Dying language gets another chance (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Dying language gets another chance

[photo inset - Jenna Hauck/Metrovalley. Seabird Island resident
Elizabeth Herrling continues to keep her native Sto:lo language alive.]

By Jessica Gillies
MetroValley News
http://www.agassizharrisonobserver.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=2&cat=23&id=290213&more=

Thanks to a handful of local Sto:lo elders, the nearly extinct
Halq'emeylem language has a chance to live on in future generations.
The elders' work has led to the creation of a Halq'emeylem language
program that will enable students to earn a Developmental Standard
Teaching Certificate that will allow them to teach the language to
others, says program coordinator Thelma Wenman.

The language was on the verge of dying out. Only a few elders remained
who could speak the language, and children had resisted learning it in
school, says Elizabeth Herrling (whose traditional name is
Ts'ats'elexwot) - one of the elders who speaks Halq'emeylem and who has
made great contributions to the language program.

She went to Seabird Island to teach it, she says, but the children were
"stubborn" and didn't want to learn.

"Every time you'd speak to them, they'd just laugh at you."
When Ms. Herrling was a child, she was forbidden to speak Halq'emeylem
at school. On Seabird Island, her friends all forgot their own language
and spoke English.

"I was stubborn," she says. "It was the only language my grandmothers
were speaking. Every time we spoke the language we got punished [at
school]."
Now, there are few people to speak Halq'emeylem with.

"Just me," she says. "I talk to myself sometimes."

Ms. Herrling, who is now 88, had six sisters and three brothers. She has
one younger brother left, who she says can understand Halq'emeylem but
not speak it.

"I'm the oldest and I'm still here," she says. "I don't know why."

"Because you're stubborn," replies Strang Burton, a linguist working
with her on the language project.

Mr. Burton has been working with the language for about nine years. He
started when he was doing a post-doctorate from UBC, and he was hired
part-time by Sto:lo Nation five or six years ago, he says. He knows
words and phrases in Halq'emeylem, he says, but "if a couple of elders
were to speak fluently, I would have a hard time understanding them."

Mr. Burton and Elizabeth Herrling, along with elders Elizabeth Phillips,
Tillie Guitterez, and the late Rosaleen George, have collaborated to
make various learning mate rials so that Halq'emeylem can be taught in
schools.

"I didn't want my language to fade away, so I had to do something," says
Ms. Herrling.

They have produced three CD-ROMS (two vocabulary/language and one
sounds), three textbooks with 50 lessons each, audio CDs of phrases and
language in the textbooks, and an audio dictionary, says Mr. Burton.
The dictionary, he adds, has about 3,800 entries, which ends up being
about 10,000 sound files. There are two speakers for each entry,
because they have "noticeably different dialects" of Halq'emeylem.
There is also another CD-ROM, with a book and audio CD, about a
Sasquatch story told by an elder.
Currently, Mr. Burton is working with Ms. Herrling and collecting her
stories to put them into a similar format.

In June, Ms. Herrling received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from
UCFV.
The Halq'emeylem program has four introductory levels and four intensive
fluency levels, all of which have to be completed in order to qualify
for the Developmental Standard Teaching Certificate, she says. All the
levels are accredited through the Niccola Valley Institute of
Technology, and the introductory levels are accredited through UCFV,
says Ms. Wenman.

Those eight levels satisfy the DSTC's language component, but other
courses have to be completed as well.

The DSTC was approved through the B.C. College of Teachers and Simon
Fraser University, she says.

Ten students have finished the program and nine are almost done, she
says. Their courses are scattered between NVIT, UCFV, SFU, and Sto:lo
Nation.

"We're running three levels per year," says Ms. Wenman, so it takes a
year and a half to get through the introductory levels, and a year and
a half to get through the intensive fluency portion.

"That's just for the language component," she says.

Ms. Wenman credits the elders for their hard work and influence on the
program.

"It's all through the aid of our beloved elders Elizabeth Herrling,
Elizabeth Phillips, and the late Rosaleen George," she says. "Without
them we wouldn't have our language classes."

Laura Wealick, whose traditional name is Wee Lay Laq, is one of the
students who took the language classes.

"I am a teacher of the language; I'm also a student of the language,"
she says. "I've been studying [Halq'emeylem] for the last five years."
She has also studied a downriver Halq'emeylem dialect, she says, and
her mother's language, Ooweekeno.

She's studying Halq'emeylem because it's her father's language and
because it's endangered, she says.

For the past two and a half years, Ms. Wealick has been teaching
community language classes at Tzeachten. In September, she says she'll
be teaching Halq'emeylem at Sto:lo Shxweli.

"Our students will have the opportunity to study - more importantly, to
think - in their language," she says. "I felt like I was waking up my
ancestors because the words I was speaking hadn't been spoken in our
family for two generations. It was like using muscles in my throat, in
my body, that hadn't been used for many years. That was a really moving
experience. The language is an integral part of our culture."

Now that she has her DSTC, Ms. Wealick will be doing the Professional
Development Program, which she says is a year of intensive study, half
of which is a practicum.

As for Elizabeth Herrling, says Ms. Wealick, "She's my mentor. She is
probably one of the most beautiful women I have ever met."

Ms. Herrling, Elizabeth Phillips and Tillie Guitterez "are leaders in
the language now," she says, as well as "other people, too, that have
gone before them.

"These three ladies have come forward, and continue to come forward and
offer their knowledge. Without them, our language would not have this
thread of hope."

She praises Strang Burton as well.

"That guy is just unreal. He's doing phenomenal work - I just can't say
enough about him. He's just so giving and the stuff he's doing is just
incredible.

"It's my belief that it takes many hands and many minds to accomplish
anything. These people are only a handful of representatives of
everyone that's contributed to the language to date. There have been
lots and lots of people - I don't want people to get the wrong
impression that it's only these three people."