Reviving California Native languages (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Reviving California Native languages

By Jack Chang
Knight Ridder Newspapers
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001977242_languages12.html

BERKELEY, Calif. — In front of hundreds of indigenous people and
linguists from around the world, California Native American Bill Combs
held a sheet of paper in front of him and nervously spoke the lost
language of his ancestors.

While his cousin Norma Yeager translated, he read the Wintun words for
frog, deer and other animals, complete with the glottal stops, or
deep-throated clicking sounds, that he had practiced all week.

Combs, 34, finished his presentation by looking up at the audience
gathered in Pauley Ballroom at University of California, Berkeley, and
telling them in Wintun what he had recently learned to do after being
denied the opportunity all his life:

"I am speaking my language."

Since mid-June, the university's linguistics department has been helping
about 50 Native Californians learn to read, write and speak their
languages, many of which have not been used for decades and are
considered dead.

For many "Breath of Life" conference participants, the experience has
been emotional as they dig through the university's archive of language
recordings to find traces of their lost tongues.

[insert]
Nomelaki language

Transcribed by California Native American Norma Yeager and UC, Berkeley
graduate student Jenny Lederer. Nomelaki was spoken among Northern
Californian natives.

Nomelaki words:

Tree — mee
Deer — nopoom
Flowers — kalal
Bear — waymahl
Jaybird — chiek-chiek
Rabbit — patkeelee

Part of a Nomelaki prayer using the words:
Hlesin mem mee nopoom kalal way
Hlesin mem waymahl chiek-chiek patkeelee
Water-spirit make the tree, deer and flowers grow.
Water-spirit feed the plant life to the bear, jaybird and rabbit.

Source: Transcribed by California Native American Norma Yeager and UC,
Berkeley graduate student Jenny Lederer
[insert end]

In some cases, they have come across recordings of grandparents and
other family members speaking their languages decades ago into the
microphones of UC, Berkeley anthropologists.

Some have become the first people to speak their ancestral languages
since the early 20th century.

Mike Lincoln, who lives on the Round Valley Indian Reservation in
California, said he hopes to revive the language of his father's tribe,
the Nomelaki.

"I look at it as something missing," Lincoln said. "(The U.S.
government) took it away from us. They didn't let us have it. It's part
of our culture. Without it, you're lost."

Throughout the 20th century, the federal government aggressively tried
to stamp out the languages, sending Native children to boarding schools
where only English was permitted and prohibiting the teaching of the
languages in public schools.

Mamie Elsie Powell, 72, a resident of the Grindstone Indian Rancheria in
Glenn County, Calif., grew up without speaking her native tongue of
Nomelaki, although she remembered hearing her father and other
relatives speak it while growing up.

As it turns out, her father, who died in 1987 at age 101, was aware of
the importance of his language and made hours of recordings of himself
speaking it.

"I am one of the few people around who remember what my language sounds
like," Powell said. "I have my father's tapes."

Since the 1980s, the campaign to rescue dying or dead languages has
become a movement among Native Americans, said Leanne Hinton,
chairwoman of UC, Berkeley's linguistics department.

Many California Indians are apathetic about their culture, and changing
that is often an uphill battle, said Yeager, also from Grindstone. "If
they show interest, we'll teach them," she said.

On a Thursday in June, UC, Berkeley launched a companion conference —
"Stabilizing Indigenous Languages" — drawing several hundred indigenous
people and linguists from around the world to learn how to rescue their
own fragile languages.

The two conferences merged the next Friday morning, and Californians
such as Combs and Yeager nervously climbed onto the Pauley Ballroom
stage to show what they had learned to the international audience.

Among the crowd were young people such as Michelle Martin, 26, an
Aborigine from northwestern Australia who said she has been trying to
preserve some of the 25 indigenous languages in her part of the world.
Her motivations were the same as those of the Native Californians.

"It's who we are," Martin said. "You can say you're an Aborigine, but
what it really means is your culture and your language."

Martin said many of her elders still speak the old languages, although
few try to pass on their knowledge. That's why Martin is working to
preserve the languages by recording them onto tape and creating
dictionaries.

In that way, what she has seen so far in California has been a warning
to her. "If my people don't take an interest now, we'll be in the same
situation as you."