >> >> Beginning in kindergarten and extending to third grade, students >> enrolled in the Yupik language program are taught a Western curriculum >> similar to those found in Lower 48 classrooms. >> >> But teachers speak Yupik and students read from Yupik textbooks, >> produced by the district by permission of their English-language >> publishers. >> >> While most children speak some English, those enrolled in the programs >> don't begin formal academic training in the language until fourth >> grade. >> >> Sampson wants permission from federal education officials to delay >> testing these Heritage Language students until sixth grade. At that >> time, the students would have had three years of English-speaking >> instruction. >> >> Already, schools in the district are failing to meet "adequate yearly >> progress" set out by the federal law, and much of that is attributed to >> the language barrier, Ferguson said. >> >> Alaska educators hold little hope that Yupik-speaking students will >> fare >> well in third-grade testing in the 2005-2006 school year when all >> schools are expected to have such tests in place. >> >> Ultimately, Alaska may seek a waiver under the federal law to >> accommodate its language barrier, Sampson said. The state Board of >> Education will to take up the issue Jan. 29. >> >> Winning an exemption from some parts of No Child Left Behind from >> Education Secretary Rod Paige will be difficult. >> >> "Secretary Paige has made some very strong statements regarding the >> fact >> that he doesn't anticipate the state's being exempted from any >> requirement under NCLB," said U.S. Department of Education spokesman >> Zollie Stevenson. >> >> States could seek federal funds to pay for translating testing >> materials, Stevenson said, but he acknowledged enough money may not be >> available to meet Alaska's varied dialects. >> >> ___ >> >> On the Net: >> >> No Child Left Behind: http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ >> >> State Department of Education and Early Development: >> http://www.eed.state.ak.us/ >> >> Lower Kuskokwim School District: http://www.lksd.org/ >> > From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Wed Jan 28 17:26:35 2004 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:26:35 EST Subject: Native language programs running afoul of No Child Left Behind (fwd) Message-ID: Puerto Rico does not have to follow the same rules. It is written into NCLB that they can have their testing and curriculum in Spanish. This is also true for other federal education legislation. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From langendt at U.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jan 29 21:04:24 2004 From: langendt at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Terry Langendoen) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 14:04:24 -0700 Subject: New language discovered In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Massimo, David Harrison has made a TV documentary about his fieldwork in Siberia. A preliminary version was shown at LSA earlier this month. I didn't see it, but those who did said it is excellent. I don't know whether the language in question was "discovered". One way to check is to see if it's listed in the most current edition of Ethnologue. I don't know its typological properties either. I also can't give you a figure on how many languages have gone extinct in the past 10 years. I'm copying this reply to the ILAT list that Phil Cash Cash has set up. Perhaps someone on that list can answer the questions you have raised. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Good luck with your piece! Terry On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini wrote: > Dear Terry, > Tried to communicate with you by phone. I have been asked by Il Corriere to > write an article on the discovery of a new language in Siberia (Middle > Chulym, discovered by Swarthmore linguist David Harrison). Only a handful of > elderly speakers (about 35 individuals, all over 50). I would like to get > from you, either for quote or for my own elaboration, essential replies to > the following questions: > How many languages have disappeared already in the last, say, 10 years or > so? > > This new language (no details available on the press articles) may well have > some interesting novel features, but it will no doubt have the usual > universals. Can we make a quick list? > > What does it mean today, for linguists, to discover a new language? > > I have to send in my piece tomorrow (Friday), so a quick reply will be > highly appreciated > Thanks a lot > Massimo > > > Terry Langendoen, Dept of Linguistics, Univ of Arizona P O Box 210028, 1100 E University Blvd, Tucson AZ 85721-0028 USA Phone: +1 520.621.6898 Fax: +1 520.626.9014 http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~langendoen Editor, Linguistics Abstracts http://www.linguisticsabstracts.com http://www.linguistlistplus.com Book review editor, LINGUIST List http://linguistlist.org/reviews/index.html From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jan 29 21:40:51 2004 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 13:40:51 -0800 Subject: Languages (event0 Message-ID: (Please send this message along to anyone else you think would be interested. The registration forms et al are attached to this email.) Call for Presentations Language is Life: the 11th Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference at the University of California at Berkeley June 11-13, 2004 Hosted by The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival and the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages (Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley) The Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Steering committee invites interested individuals and groups to give presentations at SILC this year, either in the form of a 15-minute talk (or less), a 1 1/2 hour workshop, or else to join one of our suggested panels, which will be 1 1/2 hours in length. Suggested panels include: Master-apprentice programs Immersion schools Archives and intellectual property rights Developing and using new writing systems Revitalizing languages without speakers We will also make time and space for the showing of films on language loss and language revitalization, if you have anything you'd like to show. See either of the following websites for the registration and presentation forms www.aicls.org or http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/SIL9brochure.html -- <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Prof. Leanne Hinton Chair, Dept. of Linguistics 1203 Dwinelle Hall University of California Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 email: hinton at socrates.berkeley.edu fax: (510) 643-5688 phone: (510) 643-7621 <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 29 22:20:08 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:20:08 -0700 Subject: Keeping a Culture Afloat (fwd) Message-ID: This issue: having a minority culture overrun with speakers of the dominant language, is very common. This is, for example, a potential great threat to the Tibetan language; as the Chinese government is encouraging Mandarin-speaking ethnic Han to move to Tibet--just a fraction of a fraction of the Chinese population could swamp the Tibetans in terms of numbers. The US territory of Guam is another example: the Chamorro natives now represent only about 47% of the population, which presents obvious challenges in terms of language preservation. Large, dominant cultures have shown that they can easily absorb immigrants without any threat of losing their culture and language (despite what we hear from the ignorant rhetoric of the English Only movement), but it is much more difficult for minority cultures to do this. In this case, I hope that the Chilean government halts migration to the Easter Islands, as well as changes their Spanish-only laws. phil cash cash wrote: >http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-easter28jan28,1,4229585.story > >Keeping a Culture Afloat > >A revival of the Rapa Nui tongue is energizing the small community of >Easter Island natives, whose heritage is at risk of being overrun. > >By H??ctor Tobar >Times Staff Writer > >January 28, 2004 > >EASTER ISLAND ?~W Evelyn Hucke wants her son to speak in the language of >the king who settled this remote island more than a millennium ago, the >same Polynesian tongue spoken by the people who carved the totemic >statues that rise above the powder-blue waters of the South Pacific. > >Hucke, 30, grew up speaking that language, known as Rapa Nui. But as she >walks the streets of Hanga Roa, Easter Island's only town, she hears >the Polynesian-faced children chattering and arguing in Spanish, the >language of the island's current rulers, the Chileans. > >Every day is a linguistic battle for Hucke as she fights the cartoons >beamed in from South America, and the Spanish repartee at the grocery >store and in the island's only schoolyard. > >"Ko ai a Hotu Matu'a?" she asks her 7-year-old. Obediently, he answers >in the same language: "He was the first king who came here." > >Often called the loneliest place on Earth, Easter Island is now caught >up in the swirling changes of globalization and is on the front line of >a broader effort to preserve the world's endangered languages. > >Every year, more languages pass into extinction. In the Chilean >archipelago north of the Strait of Magellan, the last dozen or so >speakers of the Kawesqar Indian language are aged. Inevitably, Kawesqar >will join Kunza and Selknam on the list of Chile's dead languages. > >Only an end to "Chileanization," local leaders here say, can rescue Rapa >Nui ?~W the term applies to the language, the 2,000 people who speak it >and the island itself. Rapa Nui leaders want political autonomy from >Chile or independence so they can control the migration of >Spanish-speaking "Continentals" to the island. > >Saving Rapa Nui has become an obsession for a handful of people here, >including a pair of California linguists who've spent nearly three >decades helping create a Rapa Nui literature and a former medical >worker who became a schoolteacher and launched the island's first Rapa >Nui "immersion" program. > >"You realize something of your people is being lost, the spirit of our >people," says Virginia Haoa, who runs the immersion classes for >students from kindergarten through fourth grade. > >For Haoa and others, saving Rapa Nui means saving Easter Island's >uniqueness ?~W "our culture, our cosmology, our way of being," Haoa says. >If Rapa Nui dies, so will a living connection to ancestors who built an >exotic, mysterious civilization on an island just a few miles wide in a >vast, otherwise empty stretch of the Pacific, 2,300 miles from the >South American mainland. > >For now, there are still Easter Islanders who can tell you, in Rapa Nui, >stories that have been passed down for generations about Hotu Matu'a, >who, around AD 400, arrived with seven explorers from the land called >Hiva to settle this place. You can still talk to people whose >grandfathers were part of the Birdman cult that raised one of the last >of the island's 800 famed, imposing moai statues. It was later shipped >off to the British Museum in London. > >"What we've kept alive [of our culture] has been entirely on our own >initiative," says Alfonso Rapu, 61, who, in the 1960s, led one of the >most important protests against Chilean rule, escaping an arrest >warrant by hiding in the island's caves. > >Intermarriage with Chilean Continentals, he says, might soon do away >with many of the 39 surnames associated with the island's tribes. > >Chile has ruled the island since one of its admirals arrived here in >1888, signing a treaty with its last king, who residents believe was >later poisoned in the Chilean city of Valparaiso. > >Until recently, geographic isolation kept alive the Rapa Nui language ?~W >a rhythmic tongue with few hard consonants ?~W despite the small number >of people speaking it. > >But these days, the peak of tourist season brings four daily flights >from Santiago, Chile's capital. Taxi drivers who've relocated from >Santiago cruise up and down Atamu Tekena Avenue in Hanga Roa, in search >of fares. > >"Word has gotten out in Chile that you can make dollars easy on Easter >Island," explains Hucke, a member of the self-appointed "Rapa Nui >parliament," which is pushing to have the island's status placed on the >agenda of a United Nations committee on colonization. "They come to try >their luck. They aren't interested when we tell them our culture is >being destroyed." > >Of the 3,000 or so residents here, about a third are transplants from >the Chilean mainland. Last year, Easter Island had its first armed >robbery ?~W committed by a youth from the mainland. > >"It's not that we are against the people coming from the continent," >says Enrique Pakarati Ika, the island's Chilean-appointed governor. >"The people of Rapa Nui are very hospitable, and many times they invite >Continental people to come." > >In the process, however, Hanga Roa risks becoming just another Chilean >town. > >Chileans are currently as free to come to Easter Island as Americans are >to move to Hawaii. > >"The Constitution of Chile is killing my culture and my identity," says >Petero Edmunds, the mayor of Hanga Roa and the island's only popularly >elected official. "We are a millenarian culture that existed long >before Chile did. And the only way to protect that culture is by >regulating migration." > >Edmunds and other leaders head to Santiago several times a year to >negotiate autonomy with the authorities. Islanders hope to eventually >achieve a status similar to their oceanic neighbors in French >Polynesia, which was granted self-rule in 1984. > >"We are Polynesians," says activist Mario Tuki Hey, expressing an >opinion shared by most anthropologists. "It's only an accident that >makes us part of Chile." > >There is a growing consensus on the mainland that Easter Island deserves >a different status than other isolated corners of the Chilean state. > >"There is unanimity in the idea that certain places, like an island >located in the middle of the Pacific, should receive special >treatment," said Sen. Jaime Orpis, a member of the conservative >Independent Democratic Union who was part of a Chilean Senate >commission that visited the island in September. "They should have >autonomy." > >Sen. Carlos Ominami of the Socialist Party said such a status would >probably be based on that of the Galapagos Islands, which are allowed >to control migration from Ecuador and charge a visitor's fee to raise >money for development. > >The Easter Island negotiations have dragged on for at least a year. For >the time being, the island remains simply another administrative >subdivision of the city of Valparaiso, Chile's main Pacific port. > >"We are as far from Valparaiso as Los Angeles is from Miami," Edmunds >says. "It does not make sense that I have to call Valparaiso to get the >money to fill a pothole or to have a Chilean bureaucrat tell me in what >language I should educate my children." > >In fact, the island's school established its Rapa Nui immersion program >four years ago in defiance of Chile's education laws, which mandate >instruction primarily in Spanish. The educators and linguists behind >the program say Rapa Nui was in such desperate straits, they couldn't >afford to wait any longer. > >"For anyone under 25, Rapa Nui is not their primary language," says >Nancy Weber, a linguist who has worked on the island with her husband, >Robert, since the mid-1970s. > >Back then, things were different. "When we came, probably the greatest >percentage of Rapa Nui children spoke Rapa Nui as their primary >language," she says. > >Television arrived on Easter Island about the same time the Webers did. >In those days, the linguists had great fun listening to the island's >schoolchildren talk ?~W in Rapa Nui ?~W about the strange and exotic >happenings on shows such as "Daniel Boone." The beaver-capped explorers >and tomahawk-wielding Indians on the series were speaking dubbed >Spanish, and the children weren't entirely sure what they were saying >or doing. > >"None of them agreed with each other about what they had seen on TV the >night before," Robert says. "And none of their stories seemed to match >the 'Daniel Boone' I had seen." > >At the same time, the Webers set out to create Rapa Nui texts, inviting >local residents to writing workshops and publishing mimeographed >anthologies of poetry and family narratives. If Rapa Nui was to be >taught in school, they felt, it needed a literature ?~W writing that >reflected its cultural reality. > >"People were moved to tears when they produced their first books," Nancy >recalls. > >Rapa Nui, it seemed, was on the rebound. > >But as time passed, Rapa Nui began to slip behind Spanish, especially >after Chilean TV expanded to a daylong schedule. By 1997, a >sociolinguistic survey of the school found that no exclusive Rapa Nui >speakers were left and that only a handful of students were "coordinate >bilingual," or equally fluent in Spanish and Rapa Nui. > >In public places, Rapa Nui is being replaced by Chilean-accented Spanish >laced with Rapa Nui structure, the Webers say. For example, Rapa Nui >uses frequent "reduplication" of sounds. So you might hear an Easter >Islander greet someone with "Hola, hola" in Spanish. > >"Eventually, Rapa Nui will be lost," Robert says. "If Rapa Nui were on >the mainland, it would have disappeared long ago. If we're really >honest, all we're doing is delaying the inevitable." > >If true, it will happen despite the long history of resistance and >perseverance of the Rapa Nui people. Against long odds, Easter >Islanders have kept their language alive through their tragic >encounters with the outside world. > >The Chileans are only the most recent in a long line of Europeans and >South Americans to control the island. For centuries, colonialists and >slavers decimated the population. > >The small group of elders who could read Easter Island's rongo rongo >writing system ?~W preserved in 28 carved wooden tablets ?~W all died as >slaves in 19th century Peru. By the time the Chileans arrived, the Rapa >Nui people numbered fewer than 200. > >In the 20th century, Chile ruled the island with a mixture of >paternalism and benign neglect. Older residents remember an island >without electricity or running water, run by Chilean naval officers "as >if the island were a ship and we were all sailors." > >Chilean educators encouraged the parents of Easter Island's "best and >brightest" to send their children to mainland boarding schools. > >Haoa, the Rapa Nui teacher, was sent off to Chile when she was 9. She >suffered an unbearable loneliness for months on end, rarely hearing a >word of her native language. "The nuns told my parents I was too smart, >that it would be a waste to let me stay on the island," she says. > >As an adult with a Chilean university degree, she returned to the island >to work at the local clinic ?~W until the day her oldest daughter started >kindergarten at Easter Island's elementary school. > >"I had always spoken to her in Rapa Nui because I knew when she grew up >there would be pressure to speak in Spanish," Haoa remembers. After >that first day of kindergarten, Haoa discovered that Rapa Nui was being >treated "like an alien language" in her daughter's class, which was >conducted entirely in Spanish. > >Soon Haoa was volunteering to organize Rapa Nui workshops at the school. >Eventually, she became a full-time teacher there. "It was urgent that >we have our children speaking our language," she says. > >Because Rapa Nui has no equivalents for modern words like "computer," >Haoa and other teachers have coined new terms. A computer, for example, >is a makimi roro uira, which literally means "brilliant mind machine." > >Creating new words helps encourage invention and creativity in a >language, an essential part of keeping it alive. > >"We've proved that it's possible to teach science in Rapa Nui," Haoa >says. But more important, she adds, "we're preparing our children for >the outside world by giving them a stronger sense of who they are and >where they come from." > >Mauricio Valdebenito, a Chilean and a cabdriver, is among the parents >whose children will start the Rapa Nui immersion program soon, when the >next kindergarten class begins. His wife is Rapa Nui, but she and their >5-year-old daughter speak mostly Spanish at home. > >"To me, all learning is a good thing. The more the better," Valdebenito >says. "I wouldn't mind hearing her speak it more. It's part of her >culture." > >Haoa tries to spread the same message outside the classroom. On her >kitchen door there is a sign asking visitors to speak in Rapa Nui. >"Hare vanaga i te reio henua," it says. "In this house we speak the >voice of the people." > >Haoa believes she's making progress. The other day, she was walking >across the playground when she heard something she hadn't heard for >many years, a sound that transported her to her own childhood. > >A group of small children were arguing in Rapa Nui. > >"They were starting to scream, but they weren't hurting each other," she >says. > >So for a moment or two, all she did was listen. > > > From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Thu Jan 29 23:11:55 2004 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 16:11:55 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) Message-ID: It's my understanding that there is indeed language shift going on in India, but it is mostly in the direction of Hindi or other major state languages. Hindi is now estimated by some to be the native language of fully one-third of the population, which means, with the population of India having recently passed one billion, that the number of Hindi native speakers in the world population (let alone in India) may have already caught up with that of English. In fact, in the next century Hindi is widely forecasted to pass both English and Spanish to become the world's second largest native tongue, second only to Mandarin Chinese. As for language shift to English, it probably does occur to a certain degree when you are dealing with people like those described in the article: children of members of the small upper-class elite, who are are products of mixed marriages, and whose parents both speak minority languages and are likely to be fluent in English. But, for the large majority of Indians who are not members of this elite, mixed marriages are far more likely to favor dominant indigenous languages like Hindi. At any rates, even liberal estimates put the native-English speaking population of India at a tiny fraction. A personal observation: for some reason, there are a number of Indian students in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I am living, and although they come from a variety of Indian states and speak a variety of Indian languages, they use Hindi as their lingua franca, although they are living in an English-speaking country and studying in English. Were two such people to marry, it seems clear that their children would be hearing mostly Hindi at home. There is also quite a large anti-English movement in India, and there have been a growing number of states which have eliminated English as one of their official languages in recent years. This is, in my mind, a positive development, but I have also read articles that argue that the focus on containing the national role of English sometimes obscures a more pressing issue: the widespread loss of minority languages to more dominant Indian languages. In the more populated north, especially, where most languages are related to Hindi, the spread of Hindi as the national languages has met with little resistance, as it is not seen as an alien language. Consequently, it puts minority languages at a great deal of risk. In the south, where people speak completely unrelated languages, there is more resistance to Hindi, which has allowed English to remain a lingua franca to a greater degree, arguably a negative development, but it also reduces the likehood that local languages will be replaced by Hindi. Certainly, it is a very good thing indeed that India has chosen for their national language an indigenous language over a colonial language, and I agree that they should continue to expand the role of Hindi at the expense of English, but it does necessarily make the position of minority languages any more secure. For an extreme example of this kind of thing, I think of France, which speaks one of the most dominant languages in the world. All of the French paranoia about English loan words (which have about as much potential of "harming" French as tens of thousands of French loan-words have "harmed" English) have obscured the reality that French-only policies, some of the most conservative in any modern democracy, have put traditional languages like Breton in great danger. I think that the world in general, and not only the people who live in the major English-speaking countries, have a good reason to be wary of the English language, but it is not good to let that wariness draw attention away from the reality that most of the endangered minority languages in the world are not being replaced by English. Don Osborn wrote: >It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by international >bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children could be >used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The situation >described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual societies. >In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic approach to >teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez faire, >with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), except in >isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or English >only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So in >linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' >language education, especially in the cities. > >Don Osborn >Bisharat.net > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Phil Cash-Cash" >To: >Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM >Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) > > >Regional languages dying in mixed marriages >SANDHYA IYER > >The Times of India >TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] >http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms > >When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the >bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. > >Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may not >be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But >there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today?~Rs global >village. > >Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the >mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom?~Rs hometown. > >Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and 10, >"My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they >mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn?~Rt even gather a >smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that >there is no ?~Qnative?~R element to look up to. At the same time, it isn?~Rt >so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards >life," she reasons. > >Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class >populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for >children to know a regional language. > >Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire >cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a >regional language is encouraged. > >To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important that >a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she >opines. > >That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing generation >in families where the parents are from different regions. > >Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their >five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. > >"There?~Rs little we can do about it. My husband is constantly travelling, >so he gets very little time with Ishaan. > >I?~Rm am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. >The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his grandparents >come over," says Jyotsna. > >Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no support >system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. > >Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both >mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak >Marwari quite well. > >But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn?~Rt >speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the >language. > >>>From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn?~Rt want her talking only >in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade >away," he warns. > > > From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jan 30 17:03:11 2004 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 10:03:11 -0700 Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) In-Reply-To: <4019933B.1010009@luna.cc.nm.us> Message-ID: the situation described by the article was quite interesting. in the southern Columbia Plateau region (OR, WA, ID), an undocumented language isolate--Cayuse--shifted to Nez Perce in the 18th century and the last vestiges of the language shift was complete by 1930 with its last speakers. this language shift event is unique because it is not a contemporary one like we now know, it is entirely an indigenous language shift. apparently, the Cayuse and Nez Perce allied themselves through intermarriage, political, and economic means. but more than anything, it is likely the intermarriage that facilitated the language shift. phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce) UofA, ILAT On Jan 29, 2004, at 4:11 PM, Matthew Ward wrote: > It's my understanding that there is indeed language shift going on in > India, but it is mostly in the direction of Hindi or other major state > languages. Hindi is now estimated by some to be the native language of > fully one-third of the population, which means, with the population of > India having recently passed one billion, that the number of Hindi > native speakers in the world population (let alone in India) may have > already caught up with that of English. In fact, in the next century > Hindi is widely forecasted to pass both English and Spanish to become > the world's second largest native tongue, second only to Mandarin > Chinese. > > As for language shift to English, it probably does occur to a certain > degree when you are dealing with people like those described in the > article: children of members of the small upper-class elite, who are > are products of mixed marriages, and whose parents both speak minority > languages and are likely to be fluent in English. But, for the large > majority of Indians who are not members of this elite, mixed marriages > are far more likely to favor dominant indigenous languages like Hindi. > At any rates, even liberal estimates put the native-English speaking > population of India at a tiny fraction. > > A personal observation: for some reason, there are a number of Indian > students in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where I am living, and although they > come from a variety of Indian states and speak a variety of Indian > languages, they use Hindi as their lingua franca, although they are > living in an English-speaking country and studying in English. Were > two > such people to marry, it seems clear that their children would be > hearing mostly Hindi at home. > > There is also quite a large anti-English movement in India, and there > have been a growing number of states which have eliminated English as > one of their official languages in recent years. This is, in my mind, > a > positive development, but I have also read articles that argue that the > focus on containing the national role of English sometimes obscures a > more pressing issue: the widespread loss of minority languages to more > dominant Indian languages. In the more populated north, especially, > where most languages are related to Hindi, the spread of Hindi as the > national languages has met with little resistance, as it is not seen as > an alien language. Consequently, it puts minority languages at a great > deal of risk. In the south, where people speak completely unrelated > languages, there is more resistance to Hindi, which has allowed English > to remain a lingua franca to a greater degree, arguably a negative > development, but it also reduces the likehood that local languages will > be replaced by Hindi. Certainly, it is a very good thing indeed that > India has chosen for their national language an indigenous language > over > a colonial language, and I agree that they should continue to expand > the > role of Hindi at the expense of English, but it does necessarily make > the position of minority languages any more secure. > For an extreme example of this kind of thing, I think of France, which > speaks one of the most dominant languages in the world. All of the > French paranoia about English loan words (which have about as much > potential of "harming" French as tens of thousands of French loan-words > have "harmed" English) have obscured the reality that French-only > policies, some of the most conservative in any modern democracy, have > put traditional languages like Breton in great danger. > > I think that the world in general, and not only the people who live in > the major English-speaking countries, have a good reason to be wary of > the English language, but it is not good to let that wariness draw > attention away from the reality that most of the endangered minority > languages in the world are not being replaced by English. > > Don Osborn wrote: > >> It would seem in principle that the same techniques used by >> international >> bilingual couples to impart the languages of both to their children >> could be >> used by interethnic couples within a country to do the same. The >> situation >> described in the article is probably widespread in multilingual >> societies. >> In West Africa my impression is that there is not a systematic >> approach to >> teaching languages to the very young before school (rather laissez >> faire, >> with kids picking up language from family, neighbors, friends), >> except in >> isolated(?) cases where parents may insist on speaking French or >> English >> only at home in the belief this will somehow help their children. So >> in >> linguistically mixed marriages it's catch as catch can for the kids' >> language education, especially in the cities. >> >> Don Osborn >> Bisharat.net >> >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: "Phil Cash-Cash" >> To: >> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2004 6:27 PM >> Subject: Regional languages dying in mixed marriages (fwd) >> >> >> Regional languages dying in mixed marriages >> SANDHYA IYER >> >> The Times of India >> TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, JANUARY 22, 2004 05:55:13 AM ] >> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/438291.cms >> >> When two mothertongues meet, the result is a third language. In the >> bargain, both the regional languages are forgotten. >> >> Sociologists are calling it a linguistic cultural quandary, that may >> not >> be ideal for those keen on a sense of identity and rootedness. But >> there seems to be little room for mother-tongues in today?s global >> village. >> >> Mixed marriages are breeding children who speak neither the >> mother-tongue of the dad or the local lingo of their mom?s hometown. >> >> Says event manager, Namita Shibad, who has two children aged 15 and >> 10, >> "My father was from Mangalore and my mother from Punjab . So they >> mostly stuck to speaking English,which is why I couldn?t even gather a >> smattering of either languages. There is a regret, in the sense that >> there is no ?native? element to look up to. At the same time, it isn?t >> so bad to shed regionality and adopt a very global approach towards >> life," she reasons. >> >> Sociologist Sujata Patel, however, warns, "The urban upper-class >> populace faces this threat most of all. It is very important for >> children to know a regional language. >> >> Primarily, because a mothertongue brings along with it an entire >> cultural ethos. Any kind of diversity and richness only comes when a >> regional language is encouraged. >> >> To be able to attain a certain level of stability, it is important >> that >> a special effort is made towards retaining a regional essence," she >> opines. >> >> That essence is a fast disappearing flavour with each passing >> generation >> in families where the parents are from different regions. >> >> Jyotsna and Vighnesh Shahane are another couple who admit that their >> five-year-old son Ishaan cannot speak either Marathi or Kannada. >> >> "There?s little we can do about it. My husband is constantly >> travelling, >> so he gets very little time with Ishaan. >> >> I?m am not too good with my Kannada, so I prefer sticking to English. >> The only time my son really listens to Marathi is when his >> grandparents >> come over," says Jyotsna. >> >> Many parents feel that the challenge is greater when there is no >> support >> system, in terms of extended family or grand-parents. >> >> Ashish and Shweta Khandelwal, are very keen that their kids speak both >> mothertongues. Says Ashish, "My elder daughter Vanshika can speak >> Marwari quite well. >> >> But it took some effort. My wife Shweta is from the North and doesn?t >> speak Marwari at all. So it was primarily left to me to teach her the >> language. >> >>> From the beginning, I was very clear that I didn?t want her talking >>> only >> in English. That attitude will make regional languages completely fade >> away," he warns. >> >> >> > From Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU Fri Jan 30 21:49:48 2004 From: Gary.Holton at UAF.EDU (Gary Holton) Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 12:49:48 -0900 Subject: New language discovered In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Massimo, I joined this discussion late -- my apologies if this message is by now redundant. I did see the David Harrison documentary. It's wonderful. Just a "rough cut" at this point, but it shows much promise. You can view clips at http://ironboundfilms.com/ Chulym in definitely NOT a newly disovered language. It is rather an underdocumented language belonging to the Turkic family. Prior to Harrison's recent field work, there had been no work on the language for several decades. Harrison was not even sure whether he would any speakers remaining. He was pleasantly surprized to find several dozen speakers, some in their 50's. _____________________________ Gary Holton Alaska Native Language Center University of Alaska Box 757680 Fairbanks, AK 99775-7680 (907) 474-6585 [voice] (907) 474-6586 [fax] http://www.uaf.edu/anlc gary.holton at uaf.edu > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology > [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Terry Langendoen > Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 12:04 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: New language discovered > > > Hi Massimo, > > David Harrison has made a TV documentary about his fieldwork in > Siberia. A preliminary version was shown at LSA earlier this > month. I didn't see it, but those who did said it is excellent. > > I don't know whether the language in question was "discovered". > One way to check is to see if it's listed in the most current > edition of Ethnologue. I don't know its typological properties > either. I also can't give you a figure on how many > languages have > gone extinct in the past 10 years. I'm copying this > reply to the > ILAT list that Phil Cash Cash has set up. Perhaps someone on > that list can answer the questions you have raised. Sorry I > couldn't be of more help. Good luck with your piece! Terry > > On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini wrote: > > > Dear Terry, > > Tried to communicate with you by phone. I have been > asked by Il Corriere to > > write an article on the discovery of a new language > in Siberia (Middle > > Chulym, discovered by Swarthmore linguist David > Harrison). Only a handful of > > elderly speakers (about 35 individuals, all over > 50). I would like to get > > from you, either for quote or for my own > elaboration, essential replies to > > the following questions: > > How many languages have disappeared already in the > last, say, 10 years or > > so? > > > > This new language (no details available on the press > articles) may well have > > some interesting novel features, but it will no > doubt have the usual > > universals. Can we make a quick list? > > > > What does it mean today, for linguists, to discover > a new language? > > > > I have to send in my piece tomorrow (Friday), so a > quick reply will be > > highly appreciated > > Thanks a lot > > Massimo > > > > > > > > Terry Langendoen, Dept of Linguistics, Univ of Arizona > P O Box 210028, 1100 E University Blvd, Tucson AZ > 85721-0028 USA > Phone: +1 520.621.6898 Fax: +1 520.626.9014 > http://linguistics.arizona.edu/~langendoen > Editor, Linguistics Abstracts > http://www.linguisticsabstracts.com > > http://www.linguistlistplus.com > Book review editor, LINGUIST List > http://linguistlist.org/reviews/index.html >