From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 20:34:56 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 13:34:56 -0700 Subject: Dictionary For Sale Message-ID: Below please find an offer for an original Version of Bill Bright’s Dictionary and book entitled “The Karok Language”. They are also available reprinted from Susan Gehr at the Tribe for a mere $19.95 1.800.50.KARUK http://www.ncidc.org/karuk/index.html susan at karuk.org Bright, William... The Karok Language UC Pub in Linguistics Volume 13     8vo paper wrappers 449pp + appendix slight cover wear otherwise  very good $125.00  LOUIS COLLINS BOOKS  ABAA 1211 East Denny Way     Seattle,WA  98122  USA ph (206) 323-3999 "We rather successfully find out-of-print books in all fields" mailto:collinsbooks at collinsbooks.com VISIT OUR WEB SITE: http://www.collinsbooks.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- We accept VISA/ MasterCard/American Express. Books are returnable within 10 business days. POSTAGE DOMESTIC:  MEDIA MAIL (6-8 days delivery) - add $4.00 per order;  PRIORITY MAIL (2-3 days) - add $8.00 per order.    - method determined by weight and locale mailed to. POSTAGE FOREIGN:  Postage is extra on ALL orders.  Via GLOBAL PRIORITY cardboard envelope when possible,    - add $10.00 to most locales ($7.00 to Canada & Mexico).  Items too large or fragile for GP envelope or requiring more  protective packaging are sent via AIRMAIL LETTER POST,  Airmail Parcel Post, or Economy Letter Post (Surface Mail),  depending on weight and locale (often Airmail is minimally more  than Economy, and MUCH faster and reliable and thus our preference). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2898 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 20:37:07 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 13:37:07 -0700 Subject: Submissions Requested Message-ID: Call for Submissions (please forward to interested parties):   UNESCO Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation   In accordance with its mission to protect and promote cultural diversity, and in particular to encourage the safeguarding of endangered languages as an essential part of the living heritage of humanity, UNESCO calls for submissions to its online 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation' under the Endangered Languages Programme. We are interested in collecting reports on both ongoing and past projects.     PURPOSE:   The purpose of this Register is to identify and collect reports concerning efforts in language preservation, as a means to facilitate the dissemination of Good Practice knowledge, expertise and experience in this area, and thus to encourage future application and adaptation worldwide. To this end, we ask speaker communities, governmental and non-governmental organisations, and related experts to share their good experiences in the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of endangered languages with a wider public, via our Good Practices database. Registry in this database is also meant to ensure the visibility, recognition, and accessibility of the projects entered (the UNESCO portal recording over 10 million hits on average every month).     SUBMISSIONS:   We solicit the submission of case reports on any form of community-based projects concerning language preservation, - e.g. reports on local/ regional projects in education, revitalisation, standardisation, community development, awareness raising, capacity building, documentation, use of new technologies, etc. (Note: These can be projects that do not focus on language exclusively but include language as one aspect among their concerns)   For submission, please use the form and the guidelines available on the Register website of the UNESCO Endangered Languages Programme:   http://www.unesco.org/culture/endangeredlanguages/goodpractices   Submissions will be reviewed by UNESCO experts prior to web publication to ensure consistency.   Your participation is greatly appreciated – it helps establish a valuable service of knowledge transfer in language preservation, for future efforts and projects worldwide that safeguard language diversity as an important aspect of our living heritage.   Best regards,   The Endangered Languages Programme Team   Intangible Heritage Section UNESCO 1 rue Miollis, F-75015 Paris, France Fax: +33.1.45.68.57.52 E mail: ling.diversity at unesco.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2704 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 22:12:36 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 15:12:36 -0700 Subject: Bright Dictionary Message-ID: I misinformed you earlier. Susan Gehr is not the person to contact for the reprints of "The Karuk Language" dictionary and grammar guide by the eminent Dr. William Bright To order the Bright Dictionary for $19.95 go to http://www.legalbooksdistributing.com/lbsearch/index.html when you arrive at search page... type "BRIGHT" FOR AUTHOR AND CLICK SEARCH, then ADD TO CART -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 425 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 00:24:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:24:11 -0700 Subject: Indigenous Television Channel Launched in Taiwan (fwd) Message-ID: INDIGENOUS TELEVISION CHANNEL LAUNCHED IN TAIWAN (2 July 2005 1:30 pm) http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k5/july/july21.htm MUMBAI: Touted as Asia's first indigenous television channel, iTV was formally launched in Taiwan. The new channel can be seen on cable channel 16 and presents programming that focuses on indigenous issues, culture and enterprises, and hopes to help preserve and pass on indigenous languages. Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has been quoted in media reports as saying that the opening of iTV was in line with the United Nations' slogan, "dissemination means human rights" and represented another step forward in Taiwan's democratization. iTV will air Taiwan's first indigenous-themed soap opera, Hunter, starting 4 July. The soap opera details the lives of young indigenous people living in Taiwan's urban areas, including their experiences of being discriminated against and bouts with identity crises. Apart from such indigenous language programs, iTV will also offer various Chinese and English programmes. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 00:27:52 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:27:52 -0700 Subject: Culture Camp bridges Native teaching gap (fwd) Message-ID: CULTURE CAMP BRIDGES NATIVE TEACHING GAP By Nate Traylor Leader Staff http://leaderadvertiser.com/articles/2005/06/29/news/news03.txt Valley teachers spent several days at Blue Bay campground this week, learning Native languages and cultures at the Flathead Reservation Culture Camp as part of the Leadership Development for Master Teachers Project funded by the National Science Foundation. Every school district in the valley was represented as about 60 K-8 teachers spent time with tribal elders, gaining knowledge from those who are deeply connected with customs of the past in order to better help students in the future. It was the third year the culture camp has been held. "Teachers will not only learn how to teach better, but they will be more contextually responsive," explained program manager Gina Sievert. Using the valley's environment and culture, and integrating local issues like air and water quality, land management, and timber practices into everyday curriculum will not only enable Native American students to relate to their studies, but it will also give other students a unique perspective on those issues, she explained. Vernon Finley, Director of the Kootenai Language Curriculum Project for the Kootenai Culture Committee, saw teachers expressing an interest in Native American studies a few years back when he was invited to tell stories to Cherry Valley students. "They were concerned that a significant part of the school's population was being ignored," Finley said. After several visits to the school, he saw that his stories had a big influence on the students. "They had [Kootenai] words that I had used in the story written on their books and on the walls," he said. Since then, public schools were inviting elders to speak in classes, but the students' exposure to tribal traditions "had nothing to do with curriculum and it became kind of a stand-alone thing," Finley explained. "They [teachers] wanted to learn how to make it more meaningful," he said. When SKC came into a grant to fund the camp, interest started to grow, he said. Teachers participated in activities led by elders such as beading, sewing, plant identification and crafts. Elder Frances Vanderburg led a group through the campground and identified various plants in her Native tongue. Vanderburg is a Salish Language teacher in Arlee and also teaches botany. "It's been a long time coming," she said when asked about the inclusion of Native traditions in public schools. "The resistance isn't as blatant as it was when we were the minority in schools. The doors have been opening slowly." She attributes these recent efforts to new teachers who have come here without prejudices. "I'm going to use this to talk about the knowledge the indigenous people have," said Polson fifth grade teacher Charles Bertsch when asked how he plans on using what he learned in the classroom. First grade Ronan teacher Sheila Hoback is going to have her students learn Salish and Kootenai words for various animals. She estimates that 15 percent of her students are Native American. Tim Ryan of Ancestral Skills and Technology Northwest taught his group how to make cordage out of dogbane. After fibers are separated from bark, it can be rolled into long strands of cord. Native people used the cord to make everything from fishing wire to heavy duty rope, he explained. Ronan elementary teacher Renee Kelch was occupied with making snow shoes. She enjoyed the project so much that she is going to teach it to her students. "It's really fun to make," she said. "The kids will enjoy this." Sievert emphasized how beneficial it is to have non-Tribal teachers building relationships with Tribal elders. "It's helping teachers develop relationships with community members and bridging the gap between the Indian and Non-Indian community," said former Indian Education Coordinator Julie Cajune. She said the culture camp was the most worthwhile teaching endeavor she's ever been involved in. "What I hope teachers get out of this is that they have a little more respect for Native teaching and culture," said SKC student Naida Lefthand who helped coordinate the event. "I'd like this experience to go beyond the school. I'd like to see it influence neighbors and family members and build a larger bridge." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 38087 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:32:34 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:32:34 -0700 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) Message-ID: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language Date: Wednesday, July 06 @ 00:00:30 Topic Top Stories In a region well known for its penchant for family history, Eileen Quintana takes a somewhat less traditional approach to her heritage. She helps 250 area American Indian children learn the Navajo language, traditions and culture, from pronunciation of the vowels to the ceremonies. "The reason why we believe it's very, very important to teach Navajo ... is we want to keep the language," she said. "So much of our culture is within the language." Quintana is the program manager of the Nebo/Juab Title VII Indian Education program. She works with several children from throughout the area from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday during the regular school year, teaching them to speak, read and write Navajo. Quintana said many of them have family who still speak Navajo, and the students are excited about being able to visit their relatives and greet them or carry on a short conversation in the family's native language. Plus, she keeps records of grades, school attendance and any problems the children may be having, and the program provides access to tutors. They also can log onto an electronic high school program and earn credits through online courses. The students and their families go on field trips to BYU, Thanksgiving Point and area museums. About 85 percent of the students are Navajo; the rest belong to one of about 16 tribes represented in Utah and Juab counties. So far the reaction has been good; the program has grown from less than a dozen to 249 students, and funding has more than quadrupled since 1998. The program is funded by federal grants, including one from the Utah Arts Council for the Artists-in-Residence program, which pays to bring artists to class. "We really see a lot of benefits because we feel like their culture is validated," said Brenda Beyal, on-site coordinator for the Artists-in-Residence program. "They're able to see minority adults as role models." Learning about art and creating their own is a good way to experience culture as well, she said. For Betty Tanner's three children, the program is a fun way to learn. They have been involved in the program for several years, and her children have made pouches, learned songs and dances and performed at the Olympics in the Navajo village, in her oldest son's case. The irony is, her children aren't even Navajo. "My kids are actually Chippewa, so they haven't necessarily learned a lot about their heritage," she said. Tanner still wants to keep them participating as long as possible, though. The most important part, Quintana said, is teaching the students about their Navajo heritage and helping them to understand how important that heritage is to them, even far away from the reservation. "For a people to survive, they had to rely on each other," she said. "My clan and my family history are more important than my name." She hopes to instill self-identity and a connection with the past in her students, which will then inspire the students to work harder and accomplish those things they want to. Plus, knowing another language is beneficial for every child; Quintana said students who are bilingual tend to earn higher scores on national tests and do better in school. The program, so far, has accomplished that. The graduation rate for American Indians in the area was about 37 percent in 1998, Quintana said. Last year it was 94.2 percent. And while she is proud of the work accomplished here, Quintana said there is much more to be done, as the national average graduation rate for American Indians is below 50 percent. "And how the hell we allow that to stay baffles me," she said. HEIDI TOTH can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth at heraldextra.com. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1. This article comes from The Daily Herald http://www.newutah.com/[1] The URL for this story is: http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58978[2] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:38:19 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:38:19 -0700 Subject: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors (fwd) Message-ID: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors Speaker gives lesson in culture, language. By JASON ROSENBAUM of the Tribune’s staff Published Sunday, July 3, 2005 Jenna Isaacson photo Truman Black, a full-blooded Otoe Indian, tries to recall the Otoe word for “mama” while discussing tribal culture and language yesterday at Van Meter State Park. “If you don’t speak it, you lose it,” Black said. MIAMI, Mo. - After taking a sip of water, Truman Black placed the tips of his fingers against his chest and closed his eyes. He swayed slightly as he sang a soft, deeply powerful melody. "The Flag Song," as Black called it, honors Otoe predecessors who fought for their culture at home as well as for the United States abroad. "Our tribe, many a tribe, have great honor in their warriors," said Black, who calls himself one of the last full-blooded Otoe American Indians. Black, 68, of Oklahoma City, spoke about the Otoes’ history, language and culture yesterday at Van Meter State Park, some 75 miles west of Columbia. About a dozen people came to the event, which was sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The Otoes originated in what is now the Upper Midwest in the 1300s or 1400s. They moved west in the 1500s to 1600s before settling in the 1750s with the Missouri and Ioway American Indians in what are now Nebraska and Iowa. Connie Winfrey, historical site administrator for Van Meter State Park, said that after the Missouri, Ioway and Otoe tribes migrated from the Great Lakes, the Missouri Indians stayed near the Missouri River in what is now Saline County, and the Otoes went up the river to Nebraska. In the late 1700s, when the Sauk and Fox tribes defeated the Missouri Indians, they went up the river and joined the Otoes. "When Lewis and Clark came through here, the Missouri Indians weren’t living here. They found them with the Otoe," Winfrey said. "The Missouri Indians and the Otoe were the first tribes Lewis and Clark encountered on their trek west." Black said the Missouri, Ioway and Otoes share similar languages. The Ioway language, he said, has only a handful of words with meanings that differ from the Otoe language. The Missouri Indians spoke the same language but at a quicker pace, he said. "If we got the people to slow down enough, we could understand them," Black said. At its peak, Black said, the Otoe tribe had about 2,300 members. Today, he said, there are a little more than a dozen "full-blooded" Otoes. Language is the key to the preservation of culture, Black said. "You lose your language, you lose your culture," he said. Black said that because the Otoes do not have a written language, he learned the tribe’s customs and language from Arthur Lightfoot, an uncle of Ioway and Otoe descent. Black said he is among only a handful of people who know how to speak the language. Black said descendants of the Otoe tribe don’t know American Indian history because their parents no longer talk about it. "They are no longer told stories as I was when I was growing up," he said. During a question-and-answer session, Black explained how to say the word "daughter" in Otoe but struggled to recall the word for "mama." "If you don’t speak it, you lose it," he said. Black also discussed his confrontations with bigotry. He told how he was refused service in 1957 at a Ponca City, Okla., bar while wearing his Navy uniform. The server told him that because he was an American Indian, he could not buy beer. Black said he once was confined to a segregated portion of a cafe.But he said he’s never been ashamed of his heritage. "I have never had a reason not to be prideful of my heritage." He said that it was emotional remembering his past because many of the people who know the Otoe culture are dying off. "I’m of an age where I knew the elders that lived the culture, still spoke the language and were still in the cultural customs of our Indian history," he said. "There are many people of my age today who don’t have that spiritual feeling that I have because of knowing of the language and the customs." ------------------------- _Reach Jason Rosenbaum at (573) 815-1723 or jrosenbaum at tribmail.com[1]._ Links: ------ [1] mailto:jrosenbaum at tribmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 25200 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:42:45 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:42:45 -0700 Subject: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706093819.bk0wwsww4o8c80sw@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: fyi, here is the url to the previously posted article: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jul/20050703News007.asp phil cash cash UofA, ILAT Quoting phil cash cash : > Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors > Speaker gives lesson in culture, language. > > By JASON ROSENBAUM of the Tribune’s staff Published Sunday, July 3, > 2005 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 6 16:48:15 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 10:48:15 -0600 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706093234.mssgg4o8cgkgokok@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: The article url doesn't work. . . . -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 10:33 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language Date: Wednesday, July 06 @ 00:00:30 Topic Top Stories In a region well known for its penchant for family history, Eileen Quintana takes a somewhat less traditional approach to her heritage. She helps 250 area American Indian children learn the Navajo language, traditions and culture, from pronunciation of the vowels to the ceremonies. "The reason why we believe it's very, very important to teach Navajo ... is we want to keep the language," she said. "So much of our culture is within the language." Quintana is the program manager of the Nebo/Juab Title VII Indian Education program. She works with several children from throughout the area from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday during the regular school year, teaching them to speak, read and write Navajo. Quintana said many of them have family who still speak Navajo, and the students are excited about being able to visit their relatives and greet them or carry on a short conversation in the family's native language. Plus, she keeps records of grades, school attendance and any problems the children may be having, and the program provides access to tutors. They also can log onto an electronic high school program and earn credits through online courses. The students and their families go on field trips to BYU, Thanksgiving Point and area museums. About 85 percent of the students are Navajo; the rest belong to one of about 16 tribes represented in Utah and Juab counties. So far the reaction has been good; the program has grown from less than a dozen to 249 students, and funding has more than quadrupled since 1998. The program is funded by federal grants, including one from the Utah Arts Council for the Artists-in-Residence program, which pays to bring artists to class. "We really see a lot of benefits because we feel like their culture is validated," said Brenda Beyal, on-site coordinator for the Artists-in-Residence program. "They're able to see minority adults as role models." Learning about art and creating their own is a good way to experience culture as well, she said. For Betty Tanner's three children, the program is a fun way to learn. They have been involved in the program for several years, and her children have made pouches, learned songs and dances and performed at the Olympics in the Navajo village, in her oldest son's case. The irony is, her children aren't even Navajo. "My kids are actually Chippewa, so they haven't necessarily learned a lot about their heritage," she said. Tanner still wants to keep them participating as long as possible, though. The most important part, Quintana said, is teaching the students about their Navajo heritage and helping them to understand how important that heritage is to them, even far away from the reservation. "For a people to survive, they had to rely on each other," she said. "My clan and my family history are more important than my name." She hopes to instill self-identity and a connection with the past in her students, which will then inspire the students to work harder and accomplish those things they want to. Plus, knowing another language is beneficial for every child; Quintana said students who are bilingual tend to earn higher scores on national tests and do better in school. The program, so far, has accomplished that. The graduation rate for American Indians in the area was about 37 percent in 1998, Quintana said. Last year it was 94.2 percent. And while she is proud of the work accomplished here, Quintana said there is much more to be done, as the national average graduation rate for American Indians is below 50 percent. "And how the hell we allow that to stay baffles me," she said. HEIDI TOTH can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth at heraldextra.com. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1. This article comes from The Daily Herald http://www.newutah.com/[1] The URL for this story is: http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=589 78[2] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 17:02:37 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 10:02:37 -0700 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706164822.CC2233185@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: thats odd as i tried it too and it doesn't work.  here is a url that works... http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58978&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 phil cash cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > The article url doesn't work. . . . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 6 17:31:12 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 11:31:12 -0600 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706100237.pwcccg0040gks4w8@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Try this one: http://www.newutah.com/ The article is on the front page. _____ From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 11:03 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) thats odd as i tried it too and it doesn't work. here is a url that works... http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s id=58978&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 phil cash cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > The article url doesn't work. . . . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jul 7 00:22:31 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 17:22:31 -0700 Subject: Voices Of The World Message-ID: International project seeks speakers of Native languages Goal is to create online database 7/6/2005 Dear colleagues around the world, Voices of the World aims to build international popular awareness of the diversity of mankind through a worldwide documentary film and media project. We want to portray the peoples of the world, giving face and voice to each culture and empowering every language community to speak. The goal of Voices of the World is to strengthen our global mutual belonging. The peoples of the world speak over 6,500 separate languages. Each language employs a vocabulary and a grammar that is unique to the communities that use them. Each reflects cultures that are equally unique, rich in folklore, history and humanity. In a time of globalization and the telecommunications revolution that is accompanying it, most of those languages have come under threat. A surprisingly large number, about 50%, will probably not survive this century. Many are already in terminal decline. Indigenous peoples speak most of these languages. Linguists calculate that planet earth is losing one language every two weeks - and with each one that vanishes, a means of communication, a method of expression and a way of looking at the world, disappears. Voices of the World is an international non-profit initiative of UNESCO’s Goodwill Ambassador for Languages Mrs. Vigdis Finnbogadottír, based on an original idea by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Janus Billeskov. Jansen is supported by the Danish Government, the UN and by leading linguists from all over the world. Our first task is to create a media event in connection with the UN's 60th anniversary in October 2005. All the Nordic public service TV stations are already committed to this broadcast. We are presently working on similar arrangements with other European and international TV-stations. Our aim is to reach a global TV-audience. In order to make this a truly global event we want to invite you to participate in creating key elements of the central documentary film - Voices. Voices will tell the story of the cultural and linguistic loss the world is suffering from the threat of language endangerment. But the main elements of the film are to be based on you contributions. We seek case stories, which pinpoint the various stages from language endangerment to language death. We look for storytellers who can explain what it feels like to lose one's language. We aim to include material from as many different languages as possible in the film, but we have a limited budget. Thus we are looking for local contributions. You can participate in three different ways. Firstly, you can submit new material. Secondly, you can submit material already recorded. And thirdly, you can send us contacts to speakers of endangered languages. We are looking for charismatic storytellers who can tell moving personal stories to the world in their own language. The issues to be covered are: 1. The language generation gap - for example how does it feel to live in a family where grand parents and grand children find it hard to communicate, because the language of the older generation was not passed on? 2. The last speakers - for example how does it feel to be among the last few speakers of a language? 3. Language suppression (economic, social, political, cultural) - for example how do people cope with situations, when their language is not given space in the public sphere? What does it mean to a person or a community, if their language is forbidden or drained of resources? 4. Language and technology - for example how are speakers of endangered languages affected by globalization and the new information technology? We are also looking for success stories such as: 5. Language revitalization - for example how did a particular endangered language community manage to turn the situation around and revitalize their language? 6. Other vital language issues? - You might come up with something brilliant, which we were not even able to conceptualize - given the limitations of our language. If you want to participate in "Voices", please start by sending us an email introducing yourself, your language or the language you are engaged with. Please also describe your contribution and in what way you would like to collaborate with us. We will then send you more information about the project, more precise specifications of what we are looking for and technical requirements. We will do our best to support you in your filmmaking efforts and to make use of your material in the best possible way. Don't miss this opportunity to present your language as part of the bigger picture. After the film is finished, all the footage collected and shot for the Voices of the World project will be handed over to the Vigdis Finnbogadottír Institute of Foreign Languages at University of Iceland. The aim of Voices of the World and the university is to create a database of all the world's languages, accessible to everybody via the Internet. Contact: Voices of the World Project manager: Signe Byrge Sørensen e-mail: byrge at final-cut.dk Address: Forbindelsesvej 7; 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45 35 43 60 43, Fax: +45/ 35 43 60 44 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5491 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri Jul 8 07:21:01 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 00:21:01 -0700 Subject: Big Valley Pomo Message-ID: American Indian Youths Preserve the Past, One Word at a Time Pacific News Service, Youth News Feature, Shadi Rahimi, May 11, 2005 Editor's Note: Though only a few elders of the Big Valley band of Pomo Indians are still fluent in their language, young tribal members are picking up words and phrases with the help of technology. Eighteen-year-old Kristin Amparo, a tribal member of the Big Valley band of Pomo Indians, lives with her parents and five siblings in a large house on their reservation in Clear Lake, about three hours north of San Francisco. She likes bouncing on a trampoline to slam-dunk a basketball in her back yard, zooming past the creamy white Konocti Vista Casino in a yellow all-terrain vehicle and, now, speaking Bahtssal with her 14-year-old sister Felicia. The flat and green Big Valley reservation sits two miles from tiny downtown Lakeport on 153 acres encircling the banks of Clear Lake, whose blue-green waters host international bass-fishing tournaments and traditional Pomo tule boat races. On sunny days, kids fish for bluegill and catfish from the dock near the tribe's Konocti Vista Casino. Only a few elders of the Big Valley tribe are fluent in Bahtssal, a tribal dialect that began to fade after settlers forced Northern California Pomos off their lands. Today, Amparo and her sister are among a small group of young people on the 470-member reservation who are learning to speak the dialect as part of a newly formed language program. "We tell our mom stuff in Bahtssal, like, 'I have to go,'" says Amparo, who had never heard the language spoken before she began studying it under the new initiative. "It's really fun to learn." According to tribal historians, the decline in fluency in Bahtssal dates back to 1852, when the United States Senate refused to ratify a federal treaty that had promised the Big Valley tribe 72 square miles of land on the south side of Clear Lake. Settlers began claiming plots of land the following year, making private property of the areas where Big Valley ancestors had gathered food for more than 11,000 years. As tribal members began working in fields and on ranches owned by settlers, and their children began learning English in white schools, Bahtssal began to fade. James Bluewolf, who directs the language program, sees it as an exercise not just in cultural preservation, but also in healing. "People are still suffering from post-traumatic stress after being forced to give up everything they had," he says. "But every culture comes to a point where they are ready to make a change." In Clear Lake, the epicenter of that change sits among piles of scrap metal, wood and rusty cars, in a building that looks like it has dropped from the sky. It is tiny and tidy, and painted a bright swimming-pool blue. Inside this building, which houses the tribal language program, young mothers watch their chubby-cheeked toddlers play in a preschool class held by the nonprofit Lake County Tribal Health Consortium. In a cramped office past the play area, James Bluewolf smiles at the children's squeals. A stocky, soft-spoken man who once ran a landscaping business, Bluewolf has been using technology tribal ancestors could not have imagined to preserve and promote the tribal language. Bluewolf records hours of Bahtssal spoken by elders, which he edits into half-hour audio segments that air on the community radio station, and are available free on CD to tribal members. Bluewolf is also writing a curriculum for a 15-week course in Bahtssal. In a program Bluewolf directs, local teenagers perform skits that teach words and phrases such as "Chiin the'a 'eh" ("How are you?") and "Q'odii" ("Good"). Bluewolf videotapes the skits and makes them into videos that are played on the Lake County television station, and made available on DVD. In the play area, Alisha Salguero, 21, rocks her 5-month-old daughter to sleep while her 3-year-old son Brian plays. Brian has learned several words in Bahtssal in the preschool class, where Bluewolf uses hand puppets to teach the language. "He's really picked it up," Salguero says with a smile. "I don't really know it, so I think it's good for him to learn his language." While traditional song, dance, and tule boat races have always been part of the cultural life of Big Valley children, holding on to their tribal language has been more difficult, says Marilyn Ellis, 21. "That's why this language program is important," says Ellis, whose father, Ray, was the spiritual leader of the tribe. Before he died several years ago, Ray Ellis revived the tribe's "Big Time" spiritual celebration. The gathering, held every September on the grassy banks of Clear Lake, includes prayer, dancing and singing -- and now, perhaps, the sound of children trying out their ancestral tongue. "Our language is part of us," says Ellis, who does not speak the tribal dialect herself, but whose daughters can now name their cat and dog in Bahtssal. "If we don't know it, we're pretty much dead." PNS contributor Shadi Rahimi, 24, is the co-founder and an editor of Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG) magazine, and an associate editor of YO! Youth Outlook, www.youthoutlook.org. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5324 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jul 8 13:48:52 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 06:48:52 -0700 Subject: Inuktitut computing takes shape (fwd) Message-ID: July 8, 2005 Inuktitut computing takes shape Shamanism revived in Inuktitut computer programs SARA MINOGUE http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/50708_09.html [photo inset - Leena Evic lights her seal oil lamp before firing up her laptop in her summer office. (PHOTO BY SARA MINOGUE)] Leena Evic and Eva Aariak of Iqaluit's Pirurvik Centre are mixing old worlds with new as they take their summer project to their traditional canvas tents on the Sylvia Grinnell River. The pair are working outdoors as much as they can on an Inuktitut translation of Microsoft Office as part of a Microsoft initiative funding similar translations in India, Ethiopia and the Ukraine. The goal is to have a first draft of the new words ready by October, along with a functional Windows operating system in roman orthography. A syllabics version will follow. The group plans to complete a language review with the help of the department of culture, language elders and youth this fall, but some of the suggested terms are likely to stick. The word for Internet, for instance, is "ikiaqqivik," or, "traveling through layers," which Aariak believes is an appropriate metaphor, even though young people may not recognize the term as it falls out of use. The word comes from the term used to describe what a shaman does when asked to find out how loved ones were doing, or where animals had gone, by traveling through time and space. "They used to travel all over the world - even to the moon," says Aariak, who was Nunavut official languages commissioner before joining Pirurvik. "The 1969 moon landing did not impress local elders, Aariak adds. "They said: 'We've already been there.'" The word for email is "irngiinaaqtauq," the Inuktitut word for "instant." Both Aariak and Evic are aware that not all of the terms will catch on, but both say that usage will be the test. The pair also say they've striven to include as many dialects as possible, rather than stick to one regional version of Inuktitut. Contributors have come from the North and South Baffin, Nunavik, the Kivalliq and Greenland. Nonetheless, they expect they will likely have to produce a glossary of the new terms. "We are not practicing shamans anymore, but we feel that it's part of keeping our language alive," Aariak says. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jul 8 13:55:26 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 06:55:26 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) Message-ID: Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time=14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0        BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of Invention" to 37.        The 2005 awards go to:        - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life Sciences, Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of growing neurons;        - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics Division -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, warping, mold, and other effects of age;        - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles to assess the risk of coronary artery disease.        "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important role in both our economic and national security."        "We're looking for products and processes that can change people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D 100 Awards annually since 1963.        "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress."        The Neural Matrix CCD:        Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved mental functions in patients.        In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the neural network.        Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).        The Optical Sound Restoration System:        Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional restoration.        By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high fidelity.        Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of recordings in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab technology.        Ion Mobility Analysis:        For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels of total cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better indicator of whether or not someone is at risk.        Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for counting.        Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and research labs.        The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on October 20.        - - - -        CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov        NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with images, is available at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html.        ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov.        ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:        For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html .        For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html .        For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html .        For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ .        Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at info at cellularbioengineering.com.        For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx .       Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Sun Jul 10 09:52:41 2005 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (d_z_o) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:52:41 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Conf. on Undescribed & Endangered Languages, 29 Sep. 05 Message-ID: FYI. (BTW, I still can't post directly to ILAT due to an unresolved misunderstanding between my host and the Arizona.edu server, but will reforward items that others haven't caught to ILAT from MINEL, a list with a different though overlapping purpose than that of ILAT)... DZO --- In MINEL at yahoogroups.com, "d_z_o" wrote: FYI (fwd from the Linguist list)... DZO Date: 11-Jun-2005 From: Amedeo De Dominicis Subject: Conference on Undescribed & Endangered Languages Conference on Undescribed & Endangered Languages Date: 29-Sep-2005 - 29-Sep-2005 Location: Viterbo, Lazio, Italy Contact: Amedeo De Dominicis Contact Email: dedomini at unitus.it Meeting URL: http://www.obiettivouomoambiente.com/ Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics Meeting Description: At present, most human languages are spoken by exceedingly few people. And that majority, the majority of languages, is about to vanish. Ethnologue, the most authoritative source on the languages of the world, lists just over 6,500 living languages. Population figures are available for just over 6,000 of them (or 92%). Of these 6,000, 52% are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people; 28% by fewer than 1,000; and 83% are restricted to single countries, and so are particularly exposed to the policies of a single government. On the other hand, 10 major languages, each spoken by more than 109 million people, are the mother tongues of almost half (49%) of the world's population. This loss of linguistic diversity is weakening the unique ethnoscientific knowledge hidden in such languages. >From the scientific point of view, the loss of a knowledge system also implies another kind of loss. Linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology lose another precious source of data, another diverse and unique way the human mind can use to express itself through a language structure and vocabulary. Particularly, linguistic theories miss a crucial part of their objects because the value of endangered or undescribed languages often lies in the complexity that characterises them and and through which they challenge linguistic theories. That is the reason why in the title of this conference we put together 'undescribed and endangered languages': both cases induce a loss in linguistic knowledge and in the complexity of linguistic theories. 10:00-10:30 Welcoming Remarks 10:30-11:15 Suzanne Romaine (Merton College, University of Oxford): Planning for survival- some responses to language endangerment. 11:15-12:00 Ian Maddieson (University of California, Berkeley): Endangered Languages, Endangered Sounds. 12:00-12:45 Peter Ladefoged (University of California, Los Angeles): Archiving the sounds of an endangered language. 12:45-13:30 Maurizio Gnerre (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli): Fading out voices, prosodies and rhythms: a neglected aspect of language endangerment. 13:30-15:30 Lunch Break 15:30-16:15 Roberto Ajello (Universita' di Pisa): The importance of having a description of the endangered languages: the case of Gizey (Cameroon). 16:15-17:00 Antonino Melis (Universite' de N'Djamena, Tchad): Ham: une langue et une culture en danger de disparition au Tchad. 17:00-17:45 Amedeo De Dominicis (Universita' della Tuscia, Viterbo): Tonal patterns of Gizey (Cameroon): first description and language preservation. Languages of the conference: English and French. --- End forwarded message --- From pmeyer at SDCOE.K12.CA.US Sat Jul 9 19:09:16 2005 From: pmeyer at SDCOE.K12.CA.US (Paula Meyer) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 12:09:16 -0700 Subject: TPR Message-ID: I would like to discuss the interface of TPR (and TPR-S) with elder Native language teachers. This can include culture, modes of communication, etc. If you are a language bearer, what are your experiences with TPR? What do you think of it as a method for getting your students to know the language? If you are a program coordinator, how has TPR worked in your program? If not TPR, what? Paula ----- Original Message ----- From: "phil cash cash" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:33 AM Subject: [ILAT] Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami (fwd) > Wednesday, June 29, 2005 > Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami > > The Associated Press > http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050629/NEWS01/50629039 9/1056 > > MIAMI, Okla. - Without a fluent speaker left, the Miami Tribe of > Oklahoma hopes to revive its language through the publication of a > dictionary. > > Daryl Baldwin, a co-editor of the dictionary, said the book is drawn > from records spanning three centuries, beginning with dictionaries > created by French missionaries of the late 17th and early 18th > centuries and including word lists and texts collected in the 19th and > early 20th centuries. The project, a collaborative effort with Miami > University of Ohio, began in 1991. > > "Our language is rich and complex," said Baldwin, 42. "The dictionary > proves it is a lie that the 'savage' Indian only needed 2,000 or 3,000 > words to communicate." > > The language died out as part of an English-only campaign the U.S. > government conducted in an assimilation policy that lasted into the > 1960s. > > "I never learned the language," said Floyd Leonard, the tribe's > 78-year-old chief. "It wasn't something that was done when I was a > child." > > Baldwin, an Ohio native and Miami Tribe of Oklahoma member, said a > language is part of what defines a people. > > "Most of us have been removed from our cultural heritage," Baldwin said. > "We started asking, What is Miami? Without speakers of the language, > it's hard to get a glimpse of what that means. Language is culture." > > The dictionary came out about two weeks ago. Other projects planned > include a field guide to plant species found in the tribe's historical > lands in Ohio and Indiana expected to be finished later this year, and > a mapping project that will reclaim tribal place names, which is under > way. > > An audio CD of Miami speakers that contains vocabulary, phrases, > conversation, the Miami origin story and the Lord's Prayer was > completed in 2002. > From ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US Tue Jul 12 04:17:06 2005 From: ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US (Sarah Supahan) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:17:06 -0700 Subject: TPR In-Reply-To: <00b201c584b9$b4188850$3035a8c0@paulaklm5qo59p> Message-ID: In my opinion, TPR is a GREAT tool. Learning kinesthetically helps language retention immeasurably. If TPR is the only method used, then that would be ok and much preferred over many other methods, most especially the old fashioned translation method. However, using what is referred to as Communication Based Instruction provides a larger, over-reaching method that includes TPR. Sarah On Jul 9, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Paula Meyer wrote: > I would like to discuss the interface of TPR (and TPR-S) with elder > Native > language teachers. This can include culture, modes of communication, > etc. > If you are a language bearer, what are your experiences with TPR? > What do > you think of it as a method for getting your students to know the > language? > If you are a program coordinator, how has TPR worked in your program? > If > not TPR, what? > Paula > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "phil cash cash" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:33 AM > Subject: [ILAT] Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami (fwd) > > >> Wednesday, June 29, 2005 >> Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami >> >> The Associated Press >> > http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050629/NEWS01/ > 50629039 > 9/1056 >> >> MIAMI, Okla. - Without a fluent speaker left, the Miami Tribe of >> Oklahoma hopes to revive its language through the publication of a >> dictionary. >> >> Daryl Baldwin, a co-editor of the dictionary, said the book is drawn >> from records spanning three centuries, beginning with dictionaries >> created by French missionaries of the late 17th and early 18th >> centuries and including word lists and texts collected in the 19th and >> early 20th centuries. The project, a collaborative effort with Miami >> University of Ohio, began in 1991. >> >> "Our language is rich and complex," said Baldwin, 42. "The dictionary >> proves it is a lie that the 'savage' Indian only needed 2,000 or 3,000 >> words to communicate." >> >> The language died out as part of an English-only campaign the U.S. >> government conducted in an assimilation policy that lasted into the >> 1960s. >> >> "I never learned the language," said Floyd Leonard, the tribe's >> 78-year-old chief. "It wasn't something that was done when I was a >> child." >> >> Baldwin, an Ohio native and Miami Tribe of Oklahoma member, said a >> language is part of what defines a people. >> >> "Most of us have been removed from our cultural heritage," Baldwin >> said. >> "We started asking, What is Miami? Without speakers of the language, >> it's hard to get a glimpse of what that means. Language is culture." >> >> The dictionary came out about two weeks ago. Other projects planned >> include a field guide to plant species found in the tribe's historical >> lands in Ohio and Indiana expected to be finished later this year, and >> a mapping project that will reclaim tribal place names, which is under >> way. >> >> An audio CD of Miami speakers that contains vocabulary, phrases, >> conversation, the Miami origin story and the Lord's Prayer was >> completed in 2002. >> > From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Tue Jul 12 04:51:02 2005 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 04:51:02 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Transcription of Tera (Nigeria); comparisons with work on Welsh (UK) Message-ID: FYI... According to Ethnologue, this language has about 100,000 speakers. DZO --- In AfricanLanguages at yahoogroups.com, "Donald Z. Osborn" wrote: FYI. This is an interesting item about language work in part of Nigeria with comparisons to work on Welsh. (Link from H-Hausa).. DZO 'It is the year of Africa. Let's support them in education' Jul 7 2005 http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=15708302 &method=fu\ ll&siteid=50082&headline=--it-is-the-year-of-africa--let-s-support- them-in-educa\ tion--name_page.html Jenny Rees, Western Mail Dr Paul Tench has been working with a community in Nigeria to record their language in written form for the first time since the 1930s. Here he describes the work done to form a new written language and the comparisons between the Tera language and Welsh. AGAINST the background of tensions and conflict in Nigeria in recent years, a new determination has emerged to assert local self-identity, their language and culture, a distinctiveness from the majority culture. Compare to Wales in the 1950s: monolingual Welsh-speaking children having to be educated in primary school in a "foreign" language. The political will transformed the linguistic landscape of Wales and brought about a sense of nationhood, respect for the local language, government support for initiatives in education, and the media, literature, and public bilingualism. This sense of concern in Gombe State, in north-east Nigeria, led to an approach to an American linguistics charity, The Seed Company. They respond to local initiatives with expertise in developing a spelling system and training in translation, principally for Luke's Gospel. They assembled a small team of linguists to analyse the local languages of Gombe State, in response to these local initiatives. Small teams gathered for a three-week workshop held in Gombe State. One such team represented the Tera language - two retired men, a civil servant and a teacher, educated and able to read and write in Hausa and English. We recorded a story, played it back word by word, phrase by phrase and they attempted to spell their language from their knowledge of Hausa and English spellings. The theory behind the project is that language is in the mind; we carry a large stock of words in our minds - all the words we know. They represent all the things, qualities, actions and so on that we have ever experienced for ourselves. We carry all the grammatical patterns we know - they represent all the kinds of situations we have experienced (who does what to whom). We know what is acceptable, what is not and what is marginal. We know how to be polite and impolite, how to put a message across, how to get things done. All this is stored in the mind. We also know how to pronounce all our words - there may be a few that we feel rather uncertain about, but we are able to learn how to pronounce any new word we come across. We have in our minds a pronunciation system for English which consists of a number of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables, rhythm and intonation. The whole of this pronunciation system is in the mind, ready for use any time we speak. Even illiterate people have all this in their minds - what they don't have is a spelling system in their minds that they can use. We can teach them. But what about people who don't have a spelling system at all in their language? Our methodology was to use the skills they have developed for reading and writing the other languages that they know. An alphabet - spelling system - might as well conform as closely as possible to the other languages that they have to engage with, so that people can transfer skills from one language to another. The ideal spelling system matches sounds to letters in a regular and consistent way, much as Welsh does - and Hausa - and not like English! The Tera team used Hausa spelling as a basis for the vowels and consonants as far as they could, and supplemented it with a few items from English like p and ch. They got the idea of using h to mean "something like"; for example, as sh is a bit like an s in sound (think of how Welsh spells the sh sound), so zh is used for a sound a bit like z (actually like the middle sound of leisure and vision - and just like in Dr Zhivago!). They use kh for a sound similar to k, equivalent to Welsh ch; and parallel to kh, they need a gh. They use ng at the beginning of words just like in Welsh, and also mb and nd, but the most amazing thing is that they have exactly the same sound as a Welsh ll. I truly was amazed, because in all my reading and research for this project, there was never a hint that any language in Nigeria had anything like our Welsh ll. But they too were amazed that a visitor - and a white man at that - could say their own special distinctive sound without any trouble! Their own name for themselves also contains the Welsh ll: Nyimatli (Welsh spelling: niumallu). The tl sound does not occur in Hausa or in English, and they could not use ll, because it is possible to have words with a double ll sounding in the middle of their words, but they do not have the possibility of a l sound following a t sound. To complete the consonant chart, Tera has so-called implosive sounds like Hausa, where you get a kind of b, d, g by sucking air in; they simply use the special Hausa letters for the first two and q for the third. The vowels were much simpler, just six of them. Five are easy, and they could use the five vowel letters of our alphabet: a (as in man), e (as in men), i (as in Welsh ni), o (as in Welsh glo) and u (as in glue). Their sixth vowel has a distinctly North Walian flavour to it, just like their pronunciation of ty ('house'), but the Tera have chosen to spell it with u. One enterprising man has produced an alphabet chart and two little booklets of stories from the Bible and is planning to produce a series of wall charts on things they use at home, at school, on types of animals and birds, and so on. Others are undergoing translation training to prepare the Gospels in Tera. One of them is doing a computing course to enable the team to produce their own printed materials in Tera; another, who did his Masters in Education at Cardiff University, has produced a training manual to help teachers to learn to read and write their own language. One great hope is that local governments will be persuaded to introduce reading and writing in Tera in primary schools. Who is paying for all this? Primarily it is the local community. The whole project is theirs; the initiative was theirs and the ongoing support, and The Seed Company has responded in kind. But the planning and the decision making beyond that lie in the hands in the local community. It is their project; we have helped to establish it, but with their orthography and training, and with enthusiasm and enterprise, they will carry it on. Enthusiasm? Goodness me! I couldn't stop them. We began each morning at 8.30am and continued non-stop until 12.30pm, and if lunch was late, we had to carry on until it arrived. We began again after a siesta at 2pm and continued, again non-stop, until 6pm - or later if the evening meal was delayed. We kept this pace up for three intensive weeks. We began work on an elementary dictionary - we needed to do that to be sure of where words began and ended. This is the year for Africa. Don't think of Africa as just a hopeless case, with rampant HIV/AIDS, famine, poverty, corruption and dictatorships. Africa is more than that: there are also plenty of ordinary people with honest hopes and ambitions, great concern and compassion, a will to achieve something good for their community, resourceful, skilled and educated, ready to work with just a little help from others. Let's hope that our governments and NGOs will support all such efforts, in education as well as health and the environment. Paul Tench is Senior Lecturer, Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University Copyright and Trade Mark Notice © owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2005 --- End forwarded message --- From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 13:45:37 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 06:45:37 -0700 Subject: Anishinaabe Language Research Assistant (fwd) Message-ID: Subject: [WIN] Language position Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 09:53:36 -0500 From: Jim St. Arnold Reply-To: Win at wisind.net To: win at wisind.net Please pass this on to anyone interested. Miigwetch, Jim St. Arnold POSITION DESCRIPTION: Anishinaabe Language Research Assistant - 2 year position (Due to grant restrictions position ends September 29, 2007) Salary - Starting at GLIFWC Grade 6 Step 3 - $26,041 Closing Date: July 29, 2005 Duties: 1. Conduct preliminary research on books, narratives, treaties, treaty journals and archived maps to locate the traditional names of locations within the 1836, 1837, and 1842 Chippewa ceded territories for meetings with tribal elders and native speakers. 2. Assist in developing database for listing of Anishinaabe names of plant, animal, fish, bird, and other species found in the Chippewa ceded territory and enter collected information into database. 3. Meet with elders and native speakers to complete community research on local Anishinaabe names of locations within each region and the meaning (i.e. translation) of Anishinaabe names and include the information into data bases. 4. Assist in video and audio taping of elder and native speaker meetings. 5. Oversee placement of location names into GLIFWC’s GIS mapping system, ensuring that locations are correctly identified with proper name. 6. Assist in development of Anishinaabe Language Natural Resource Dictionary/Guide CD and book. 7. Assist in archival of all collected information, to include video, audio, meeting minutes, and surveys. 8. Other duties as assigned. Qualifications: 1. A minimum of medium fluency level in Ojibwe language. 2. 2 years experience working with tribal elders and traditional leaders. 3. 2 years experience in a research related field or equivalent educational training. 4. Should have computer knowledge including use of word processing and database programs. 5. Valid driver’s license and must be insurable. 6. Willing and able to travel, must have own vehicle. Native American Preference: All applicants will be considered but a Native American preference will be given if all other qualifications are equal. Send application and/or resume to: Sharon Nelis, Secretary Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission Odanah, WI 54861 715/682-6619 ext 138 fax 715/682-9294 _______________________________________________ Win mailing list Win at wisind.net http://wisind.net/mailman/listinfo/win_wisind.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:48:36 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:48:36 -0700 Subject: Learning an old language (fwd) Message-ID: Learning an old language Thursday, 7 July 2005 http://forbes.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&category=general%20news&story_id=406746&y=2005&m=7 Children living along the Lachlan will soon be speaking Wiradjuri again. Forbes North Public School and Yoorana Gunya Family Violence Healing Centre have received an $83,000 grant to teach the regional Aboriginal language. The school will employ four Aboriginal tutors who will be trained to teach the language and then help teachers in the classroom. Their experience will be developed into teaching resources and published for the other schools in the region. Teacher Michele Herbert, whose classes have learned Wiradjuri for the past three years, said she and her students loved the language. "The kids love learning the songs," she said. Performances in Wiradjuri were a highlight of last week's school NAIDOC celebrations as was labelling body parts with their Aboriginal names. Mrs Herbert said the programme would not only keep the Wiradjuri language alive in Forbes, it would provide the children with the skills to learn a second language at a young age. "It is also building higher self-esteem and tolerance in all students," she said. "I think reviving the Aboriginal culture is going to make stronger links between all communities in our region. "We are building positive relationships between the Aboriginal community and the school - and the whole community." It also remains a relevant language for the school to teach, given 30 per cent of students are Aboriginal. "A lot of people use Aboriginal words around this region," Mrs Herbert said. "A lot of place names, for example, are culturally significant." The Wiradjuri unit Mrs Herbert developed for use in her own classes is already due to be published on the Board of Studies website for other schools to use as a resource. There is potential for the joint programme to expand to a three-year project if it is successful this year. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:53:58 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:53:58 -0700 Subject: Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer (fwd link) Message-ID: Language, Thought and Cognition Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer Posted on Sunday, July 10 2005 @ 18:06 CDT http://psychology.plebius.org/article.php?article=780 From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:58:15 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:58:15 -0700 Subject: Indian community seeks to preserve language (fwd) Message-ID: Indian community seeks to preserve language 7/12/2005 10:18 AM By: The Associated Press http://www.capitalnews9.com/content/headlines/?ArID=139762&SecID=33 A Mohawk Indian village founded more than a dozen years ago in the tribe's ancestral region is seeking to keep its native language alive. The Mohawk community in Palatine in Montgomery County is hosting the Mohawk Indian Language Immersion Program. Students participating in the program said they see the course as a way to embrace their culture. Richard Nolan, 53, was born in a Mohawk community south of Montreal, but told the Daily Gazette that he felt he had lost part of himself because he could speak English, but not Mohawk. He and a dozen other people are now learning the language of their forefathers through the Mohawk immersion course. Some students hail from nearby Schenectady, but others come from Mohawk Indian communities as far away as Kentucky, Rhode Island and Maryland. While staying at the 320-acre village, the students pitch in with chores in between studying eight hours each day for two weeks. Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 12 20:16:31 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:16:31 -0600 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050708065526.84c40gw4ckk0ks4g@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. Thanks, Phil. Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0        BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of Invention" to 37.        The 2005 awards go to:        - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life Sciences, Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of growing neurons;        - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics Division -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, warping, mold, and other effects of age;        - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles to assess the risk of coronary artery disease.        "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important role in both our economic and national security."        "We're looking for products and processes that can change people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D 100 Awards annually since 1963.        "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress."        The Neural Matrix CCD:        Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved mental functions in patients.        In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the neural network.        Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).        The Optical Sound Restoration System:        Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional restoration.        By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high fidelity.        Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of recordings in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab technology.        Ion Mobility Analysis:        For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels of total cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better indicator of whether or not someone is at risk.        Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for counting.        Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and research labs.        The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on October 20.        - - - -        CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov        NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with images, is available at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html.        ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov.        ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:        For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html .        For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html .        For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html .        For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ .        Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at info at cellularbioengineering.com.        For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx .       Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 22:40:31 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:40:31 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050712201639.8BDC91A36@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! Phil UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > Thanks, Phil. > Mia > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > Technology Advances (fwd) > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > Advances > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > >        BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > Invention" to 37. > >        The 2005 awards go to: > >        - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > Sciences, > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > growing neurons; > >        - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > Division > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > >        - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > >        "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > researchers are > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > >        "We're looking for products and processes that can change > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > >        "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > >        The Neural Matrix CCD: > >        Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > mental functions in patients. > >        In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > neural network. > >        Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > Projects Agency (DARPA). > >        The Optical Sound Restoration System: > >        Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > restoration. > >        By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > fidelity. > >        Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > recordings > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > technology. > >        Ion Mobility Analysis: > >        For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > of total > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > >        Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > counting. > >        Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > research labs. > >        The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > Berkeley > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > October 20. > >        - - - - > >        CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > >        NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > images, is > available at > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > >        ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > >        ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > >        For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > >        For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > >        For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > >        For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > >        Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > >        For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > >       Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From jtucker at STARBAND.NET Wed Jul 13 01:00:42 2005 From: jtucker at STARBAND.NET (Jan Tucker) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:00:42 -0400 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050712154031.k54w4gck4oc4ggck@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: wow, Are you saying then the technology is available, and you have digitized versions of Ishi's voice? That is truly amazing. I'd love to hear a sample, can you share or post something on your website so I could hear what it sounds like also. Jan -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 6:41 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! Phil UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > Thanks, Phil. > Mia > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > Technology Advances (fwd) > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > Advances > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > > BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > Invention" to 37. > > The 2005 awards go to: > > - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > Sciences, > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > growing neurons; > > - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > Division > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > > - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > > "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > researchers are > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > > "We're looking for products and processes that can change > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > > "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > > The Neural Matrix CCD: > > Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > mental functions in patients. > > In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > neural network. > > Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > Projects Agency (DARPA). > > The Optical Sound Restoration System: > > Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > restoration. > > By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > fidelity. > > Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > recordings > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > technology. > > Ion Mobility Analysis: > > For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > of total > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > > Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > counting. > > Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > research labs. > > The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > Berkeley > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > October 20. > > - - - - > > CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > > NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > images, is > available at > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > > ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > > ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > > For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > > For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > > For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > > For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > > Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > > For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > > Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From cashcash at U.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 13 16:56:56 2005 From: cashcash at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Phillip E Cash Cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 09:56:56 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Jan (and everybody), no, i do not have recordings of Ishi. ;-) the news article is the one that had the original mention of new work being carried out on recordings of Ishi. my own work with wax cylinder recordings for Nez Perce (Sahaptian) can be found at my website. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cashcash just go to "Research and downloadable papers" it is pretty basic as i am using commercially available and free audio editing software to digitally enhance the digital copies (of wax cylinder recordings) that i have access to. on my webpage you will find a quicktime movie file containing a Nez Perce speech from circa 1907. the audio content is my first attempt to enhance this particular wax cylinder recording. since this first attempt i am continuing to make slight improvements. nonetheless, i created a Flash-based multimedia movie using Quicktime and in it is contained the enhanced audio with its synchronous translation. but in trying to get examples, several enahanced versions of wax cylinder recordings were sent to me from a professional(or semi?) sound editor and his attempts were not that great. while alot of the noise was removed, they sounded like they were talking through a tin can. i could easily do that myself with SoundForge 6.0. so since then, i have been experimenting with PRAAT (free audio software) with the help of a classmate of mine here at the University of Arizona. nothing spectacular, but if you are interested in the speech itself and are a speaker of that particular language then it is quite spectacular. i think linguists who specialize in sound can do a lot to help endangered language communities who need these recordings to revitalize their language. phil cash cash UofA, ILAT list manager On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Jan Tucker wrote: > wow, Are you saying then the technology is available, and you have digitized versions of Ishi's voice? That is truly amazing. I'd love to hear a sample, can you share or post something on your website so I could hear what it sounds like also. > > Jan > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology > [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 6:41 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards > for Technology Advances (fwd) > > > yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax > cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax > cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only > the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics > audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. > > i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original > along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! > > Phil > UofA > > Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > > > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > > > Thanks, Phil. > > Mia > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > > Technology Advances (fwd) > > > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > > Advances > > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > > > > BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > > Invention" to 37. > > > > The 2005 awards go to: > > > > - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > > Sciences, > > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > > growing neurons; > > > > - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > > Division > > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > > > > - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > > > > "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > > researchers are > > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > > > > "We're looking for products and processes that can change > > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > > > > "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > > > > The Neural Matrix CCD: > > > > Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > > mental functions in patients. > > > > In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > > neural network. > > > > Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > > Projects Agency (DARPA). > > > > The Optical Sound Restoration System: > > > > Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > > restoration. > > > > By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > > fidelity. > > > > Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > > recordings > > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > > technology. > > > > Ion Mobility Analysis: > > > > For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > > of total > > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > > > > Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > > counting. > > > > Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > > research labs. > > > > The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > > Berkeley > > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > > October 20. > > > > - - - - > > > > CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > > > > NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > > images, is > > available at > > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > > > > ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > > > > ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > > > > For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > > > > For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > > > > For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > > > > For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > > > > Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > > > > For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > > > > Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:09:32 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:09:32 -0700 Subject: Mike Steketee: Aboriginal languages the remedy (fwd) Message-ID: Mike Steketee: Aboriginal languages the remedy 14jul05 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/ 0,5744,15920994%255E7583,00.html RICHARD Trudgen is not surprised by this week's report to federal and state governments showing that, with a few exceptions, we are not making much progress on overcoming indigenous disadvantage. A steering committee run through the Productivity Commission found that, although there have been improvements in Aboriginal employment and education, there has been little change in many health indicators and crime and imprisonment rates have worsened. Five years ago, at the request of Aboriginal leaders in northeast Arnhem Land, where he has worked as a (white) community development officer for most of the past 30 years, Trudgen wrote Why Warriors Lie Down and Die. The book gave the indigenous perspective on the crisis facing the once proud, independent and economically self-sufficient Yolngu people of the area. It helped solve the riddle of why nothing governments do seems to make much difference in Aboriginal communities. It highlighted the misunderstandings that arise from the cultural and communications gaps - or, more correctly, gulfs - between black and white Australians. He offered alternatives, based on dealing with people in their first language and giving them back control over their lives, which he argued could solve problems as diverse as poor health, inadequate housing and petrol sniffing. So how is the situation now in Arnhem Land, I asked him this week. "It's worse," he replied. "It's like we never wrote the book and no one ever noticed it. The health indicators have all got worse. Many of the medical people who come here aren't even receiving adequate cultural awareness training any more." Yet Trudgen retains a determined optimism. A radio service for Yolngu started last year, without government support, broadcasting in the local language and English. "We are on the edge of a massive breakthrough in communication," he says. This week is National Diabetes Week and he estimates that the broadcast material is reaching about two-thirds of the 8000 Yolngu, with indications that it is making a big difference in knowledge of the disease. "People who don't have radios know nothing about diabetes," he says. "Some ask whether it is a cancer." It is difficult for other Australians to appreciate the seriousness of what Trudgen describes as a two-way crisis in communication. People ignore advice to change their diets until it is explained to them, usually in their own language, what diabetes is and why giving up salt, sugar and cigarettes can overcome it. Trudgen cites the case of a woman who was unable to explain to her doctor that she had splitting headaches, and was being examined instead for hookworm. A mother lost her five-year-old son to pneumonia after failing to give one of the drugs dispensed for him because she did not know what it would do. Because health clinics and their employees have no authority under traditional law, many men do not attend them. What frustrates Trudgen is the attitude of governments and in particular bureaucracies. "People are rolling out the same old stupid programs for petrol sniffing and the rest," he says. He argues that people are mistaken in thinking that children sniff because they are bored, "so let's go and teach them how to play basketball". Much more important is the virtual disappearance of bilingual education. "They learn almost nothing in school other than that they are incapable of learning," he says. "You may as well be teaching them in Japanese: they cannot process what is being taught. They feel bad about themselves and they sniff because they want to forget who they are." Recreational programs introduced into the Ramingining community in the early 1980s made the problem worse. Organised by non-Aborigines, they alienated the children from elders and parents, while some became sniffers so they could join the programs. Success came when children were educated about the effects of sniffing, including permanent brain damage, and elders were encouraged to revive a traditional ceremony that allowed them to give instruction to sniffers. Sniffing stopped in Ramingining and has never restarted, says Trudgen, although there are other problems with drug abuse. Trudgen shares with Aboriginal leaders such as Noel Pearson views on the destructive effects of welfare dependence. But he parts ways with Pearson and others who emphasise the use of English. "I'm afraid you cannot force people to learn a language: you can only force them to lose a language, particularly academic concepts," he says. "That is why you end up with a lot of urban Aboriginal people who have no academic language capacity. You actually de-educate people." Trudgen argues for the need to give back to the people control over their lives, and he believes the key to that is language. "Government will say it is ridiculous to say everyone who comes to our communities should learn the language," he says. "But to find a teacher or nursing sister, it costs government anywhere between $40,000 and $60,000, and sometimes they don't even last three months. It seems wise to pay them a little bit to learn the language and slow that merry-go-round of people coming in and out." Trudgen's views find some resonance in this week's report from the Productivity Commission. "Indigenous language is fundamentally linked with indigenous culture and law and these are intrinsically linked with indigenous wellbeing," it says. And it attributes the success of the governing council in Wadeye in the Northern Territory to the use of traditional structures that give it legitimacy. Mike Steketee is The Australian's National affairs editor. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 6051 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:17:55 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:17:55 -0700 Subject: Cree language retention spells pride (fwd) Message-ID: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Cree language retention spells pride http://www.wawatay.on.ca/ Letter to the editor, I’m writing to commend Joyce Hunter for her informative article “Money is Not Enough to Preserve Languages,” which was published in the March 24 issue of your paper. In the article Hunter reported on the alarming number of speakers of Aboriginal languages across Canada who are choosing to communicate in one of Canada’s two “official languages,” rather than in their Aboriginal languages (a situation known as “language shift.”) She noted that if this trend continues many of Canada’s Aboriginal languages could become extinct within just one generation. There is one small correction I would like to make to this article. At one point I am paraphrased as saying that “there are some socioeconomic indicators which suggest that teaching Aboriginal children an Aboriginal language will not get those children a job.” That is not what I intended to say. What I intended to say is that among some Canadians (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) I have encountered the attitude that teaching Aboriginal children Aboriginal languages will not get those children a job. I happen to think that such an attitude is wrong and I know of no socioeconomic indicators that lend credence to it. It is my opinion that speaking two (or even more) languages enhances the ability of Aboriginal (and non-Aboriginal) people to get well-paying jobs. In a companion article in the same issue of Wawatay News, Hunter reported on a research project in which I am involved in Thompson, Manitoba. The project is ongoing and involves documenting factors which contribute to mastering Cree and English in homes in which both languages are spoken. An 11-page general survey of 61 Aboriginal parents revealed that language shift is affecting all generations. The survey also reveals that parents who grew up speaking Cree when they were children now tend to speak Cree only to their parents and grandparents and speak English and a mixture of Cree and English known as “Creenglish” to their friends, siblings, and children. In interviews with our Elders advisory group and a focus group of 11 parents, we found that one reason for this language shift may be a sense of shame stemming from residential school experiences and the former federal-government policy of “assimilation.” Parents in our study valued Cree highly and saw bilingual Cree-English programs to be important for the retrieval and renewal of the Cree language. When our project began we thought, based on anecdotal evidence from teachers, that we might find a few families with preschool or school-aged children experiencing extreme difficulties mastering both Cree and English. Cases such as this – sometimes called “semilingualism” – have been documented in minority language situations in other parts of the world and seem to be related to challenges sometimes faced in mastering two languages in a bilingual environment. No cases of semilingualism were documented in our study. The 61 families participating in our general survey were highly educated (80 per cent have finished high school and 58 per cent have either completed or are completing post-secondary education) and seem to represent an emerging Aboriginal middle class in Thompson. The high value they place on Cree, and the efforts they are now making to instill pride in their children about using it, are one of the best ways of reversing “language shift” and ensuring a bright future for the Cree language in northern Manitoba. George Fulford, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Winnipeg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4056 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:21:00 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:21:00 -0700 Subject: Aboriginal language training to get boost in N.W.T. (fwd) Message-ID: Aboriginal language training to get boost in N.W.T. Last updated Jul 12 2005 11:13 AM MDT http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nwt-languages12072005 Officials with the N.W.T.'s department of Education Culture and Employment say they want to strengthen aboriginal languages through better training and coordination to ensure more children understand their native tongue. The territorial government is hosting a workshop to help instructors figure out the best way to teach, a welcome and much needed move say some. Teachers say that keeping aboriginal languages alive is an ongoing struggle when English is everywhere. According to Statistics Canada, only 25 per cent of aboriginal children speak or understand their native language. "The language instruction content varies I would say from school to school and from class to class, depending on the instructor," says Sabet Biscaye. "There's no consistent approach." Biscaye, a Chipewyan language coordinator, says many teachers don't have a teaching background. While there is a curriculum, Biscaye says there's little support, prompting many teachers to try to find their own way of teaching. Dr. Stephen Greymorning, an international expert on teaching aboriginal languages, will be part of next week's workshop. He'll show the instructors how to help their students learn faster, through immersion. Deputy Minister Mark Cleveland says it's the first time in years that language instructors will gather to learn new techniques together. "The programming that we have in place now has been successful in a number of areas, but we think we can do better and we think that with the involvement of instructors from across the ages that the programming that is offered can be strengthened. Biscaye says bringing teachers together is, however, not just about learning new teaching techniques. "It's more than about the content of the workshop or the training. It's also the networking and the contacts that the people make because there's some people with some very creative ideasand approaches." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2100 bytes Desc: not available URL: From masuhchim at SISQTEL.NET Thu Jul 14 15:23:29 2005 From: masuhchim at SISQTEL.NET (jim ferrara) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:23:29 -0700 Subject: one more curricular factor In-Reply-To: <53def7c3d636cbfa97dc919a53998ce9@humboldt.k12.ca.us> Message-ID: Sarah: By the way, in order to give you a more complete picture of the advanced curriculum situation: Susan, without explanation, underpaid me $1500 when I submitted the draft to her, the capriciousness of which I have yet to protest. I have not heard back from her about the grammar proposal that I made. I suppose that she and Greg have needed the time to figure out what to say to me about it. My experiences with the language teaching crew down at Hoopa during the past few months have been important sources of moral support for me as my personal discouragement with my ANA grant activities has compounded the mass of jello that Susan's and my relationship had already become. Those timely experiences down there have been most helpful to me in nurturing a perspective that is not confined to the Karuk Language Program box. So, life has been good to me anyway. Yew's visiting this week along with a couple of friends. Kai and I spent several days together last week. Still flowing at an above normal rate, the river is perfect for hot weather swimming right now. I've been learning a bit about weaving from Brian and net-making from Ernie Spenks' son... Oh yeh, incidentally, yesterday Silish sent me his list of the Hupa words which correspond to the Karuk ones that I sent him a while back--you know: the "cultural cognates" (Melodie's term) or "comparative semantics" (mine) list? Anyway, vaa vúra kích payêem. 'Hope all's well with you folks, chim From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jul 15 15:21:54 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:21:54 -0700 Subject: Majority of languages on verge of extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Last Updated: 06:00 AM NST Kathmandu - July 15, 2005 - Asar 31, 2062 Nepal Sambat 1125 Tachhalagaa Nawami - Friday Majority of languages on verge of extinction By Namoti Nembang http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/pageloader.php?file=2005/07/15/nation/ nation4 Nepal is a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country. As stated in the central Bureau of statisties CBS Report 2001, more than 100 social groups speak 92+ languages. Amongst them Tibeto-Burman Languages have the largest number of speakers. Out of these only 16 languages have more than 100,000 speakers of which only three have more than one million speakers. There is no language spoken by 100,000 to 50,000 speakers. Only 18 languages have 50,000 to 10,000 speakers and the rest are spoken by less than 5,000 speakers. These figures show majority of the languages are on the verge of being extinct. However, Tribhuwan University of Nepal and Leipzig University of Germanj are jointly involved in research and documentation of two most endangered languages, Chintang and Puma of eastern Nepal with the financial and technical help of Volkswagon Foundation and Max-Plank Institute of Germany. A programme Lets Talk About Languages coordinated by Kedar Sharma sometime ago depicted the problem and present condition of some of the most endangered languages of Nepal. Among the most dangered languages are Chintang and Puma. There are approximately 2,000 speakers of Chintang in Dhuankuta district. But the Census Report (2001) gives number of speakers only eight (3 men and 5 women). Puma is spoken in certain areas of Khotang district and Udayapur by about 2,500 speakers as against the figure given by CBS Report. The are even other languages such as Lepcha and Bote which are spoken only by the older generations. These are the languages, which only the old people can converse, adults can understand but cannot speak or reply and the children neither understand nor speak. Children having little knowledge of their mother tongue and of which speakers are very less (i.e. 100500) are seriously endangered like Baramu, Tilung and Jerung. Language that is spoken by a handful of people of the older generation and whose number is less than 100 is called a moribund language such as Kusunda and Route. After those speakers die that language is supposed to be dead language. According to Prof. Dr. Nobel Kishor Rai and linguist Bishnu Rai, the seriously endangered Chintang and Puma with only about 2,000 and 2,500 speakers have become multilingual today. They speak Bantawa, Nepali languages and slowly giving up speaking their own mother tongue along with most of the Kiranti languages. Though it is advantageous to be able to speak more than one language, but for a small community like Chintang and Puma, it often becomes deadly because multilingualism also means loosing ones own mother tongue. There are many ways followed for the preservation and revival of languages. For instance, institutionalization research, proper documentation, audio-tapes, audio-video recordings of words, sentences, conversations, folk stories, myths, autobiographical stories, shamanic performances, rituals, transcription of the texts, conversations of child language etc could be done. But it is not sufficient without the State coming forward giving up the policies for language discrimination, they said. Citing examples of language revivals in the world, Nobel Kishore Rai said that the Hebrew language was resurrected after the birth of the state of Israel. Jonkha language whose speakers was not more than 500,000 has been revitalized and now it is the State language of Bhutan and medium of education. Limbu with 50,000-60,000 populations is a living language in Sikkim with rich literature and being taught in schools and colleges. If the community and the speakers are determined to take initiatives, their mother languages can be revitalised. He gave the example of languages like Newar, Limbu, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Magar, Tamang and some of the Rai groups are already moving ahead They say the best way is to speak at home, encourage family members, especially children, to speak in their mother tongue. And by building lexicon, increasing the usage of the language by writing and publishing different kinds of literature, magazines and books. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4439 bytes Desc: not available URL: From liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Fri Jul 15 15:16:45 2005 From: liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Liko Puha) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 05:16:45 -1000 Subject: Majority of languages on verge of extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Aloha mai, Aole au ma keena ma 15-19/VII/05. E kamaÿilio iho me Kalaÿi no ke noi käkoÿo ÿenehana. No ke noi kokua Leokï e leka ia Kamalu Perreira. I am out of the office the 15 thru 19 of July. Naÿu me ke aloha, na Liko From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:38:30 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:38:30 -0700 Subject: UNESCO launches Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation (fwd) Message-ID: UNESCO launches Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation 18-07-2005 (UNESCO) http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19434&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html Increasing its efforts to provide project agents with the necessary tools for the safeguarding of languages in danger of extinction, UNESCO's Endangered Languages Programme is launching a world-wide call for submissions to its new 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation'. The Register will serve as a nexus of knowledge supply and demand where experience in language protection projects can be accumulated and made publicly available, in order to give future preservation projects a head start. The rationale behind the newly-launched Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation is simple: a collection of positive experience reports from past and current project agents shall provide a rich source of problem-solving approaches, hands-on solutions, practical information, adaptable models, and do's and don'ts of language preservation, to be easily accessed as a self-help tool by current and future project agents, empowering them in their ongoing efforts. The lessons learned in the face of language endangerment can thus be passed on to a wider circle and a 'new generation' of activists world-wide. For submission to the Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation, reports on any kind of community-based projects by governmental and non-governmental organisations, field agents, community members, and related experts are welcome. A Call for Submissions to the Register is currently being disseminated via international networks and listservs; the Call is also accessible via the Register's website hosted by the Endangered Languages Programme. Each of the world's roughly 6.000 languages reflects a unique world-view and culture complex, thus representing an integral part of living human heritage. Yet experts estimate that today, over 50% of all languages are in danger of extinction. In accordance with UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, it is therefore the Endangered Language Programme's mission to aid in the preservation of linguistic diversity, and to provide assistance to language safeguarding efforts across the globe. The Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation will be a valuable tool for this purpose. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:44:13 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:44:13 -0700 Subject: Saving Oneidas' Language, One Long Word at a Time (fwd) Message-ID: July 18, 2005 Saving Oneidas' Language, One Long Word at a Time By MICHELLE YORK ONEIDA, N.Y. - In 1999, Marion Johns was near death. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/nyregion/18oneida.html Advanced Alzheimer's disease had left her bedridden and erased many of her memories. Still, one day, she turned to her daughter, Penny Raymond, and crooned a few words that Penny did not understand. Mrs. Raymond's sister, Shirley Mason, recognized them, though, and translated: "My beautiful little baby." Mrs. Johns had reverted back to an intricate, difficult American Indian language she had learned as a child - Oneida. "She never spoke it to us growing up," said Mrs. Raymond, 51. Few of the 500 members of the Oneida Indian Nation who live on or near this reservation about 30 miles east of Syracuse knew their language. Among Mrs. Raymond's generation, the number of native speakers here was all but nonexistent, and scarce also among Oneida tribes in Wisconsin and Canada. The language was nearly lost. That day, listening to her mother on her deathbed ignited a desire for Mrs. Raymond to keep her language alive. "What's going to happen if we start losing this part of our culture?" she asked. "It's like losing a part of yourselves." Six years later, Mrs. Raymond is not only fluent in Oneida, but she is also passing it on. On a recent summer day, she and Geraldine Feeley were working at their jobs as language teachers, coaxing a handful of young students attending summer camp to count from 1 to 10 in Oneida. The classes were the result of the most unusual and ambitious projects ever undertaken by an American Indian tribe. The Oneida Indian Nation contracted with the language experts at Berlitz to create an intensive curriculum. Then the tribe paid eight people, Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Feeley among them, to study Oneida full time for eight months so they could become fluent. Now, those eight students, who ranged from 26 to 63, have become language instructors and are teaching others, especially the young. "Somebody had to do something to save it," said Sheri Beglen, 45, an instructor. The Oneida Nation has offered language classes since the 1980's. But they were held once or twice a week, too infrequently to be of much use. Then there was the difficulty of the language itself. "The words were so long you had to take a breath to finish pronouncing it," said Brian Patterson, a representative of the Bear Clan, one of three groups that make up the Oneida tribe. He remembered one moment when he stared at a block of words that formed a largely useless phrase. "The interpretation was 'She wears a wristwatch,' " he said. "At that moment, I got so frustrated because I couldn't remember the last time I said that in English, let alone say it in my language. Our elders were not teachers." With no more than the limited financial resources the tribe possessed at the time, the Oneida language might have died out. But in 1993, the tribe opened its Turning Stone casino and resort near Oneida. Today it is the largest employer in a three-county region and generates millions in annual revenue. That allowed the Oneidas to pull themselves out of poverty and invest in cultural projects - chief among them language preservation. >From the outset, the task was daunting. They had few materials to work with. Oneida, like many American Indian languages, was primarily a spoken language, not a written one. In 1939, a Yale anthropologist and expert in American Indian languages, Floyd G. Lounsbury, gave Oneida standardized grammar rules which were embraced by all Oneidas and allowed the language to be written. The tribe first needed to find experts. "I was passing through one year and they were asking me if I knew any fluent speaker who would work with them," said Ray George, 66, who learned Oneida as his first language and lives on the Oneida Nation of the Thames reservation in Ontario, Canada. "Jokingly, I said, 'If you send me a good contract, maybe I'll consider it myself.' Two weeks later I got a call." Mr. George knew how to speak Oneida. A colleague from Ontario knew how to write it. Together they worked with the local Oneidas to translate English phrases into their native language. Then they provided that information to Berlitz so it could develop a curriculum. "For us, it was tough; we don't know Oneida," said Deniz Ghrewati, a Berlitz director, who estimated that among 400 American Indian languages, half are no longer in use. Only one other American Indian tribe, the Lakota tribe, has enlisted the help of Berlitz to preserve its language, but not with the same vigor as the Oneidas, said Ms. Ghrewati. "They were desperate." In the Oneida program, a few tears were shed during the intense training, and one of the students quit. "There were days it was so hard," Mrs. Raymond said. "At night I couldn't sleep cause my mind was going over Oneida words. It was just pounded into our heads." Ms. Ghrewati came to the Oneida reservation for a recent graduation ceremony. "I was actually amazed," she said. "They were joking in Oneida." But the success of the language program will ultimately depend on how well the teachers can spread Oneida among the tribe's youth. One student in Mrs. Raymond's class, Jared Rose, 10, played a few language games with a competitive streak. "It's really fun, actually, to learn the language," he said. "My mom and dad, as soon as I walk in the door, they surround me. They say, 'What have you learned today?' " The time has long passed when Mrs. Raymond could converse with her mother in their native language. Today, she has other goals, saying, "I want to teach my grandchildren." From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:49:17 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:49:17 -0700 Subject: Government-backed channel raises concerns about propaganda (fwd) Message-ID: Posted on Mon, Jul. 18, 2005 Government-backed channel raises concerns about propaganda BY GARY MARX Chicago Tribune http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/12160243.htm CARACAS, Venezuela - (KRT) - There were no cameras in place, no anchors and no frenzied producers pushing to make deadline. But Aram Aharonian said everything was on schedule as he toured the partly completed headquarters of a new satellite television station that sees itself as an alternative to CNN, Fox News and European news organizations. "This is a dream, a dream of a lot of people," Aharonian, the station's general director, shouted above the din of construction workers' hammering and drilling. Late this month, Telesur - short for Television of the South - will begin broadcasting 24 hours a day across Latin America. While the network's goal is nothing short of changing the way Latin Americans view themselves and their news, critics say the station could become a propaganda tool for the region's re-emerging left. A pugnacious, pony-tailed journalist, Aharonian argues that United States and other mass media provide a superficial and distorted view of Latin America. He said the cameras show up only to cover disasters and beam images across the region and the world that display ignorance of the continent's complex realities. It is time, he contends, for Latin Americans to determine what is news and how it is reported. "Why do we have to continue seeing ourselves through the eyes of others?" asked Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has lived in Caracas since 1986. "Now we are going to begin seeing ourselves through our own eyes." Instead of fluffy reports about American pop stars or news pieces on distant lands, Telesur plans to focus its lens closer to home, broadcasting weighty documentaries on subjects ranging from the struggle for indigenous rights in Bolivia to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. One Telesur program will promote tango, vallenato and other Latin sounds while another regular segment will profile groundbreaking Latin Americans. "Nojolivud," a program whose name is derived from a phonetic Spanish spelling of "No Hollywood," will showcase films made outside what Telesur executives call "the Hollywood system." But Telesur's news programs are sure to garner the greatest scrutiny. Although Telesur is a venture involving leftist governments in Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, its main benefactor is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a populist who derisively refers to the United States as "The Empire" and blames capitalism for the region's endemic poverty. Critics fear Chavez will use Telesur to project his ideas across Latin America at a time when some media executives and human-rights experts say Chavez has curbed free speech in his own country. "Can you imagine Telesur criticizing Mr. Chavez?" asked Alberto Federico Ravell, executive director of Globovision, a local 24-hour news channel highly critical of the president. "Chavez wants to become the leader of Latin America, and this is a project to support him." Ravell and other critics point to a number of what they see as ominous signs. For starters, Telesur's headquarters is on the same grounds as Venezuela's Channel 8, a state-run television station that flatters Chavez. Telesur's president is Andres Izarra, a veteran journalist who also is minister of communication and information in the Chavez government. Then there is the issue of Cuba, a part owner of Telesur that is providing the station technical support. "If the shareholders of this company belong to a government like Cuba where they have no basic concept of free speech and zero tolerance for independent views, God help us," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. Jorge Botero, a veteran Colombian television producer and Telesur's news director, acknowledged that Cuba doesn't practice "my ideal of journalism." He also said he admired Chavez, whom he described as a "great leader." "But I am not affiliated with his movement," Botero said. "I am an independent journalist." Aharonian said Telesur will have complete editorial independence from any government and that its only agenda is furthering Latin American unity. Everything else is fair game. "If the programming is bad and full of propaganda, then no one is going to watch it," said Aharonian, who has worked for United Press International, the Mexican newspaper Excelsior and Prensa Latina, the Cuban state news agency. "The only censor is the viewer. They can just click and change the channel," he said. Some dispute the notion that Latin America is getting its television news only from outsiders. Caroline Rittenberry, a spokeswoman for CNN en Espanol, a 24-hour Spanish-language news channel reaching more than 15 million households in the Americas, said the network covers the region in a comprehensive and sophisticated way. "We totally reject the notion that just because we are based in the U.S. we present a U.S. perspective of the news," said Rittenberry. "The overwhelming majority of editorial staff is from Latin America. We have correspondents in every country." The intense debate over a television network that has yet to go on the air reflects a broader ideological battle over the future of Latin America. But the new network also is part of a global struggle over how news is disseminated. The Internet is challenging the mainstream media's grip on information in the United States, with bloggers across the political spectrum assailing what they see as bias in newspapers and on broadcast networks. In the Arab world, the satellite news channel Al-Jazeera has been criticized by U.S. officials who complain that it gives viewers an inaccurate version of events in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera officials say they're merely reporting the truth from an Arab perspective. John Dinges, associate professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, said he did not expect Telesur to toe the middle line. But he said that did not mean the new network was without merit. "Generally in Latin America, the fact that a station has a political point of view does not rule them out of the club of good journalism," Dinges said. "I would love to see a successful television channel with hard-hitting journalism about Latin America." With a first-year budget of about $10 million, Telesur is opening bureaus in six Latin American countries and Washington and also will air material from freelancers across the hemisphere. So far, the only glimpse of what Telesur might offer is an 11-minute video aired in May during a signal test. The video shows street demonstrations by peasants and images of leftist heroes such as former Chilean socialist President Salvador Allende, killed in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973. Telesur's look will be different from the high gloss of American network television. One anchor, Ati Kiwa, is an indigenous Colombian who will appear on camera in her tribe's traditional dress. The key to Telesur's success is not going head-to-head against the giants of broadcasting but providing an alternative to them, Aharonian said. "We are losing this (information) battle because we are not doing anything right now," he said. "We are simply setting up an alternative to the hegemonic communications industry that has one way of thinking and one message." --- © 2005, Chicago Tribune. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 16:18:04 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:18:04 -0700 Subject: How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages (fwd) Message-ID: July 19, 2005 How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages By MICHAEL ERARD http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/science/19lang.html Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a sprawling compendium of the world's languages, are that 119 of them are sign languages for the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one artificial language has native speakers. (Yes, it's Esperanto.) Most languages have fewer than a million speakers, and the most linguistically diverse nation on the planet is Papua New Guinea. The least diverse? Haiti. Opening the 1,200-page book at random, one can read about Garo, spoken by 102,000 people in Bangladesh and 575,000 in India, which is written with the Roman alphabet, or about Bernde, spoken by 2,000 people in Chad. Ethnologue, which began as a 40-language guide for Christian missionaries in 1951, has grown so comprehensive it is a source for academics and governments, and the occasional game show. Though its unusual history draws some criticism among secular linguists, the Ethnologue is also praised for its breadth. "If I'm teaching field methods and a student says I'm a speaker of X, I go look it up in Ethnologue," said Tony Woodbury, linguistics chairman at the University of Texas. "To locate a language geographically, to locate it in the language family it belongs to, Ethnologue is the one-stop place to look." Yet Ethnologue's most curious fact highlights a quandary that has long perplexed linguists: how many languages are spoken on the planet? Estimates have ranged from 3,000 to 10,000, but Ethnologue confidently counts 6,912 languages. Curiously, this edition adds 103 languages to the 6,809 that were listed in its 2000 edition - at a time when linguists are making dire predictions that hundreds of languages will soon become extinct. "I occasionally note in my comments to the press," said Nicholas Ostler, the president of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, "the irony that Ethnologue's total count of known languages keeps going up with each four-yearly edition, even as we solemnly intone the factoid that a language dies out every two weeks." This dissonance points to a more basic problem. "There's no actual number of languages," said Merritt Ruhlen, a linguist at Stanford whose own count is "around" 4,580. "It kind of depends on how one defines dialects and languages." The linguists behind the Ethnologue agree that the distinctions can be indistinct. "We tend to see languages as basically marbles, and we're trying to get all the marbles in our bag and count how many marbles we have," said M. Paul Lewis, a linguist who manages the Ethnologue database (www.ethnologue.com) and will edit the 16th edition. "Language is a lot more like oatmeal, where there are some clearly defined units but it's very fuzzy around the edges." The Yiddish linguist Max Weinrich once famously said, "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot" (or "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy"). To Ethnologue, and to the language research organization that produces it, S.I.L. International, a language is a dialect that needs its literature, including a Bible. Based in Dallas, S.I.L. (which stands for Summer Institute of Linguistics) trains missionaries to be linguists, sending them to learn local languages, design alphabets for unwritten languages and introduce literacy. Before they begin translating the Bible, they find out how many translations are needed by testing the degree to which speech varieties are mutually unintelligible. "The definition of language we use in the Ethnologue places a strong emphasis," said Dr. Lewis, "on the ability to intercommunicate as the test for splitting or joining." Thus, the fewer words from Dialect B that a speaker of Dialect A can understand, the more likely S.I.L. linguists will say that A and B need two Bibles, not one. The entry for the Chadian language of Bernde, for example, rates its similarity to its six neighboring languages from 47 to 73 percent. Above 70 percent, two varieties will typically be called dialects of the same language. However, such tests are not always clear-cut. Unintelligible dialects are sometimes combined into one language if they share a literature or other cultural heritage. And the reverse can be true, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian. In Guatemala, Ethnologue counts 54 living languages, while other linguists, some of them native Mayan speakers, count 18. Yet undercounting can be just as political as overcounting. Colette Grinevald, a specialist in Latin American languages at Lumière University in Lyon, France, notes that the modern Maya political movement wants to unite under one language, Kaqkchikel. "They don't want that division of their language into 24 languages," she said. "They want to create a standard called Kaqkchikel." Beyond its political implications, the Ethnologue also carries the weight of a religious mission. The project was founded by Richard Pittman, a missionary who thought other missionaries needed better information about which languages lacked a Bible. The first version appeared in 1951, 10 mimeographed pages that described 40 languages. "Hardly anyone knew about the Ethnologue back then," said Barbara Grimes, who edited the survey from 1967 to 2000. "It was a good idea, but it wasn't very impressive." In 1971, Ms. Grimes and her husband, Joseph Grimes, a linguistics professor at Cornell, extended the survey from small languages to all languages in the world. What emerged was just how daunting a global Bible translation project was. "In 1950, when we joined S.I.L., we were telling each other, maybe there are about 1,000 languages, but nobody really knew," Ms. Grimes said. In 1969, Ethnologue listed 4,493 languages; in 1992, the number had risen to 6,528 and by 2000 it stood at 6,809. The number will probably continue to rise - 2,694 languages still need to be studied in detail, and in 2000, S.I.L. officials projected that at the current rate of work, a complete survey would not be completed until 2075. (They now say they are working to speed it up.) As for their goal of translating the Bible, Ethnologue's figures show that all or some of it is available in 2,422 languages. Ethnologue lists 414 languages as nearly extinct in 2000, a figure that rises to 497 in the new edition. However, a few linguists accuse the publisher of promoting the trends it says it want to prevent. Denny Moore, a linguist with the Goeldi Museum in Belém, Brazil, said via e-mail: "It is absurd to think of S.I.L. as an agency of preservation, when they do just the opposite. Note that along with the extermination of native religion, all the ceremonial speech forms, songs, music and art associated with the religion disappear too." Dr. Moore, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1999 for his 18 years of linguistic work in Brazil, adds: "There is no way to resolve this contradiction. The only options are fooling yourself about it or not." S.I.L. officials say missionaries are giving another option to people who are already experiencing cultural shift. "The charge of destroying cultures has been around for a long time," said Carol Dowsett, a spokeswoman for the publisher. "Basically we're interested in people, and we're interested in helping them however we can." Though the Ethnologue is intended to help spread the word of God, it is being mined for more secular reasons. Computer companies that are developing multilingual software for foreign markets turn to the Ethnologue. "You've got a developer in Silicon Valley, and a person in the field calls them and says, 'We need to provide support for Serbian' or some language the developer's never heard of, so they can pop open the Ethnologue and find out, 'What is this thing?' " says Peter Constable, a former S.I.L. linguist who now works at Microsoft. Ray Gordon, the editor, says producers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" once contacted him, and according to Brian Homoleski, the manager of the publisher's bookstore, several copies were bought after the Sept. 11 attacks by "a U.S. government agency." According to S.I.L. staff members, the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles Police Department, the New York Olympic Committee and AT&T all called for help. Ethnologue's newest step toward worldwide influence has been in the arcane world of the International Organization of Standards. The survey assigns a three-letter code to each language (English is "eng"), and the 7,000-plus codes (for living and dead languages) is near acceptance in library indexing and multilingual software standards. The codes also form the backbone of the Open Language Archives Community, a Web-based technical infrastructure. Most linguists are unfazed at S.I.L.'s affiliations. "If you took away all the literature done by the S.I.L. people done in the last 60 years," said Dr. Ruhlen of Stanford, "you'd be taking away a lot of language documentation for a lot of languages for which there's nothing at all." From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 16:42:20 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:42:20 -0700 Subject: THE CASE FOR PRESERVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE (fwd audio link) Message-ID: SBS Radio THE CASE FOR PRESERVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE 19.7.2005 16:23:47 http://www9.sbs.com.au/radio/index.php?page=wv&newsID=116273 [note: go to link to hear audio] How much is your culture tied in with the language you speak? And, in today's globalised economy, is there still a case for teaching languages other than English at Australian schools? Darcel Moyle is a Goori woman from Minjerribah -- otherwise known as North Stradbroke Island, just off the coast of Brisbane. She's also an Aboriginal Education Officer with the Australian Education Union, as well as the Indigenous representative on the ACTU. Darcel was one of the speakers at a national language teachers' conference in Melbourne, exploring the topic, Languages and Cultures Education - Why? Here are Darcel Moyle's views -- after she gave her "you-rah", which means "greetings" in her native language. It was produced by Caroline Davey. SOURCE: World View From anguksuar at YAHOO.COM Tue Jul 19 20:20:48 2005 From: anguksuar at YAHOO.COM (Richard LaFortune) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 13:20:48 -0700 Subject: How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050719091804.e9z6hmo4wco80www@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: "Conclusion SIL/WBT propaganda describes the organization as "a private, non-profit, non-sectarian scientific education, international organization." But the reality of its insidious work around the world, both in terms of its objectives and its effects is its truly destructive impact upon the languages, the cultures, and the beliefs of indigenous peoples who are targets of SIL/WBT programs. The illegitimacy of their work is compounded when they make room for U.S. (or other) business interests, either by driving indigenous groups out of their homes and land, or by providing the business interests with a pool of cheap labor. 'There is an obvious question that must be asked: Are the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service working directly or indirectly for the CIA?" --ibid p46 http://www.cwis.org/fwdp/International/russell.txt "Declaration of Indigenous Peoples [item 6.] ..."In particular we would ask the Tribunal to immediately condemn, and in the future, completely investigate the activities of that great common danger, The Summer Institute of Linguistics." "However, Colby & Dennett had heard of a darker side to SIL. Numerous critics had alleged that SIL was the vanguard of the destruction of both the rainforests and their native inhabitants. They had heard from Latin American acquintances that SIL was, in military fashion, a scouting party that surveyed the Amazonian hinterlands for potential sources of opposition to natural resource exploitation (read cattle ranching, clearcutting and strip mining) among native peoples and that it employed avirulent brand of Christian fundamentalism that relied on linguistics to undermine the soical cohesion of aboriginal communities and accelerate their assimilation into Western culture. In addition to all this, numerous articles in the Latin American press accused SIL of being funded by the American intelligence community." --Dark Night, no.14, Chicago "On 13 March 1987 El Nacional of Caracas revealed that missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics had entered Venezuela illegally in August of the previous year and had been able to establish a base among the Panare Indians in the neighbourhood of Caicar. The newspaper noted that this missionary sect - following denunciation by the United Nations and the Organization of American States- had already had its contract rescinded or been actualy expelled by the governments of Mexicao, Ecuador, Brazil, Panama and Colombia." --The Missionaries, Norman Lewis, p242 "The activities of the SIL and other North American evangelical groups have earned the hostility of indigenous peoples and, after widespread protests those missionaries have been banned altogether in some countries." -Report from the Frontier, Julian Burger, p51 April 18,1981- 'a communique released to the press calling SIL/WBT (Wycliffe Bible Translators): "an affront to...our national sovereignty....a means by which the plunder of our national resources is institutionalized," proponents of enforced sterilization of the Indians, and a front for the CIA.' [Philadelphia Inquirer, 01/28/81; Los Angeles Times, 02/08/81; Boston globe, 03/08/81] -CAQ, #18,Winter 83 'The connection between WBT & SIL was repeatedly denied until Aug 1953, when the Catholic bishops in Lima denounced the Summer Insitute of Linguistics...' --ibid p42 '"Twenty-five years ago the Shell Oil Company lost many workers to Auca spears. For several reasons Shell decided to leave Ecuador. Suddenly with the discovery of a vast reserve of oil under the Eastern Jungle, twenty-one companies are working 1500 men there. As they advance, we fly ahead of them & explain to Aucas living in their path that they are coming. We persuade them that they should move out of the way. This is done by Auca Christians through a loudspeaker mounted on the plane. As the Indians move, we notify the oil companies. As a result of this close coordination by radio & telephone through our Quito office, there has not been one life lost to date. PRAISE GOD!!." -Laurie Hart, "Pacifying the Last Frontiers: Story of the Wycliffe Translators, NACLA's Latin American & Empire Report, Dec 1973, page 22." ' --ibid p45 "Cam's effort to get Bible translators into the muslim world through its back door, the Soviet Union,was no more successful. It was not for want of trying. He made eleven trips to the Soviet Union, mostly to the oil-rich Caucasus. But the charges that SIL had had links to the CIA in Vietnam and Latin America were having their effect, Pravda calling SIL a "nest of spies."' --Thy Will be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. Colby & Dennett pp798-99. - some interesting citations from field literature re: SIL Richard --- phil cash cash wrote: > July 19, 2005 > How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of > 6,912 Languages > > By MICHAEL ERARD > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/science/19lang.html > > Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a > sprawling compendium > of the world's languages, are that 119 of them are > sign languages for > the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one > artificial language > has native speakers. (Yes, it's Esperanto.) Most > languages have fewer > than a million speakers, and the most linguistically > diverse nation on > the planet is Papua New Guinea. The least diverse? > Haiti. > > Opening the 1,200-page book at random, one can read > about Garo, spoken > by 102,000 people in Bangladesh and 575,000 in > India, which is written > with the Roman alphabet, or about Bernde, spoken by > 2,000 people in > Chad. Ethnologue, which began as a 40-language guide > for Christian > missionaries in 1951, has grown so comprehensive it > is a source for > academics and governments, and the occasional game > show. > > Though its unusual history draws some criticism > among secular linguists, > the Ethnologue is also praised for its breadth. "If > I'm teaching field > methods and a student says I'm a speaker of X, I go > look it up in > Ethnologue," said Tony Woodbury, linguistics > chairman at the University > of Texas. "To locate a language geographically, to > locate it in the > language family it belongs to, Ethnologue is the > one-stop place to > look." > > Yet Ethnologue's most curious fact highlights a > quandary that has long > perplexed linguists: how many languages are spoken > on the planet? > > Estimates have ranged from 3,000 to 10,000, but > Ethnologue confidently > counts 6,912 languages. Curiously, this edition adds > 103 languages to > the 6,809 that were listed in its 2000 edition - at > a time when > linguists are making dire predictions that hundreds > of languages will > soon become extinct. > > "I occasionally note in my comments to the press," > said Nicholas Ostler, > the president of the Foundation for Endangered > Languages, "the irony > that Ethnologue's total count of known languages > keeps going up with > each four-yearly edition, even as we solemnly intone > the factoid that a > language dies out every two weeks." > > This dissonance points to a more basic problem. > "There's no actual > number of languages," said Merritt Ruhlen, a > linguist at Stanford whose > own count is "around" 4,580. "It kind of depends on > how one defines > dialects and languages." > > The linguists behind the Ethnologue agree that the > distinctions can be > indistinct. "We tend to see languages as basically > marbles, and we're > trying to get all the marbles in our bag and count > how many marbles we > have," said M. Paul Lewis, a linguist who manages > the Ethnologue > database (www.ethnologue.com) and will edit the 16th > edition. "Language > is a lot more like oatmeal, where there are some > clearly defined units > but it's very fuzzy around the edges." > > The Yiddish linguist Max Weinrich once famously > said, "A shprakh iz a > dialekt mit an armey un a flot" (or "a language is a > dialect with an > army and a navy"). To Ethnologue, and to the > language research > organization that produces it, S.I.L. International, > a language is a > dialect that needs its literature, including a > Bible. > > Based in Dallas, S.I.L. (which stands for Summer > Institute of > Linguistics) trains missionaries to be linguists, > sending them to learn > local languages, design alphabets for unwritten > languages and introduce > literacy. Before they begin translating the Bible, > they find out how > many translations are needed by testing the degree > to which speech > varieties are mutually unintelligible. "The > definition of language we > use in the Ethnologue places a strong emphasis," > said Dr. Lewis, "on > the ability to intercommunicate as the test for > splitting or joining." > > Thus, the fewer words from Dialect B that a speaker > of Dialect A can > understand, the more likely S.I.L. linguists will > say that A and B need > two Bibles, not one. The entry for the Chadian > language of Bernde, for > example, rates its similarity to its six neighboring > languages from 47 > to 73 percent. Above 70 percent, two varieties will > typically be called > dialects of the same language. > > However, such tests are not always clear-cut. > Unintelligible dialects > are sometimes combined into one language if they > share a literature or > other cultural heritage. And the reverse can be > true, as in the case of > Danish and Norwegian. > > In Guatemala, Ethnologue counts 54 living languages, > while other > linguists, some of them native Mayan speakers, count > 18. Yet > undercounting can be just as political as > overcounting. > > Colette Grinevald, a specialist in Latin American > languages at Lumière > University in Lyon, France, notes that the modern > Maya political > movement wants to unite under one language, > Kaqkchikel. "They don't > want that division of their language into 24 > languages," she said. > "They want to create a standard called Kaqkchikel." > > Beyond its political implications, the Ethnologue > also carries the > weight of a religious mission. The project was > founded by Richard > Pittman, a missionary who thought other missionaries > needed better > information about which languages lacked a Bible. > The first version > appeared in 1951, 10 mimeographed pages that > described 40 languages. > > "Hardly anyone knew about the Ethnologue back then," > said Barbara > Grimes, who edited the survey from 1967 to 2000. "It > was a good idea, > but it wasn't very impressive." In 1971, Ms. Grimes > and her husband, > Joseph Grimes, a linguistics professor at Cornell, > extended the survey > from small languages to all languages in the world. > > What emerged was just how daunting a global Bible > translation project > was. "In 1950, when we joined S.I.L., we were > telling each other, maybe > there are about 1,000 languages, but nobody really > knew," Ms. Grimes > said. In 1969, Ethnologue listed 4,493 languages; in > 1992, the number > had risen to 6,528 and by 2000 it stood at 6,809. > > The number will probably continue to rise - 2,694 > languages still need > to be studied in detail, and in 2000, S.I.L. > officials projected that > at the current rate of work, a complete survey would > not be completed > until 2075. (They now say they are working to speed > it up.) As for > their goal of translating the Bible, Ethnologue's > figures show that all > or some of it is available in 2,422 languages. > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 20:43:43 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 13:43:43 -0700 Subject: Aboriginal languages neglected and endangered: task force (fwd) Message-ID: Aboriginal languages neglected and endangered: task force Last updated Jul 19 2005 10:28 AM MDT CBC News http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=aboriginal-language19072005 A task force on aboriginal languages and culture says that more than half of the 60 aboriginal languages in Canada are endangered while 10 other languages have become extinct over the past century. The task force, which released a report last week, also found that only about 25,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis speak their original languages. The group, created by Heritage Canada in 2002 to preserve and revitalize First Nations, Inuit and Metis languages, made 25 recommendations to the federal government, including the creation of a language commissioner for all of Canada. Another recommendation suggests funding for aboriginal languages that's in line with what's spent preserving and promoting French and English. Members are also recommending that federal departments such as justice, health and human resources provide service in aboriginal languages. "It took a hundred years to tear our languages down. We are going to need seven generations to rebuild and strengthen our languages," says Ron Ignace, the task force chair. One of the members of the task force from Nunavut, Alexina Kublu, says the effort comes a little too late, but at least it's a start. Ottawa has committed $160 million for the next ten years to try to preserve what is left of the aboriginal languages in Canada. From rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 20 19:38:41 2005 From: rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Rudolph C Troike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:38:41 -0700 Subject: SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It is sad to see the radical libels and distortions of SIL's fine work being recycled after so many years. I have known many SIL members and visited their sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and can testify that many of the politically-motivated distortions about their work can be matched a thousand-fold by factually accurate reports of outstanding humanitarian accomplishments they have performed. The attacks on SIL have often been motivated by personal political agendas. It would be fair if those who have made such attacks had made any scientific, educational, or humanitarian contributions comparable to SIL members, but this has rarely been the case. Few linguists or anthropologists have been willing to sacrifice as much to study un- or under-documented languages and produce scientific contributions, as have SIL members. Much of our knowledge of the world's least-documented languages comes from SIL research and publication. Politically or ideologically-motivated attacks on the work of SIL need to be seriously questioned, and the often distorted claims balanced with attention to the many documented but often unadvertised contributions that SIL and its members have made and continue to make to the welfare of indigenous peoples around the world. Rudy Troike Department of English University of Arizona From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 20 23:11:03 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:11:03 -0600 Subject: SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I musta missed something here. What happened? Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Rudolph C Troike Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 1:39 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions It is sad to see the radical libels and distortions of SIL's fine work being recycled after so many years. I have known many SIL members and visited their sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and can testify that many of the politically-motivated distortions about their work can be matched a thousand-fold by factually accurate reports of outstanding humanitarian accomplishments they have performed. The attacks on SIL have often been motivated by personal political agendas. It would be fair if those who have made such attacks had made any scientific, educational, or humanitarian contributions comparable to SIL members, but this has rarely been the case. Few linguists or anthropologists have been willing to sacrifice as much to study un- or under-documented languages and produce scientific contributions, as have SIL members. Much of our knowledge of the world's least-documented languages comes from SIL research and publication. Politically or ideologically-motivated attacks on the work of SIL need to be seriously questioned, and the often distorted claims balanced with attention to the many documented but often unadvertised contributions that SIL and its members have made and continue to make to the welfare of indigenous peoples around the world. Rudy Troike Department of English University of Arizona From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jul 21 16:16:02 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 09:16:02 -0700 Subject: China, UNESCO jointly protect endangered languages (fwd) Message-ID: China, UNESCO jointly protect endangered languages www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-21 21:40:35 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-07/21/content_3250194.htm BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhuanet) - Bouchenaki Mounir, assistant director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said here Thursday that China and UNESCO are now jointly protecting the endangered languages in China. At the on-going World Chinese Conference, which opened here on July 20, Mounir said more and more languages in the world were endangered, including Shui Shu, a Chinese language specially used by the local women in south China's Hunan Province. Some languages have a large population of speakers while some have few, therefore the native speakers for the less-spoken languages are no longer willing to use them. Statistics from the UNESCO showed there are 6,000 languages in the world. China's 56 ethnic groups speak more than 70 languages, among which mandarin holds the largest number of speakers totaling more than one billion. And the Chinese speakers also speak in 100-plus dialects. "The UNESCO is dedicated to promoting local people's consciousness of using their native language," Mounir said. To this end, a joint project between UNESCO and the Chinese government has been launched in south China's Yunnan Province in an effort to help the local minority ethnic groups compile specific textbooks, and cultivate their own teaching staff. According to Mounir, the UNESCO is now collecting information of endangered languages worldwide, marking them on the map on-line and showing them to the public. The UNESCO also joined hands with TV stations and Discovery channels to record endangered languages. "Language is the carrier of the human intangible culture, and we should attach much importance to the protection of them," Mounir concluded. The two-day conference, with the theme of "the Development of Chinese in a Multi-cultural World", attracted nearly 600 government officials, Sinologists and Chinese learners from 67 countries and regions, among which more than 350 came from overseas. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jul 23 17:58:36 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 10:58:36 -0700 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) Message-ID: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected 2005-07-23 07:12:55 By InterPress Correspondent http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2005/07/23/45135.html Very few of us worry that one day our tribal language may die. On September 20th 2004, China’s last woman proficient in probably the world’s only single-sex (female-specific) language, ”Nushu”, died. Linguists believe Yang Huanyi’s death put an end to a tradition that was at least 400 years old in which women shared their innermost feelings through a set of codes that were incomprehensible to men. Why should we all care? What effect will their loss have on those of us who speak English? Afterall, replacing a minor language with a more widespread one allows easier communication amongst people. Well actually, language diversity is as important as biological diversity. The Pacific linguist Stephen Wurm, once told the story of a medical cure that depended on knowing a traditional language. Northern Australia had an outbreak of severe skin ulcers that resisted conventional treatment. Aborigines acquainted with the nurse told her about a lotion derived from a local medicinal plant that would cure the ulcers. The nurse applied the lotion and it healed the ulcers. Similar incidents have happened in other parts of the world. As a result, searches are being carried out for medicinal plants known to people through their languages and traditional cultures. When the languages die, the medical knowledge stored in them will go too. Sadly, language extinction is accelerating today due to population pressures and the spread of industrialization. Small, unindustrialized communities have to choose between their traditional language and participation in the larger world. East Africans need to speak Swahili for success; Central Europeans Russian; and lately, the whole world seems to need to speak English. Many times, these languages eventually replace other languages as older speakers die and younger ones adopt the more-useful tongue. No one knows exactly how many languages exist in the world today. Western linguistics estimate around 6,800. Roughly 2,400 are spoken in Africa (35%), 28% in Asia, 19% in the Pacific, 15% in the Americas, and 3% in Europe. Bear in mind, only about a quarter of the languages and few dialects have writing systems and not all languages have even been ”discovered” by Western linguistics. Most linguists however, agree that half of the world’s languages are headed for extinction; many fear that 90% will disappear by the end of this century. More than 750 languages are already extinct or nearly extinct (according to data from ”Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 14th Edition”). Michael Krauss, director of the Alaska Native Language Center, suggests that 20% to 40% of languages are already dying, and only 5% to l0% are ”safe” in the sense of being widely spoken or having official status. Tanzania has 135 spoken living languages as said by ethnologues, and two extinct languages, namely Aasax and Kw’adza, the latter found in Mbulu district. The former, found in northern Tanzania and dependant on the Maasai, became linguistically extinct in 1976. All is not lost though. Languages can be revived, infact even after they have died. The Celtic language, Cornish, once spoken in southwestern England, expired in 1777 when its last living speaker died. Using surviving written documents, descendants of Cornish speakers began to learn their language and speak it to their children. Now, about 2,000 people speak Cornish. Another example is modern Hebrew. Hebrew survived for centuries as a religious and scholarly language. In the late nineteenth century, a movement led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda reintroduced Hebrew into Palestine as a spoken language. After the founding of Israel, Hebrew was taught in schools and is now the common language of Israeli citizens. Other languages have also risen to new life. Welsh and Navajo speakers revitalized their dying languages through ”immersion” schools where children used their ancestral language every day. Both languages have grown in numbers of speakers over the past few decades. A healthy language is one that acquires new speakers. No matter how many adults use the language, if it is not passed to the next generation, its fate is already sealed. Some of our tribal languages do not have monolingual speakers (people who speak only that language), and when they are spoken by a minority of people in the nation, they are held in low esteem causing their speakers to avoid using them or passing them on to their children. For some, 20 years ago, all of the children spoke that language; now the youngest speakers are in their 20’s. Speaking the majority language better equips children for success in the majority culture than speaking a less prestigious language and as a result some of our tribal languages are dying. It is very unfortunate that this is the case, as a language is the most efficient means of transmitting a culture. Should we let our minority cultures and their languages get swept away in the oncoming tide of standardization? The accumulated knowledge of millennia will disappear, leaving the world a poorer place. Or should minorities keep their cultural integrity, and minor languages continue to exist alongside larger ones? The scenario that comes to pass depends to a large extent on our actions now. (AllAfrica.com) SOURCE: Guardian From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jul 23 18:03:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 11:03:11 -0700 Subject: Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) Message-ID: Saturday, 23 July 2005, 07:39:23 AEST Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch http://abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1420730.htm A language used in Australia for thousands of years before the arrival of colonial settlers is being revived. A Wiradjuri dictionary is being launched in the heart of Wiradjuri country in Wagga today. Retired academic Dr John Rudder has been helping to develop the dictionary for the last eight years. Dr Rudder says it builds on what Wiradjuri people living in south and central western New South Wales remember. "The language was down to remaining words that people had, and what they did was confirm the pronunciation and the accuracy of the words from the old lists. So all told we've put about 5,000 words into the dictionary." A large crowd is expected at the property Yalbalingada in Wagga this afternoon, for the launch of the Wiradjuri Dictionary. From phonosemantics at EARTHLINK.NET Sun Jul 24 03:09:01 2005 From: phonosemantics at EARTHLINK.NET (jess tauber) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 23:09:01 -0400 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) Message-ID: This is not the first time I've seen espoused the notion that a native language's worth is largely in its potential utility to the industrial world- I guess once we have tracked down all the medically useful plants, animals and inanimate substances known to native speakers we can then sigh in relief and let the languages in question die peaceful deaths. Nice attitude. A hell of a way to get the general public to care about language endangerment. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 24 17:50:26 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:50:26 -0700 Subject: Learning Tlingit language is challenge and joy for children (fwd) Message-ID: Web posted July 24, 2005 Learning Tlingit language is challenge and joy for children Samp weaves education with whale and animal activities By ANDREW PETTY JUNEAU EMPIRE Juneau hosts several opportunities for children to learn about Tlingit culture. Some involve canoeing and fishing; this camp focuses on language. About 20 children ages 3 to 5, plus a dozen older elementary students, are spending their afternoons at Gastineau Elementary School, singing songs and doing activities related to killer whales, frogs, wolves and beavers. "It ties back to who we are," teacher Nancy Douglas said. Native clans were named after animals. The animals are archetypes in the Native culture as well as the centerpieces for educating children about Tlingit words for numbers, colors, the weather and other subjects. "I like whales because they can hold their breath for a long time," said 8-year-old Cora Bontrager, who added she cannot hold her breath as long as a whale. Making whale puppets and dorsal fin hats and then singing Tlingit-language whale songs to the tune of "Bingo" helps kids relate to a culture steeped in tradition, said teacher Kitty Eddy. "We have to create a lot of what we do," she said. There are no catalogues of Tlingit education materials to choose from, so teachers make their own curriculum. At the end of the two week-camp, each student takes home a CD of the Tlingit songs to listen to at home. Some students make journals. As instructors develop more materials, Eddy hopes elementary schools can share the tools used in the camp. This is the first summer the camp is educating pre-schoolers. Children too young to read and write English are picking up Tlingit. "They can say words back to me right away," teacher Hans Chester said. It's typically harder for adults to learn vocabulary and pronunciation, he added. Because of programs like the camp, Chester said, many Tlingits are no longer afraid their culture and language are disappearing. The camp starts its second week on Monday. The group will perform Saturday for a Tlingit memorial party at the Alaska State Museum. • Andrew Petty can be reached at andrew.petty at juneauempire.com. Click here to return to story: http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/072405/loc_20050724029.shtml From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 26 02:04:04 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:04:04 -0600 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) In-Reply-To: <17562332.1122174541732.JavaMail.root@wamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: You know, I think things have to be useful to get people's interest. I think there is a lot to be learned from native language revitalization efforts. . . I don't think that is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing because it gets people to think. It gets people to consider things they hadn't considered before. :-) ?? Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of jess tauber Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:09 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) This is not the first time I've seen espoused the notion that a native language's worth is largely in its potential utility to the industrial world- I guess once we have tracked down all the medically useful plants, animals and inanimate substances known to native speakers we can then sigh in relief and let the languages in question die peaceful deaths. Nice attitude. A hell of a way to get the general public to care about language endangerment. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 26 02:05:40 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:05:40 -0600 Subject: Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050723110311.hq8okcccsc0c400o@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Wooooooohw. I sure would like to see that. I wonder what words hundreds of years old look like. . . besides Hebrew and Yiddish of course. . . -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 12:03 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) Saturday, 23 July 2005, 07:39:23 AEST Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch http://abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1420730.htm A language used in Australia for thousands of years before the arrival of colonial settlers is being revived. A Wiradjuri dictionary is being launched in the heart of Wiradjuri country in Wagga today. Retired academic Dr John Rudder has been helping to develop the dictionary for the last eight years. Dr Rudder says it builds on what Wiradjuri people living in south and central western New South Wales remember. "The language was down to remaining words that people had, and what they did was confirm the pronunciation and the accuracy of the words from the old lists. So all told we've put about 5,000 words into the dictionary." A large crowd is expected at the property Yalbalingada in Wagga this afternoon, for the launch of the Wiradjuri Dictionary. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 27 01:00:09 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:00:09 -0700 Subject: Cultural identity for toddlers (fwd) Message-ID: Education Today Newsletter JULY - SEPTEMBER 2005 Cultural identity for toddlers Until 1995, education in Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the South Pacific, was in English. As the world’s most linguistically diverse nation, with 823 living languages spoken by a population of 5.2 million, there may have been some logistic value in this, but it did little to foster a sense of national and cultural identity. In 1979, parents in Bougainville Island, in North Solomons Province put forward the idea of providing their children with two years of pre-school education in their own language, before the first grade of primary school, which would be in English. The Viles Tok Ples Skul (village language school) was born, later becoming the Tok Ples Pri Skul (vernacular language pre-school). During the 1980s three other provincial governments and four other language communities followed suit. Vernacular language pre-schools sprung up elsewhere over the next decade, but remained informal, with no national curriculum, and with teaching materials prepared by NGOs. The education reforms of 1995 finally led to the development of a national curriculum, encouraging vernacular language teaching in the two years before primary school, with a gradual introduction of English after that. By fifth grade, teaching is 30 per cent in the local language, 70 per cent in English. At the end of 2000, vernacular language pre-schools were teaching in 380 language groups. A similar initiative is just beginning in Vanuatu, also in Melanesia, which has some 106 local languages for a population of just 200,000. And, in New Zealand, Te köhanga reo (‘language nest’) is a total immersion programme for Maori children from birth to age 6, where they speak Maori and learn within an indigenous cultural context. The programme started in 1982. >From UNESCO Policy Briefs on Early Childhood, October 2002 From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Sat Jul 30 22:37:52 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 16:37:52 -0600 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted Message-ID: Hello, Everyone, I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain Apache. There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. It's really easy, despite all the yapping. http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. I would like very much to hear what people think. Best, Mia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 00:10:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:10:11 -0700 Subject: digital audio... Message-ID: Dear ILAT, this just in from Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com). i could note resist letting people know about a new digital audio recorder. take a peak at: MicroTrack 24/96 Professional 2-Channel mobile Digital Recorder http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrack-main.html this looks like an ideal field recorder, something mobile, something digital but not akward in terms of transferring audio data to your computer. later, Phil Cash Cash UofA From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 00:13:42 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:13:42 -0700 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted In-Reply-To: <20050730223754.47D262A0B@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Hi Mia, looks really nice, though i quickly took a listen to some Navajo shapes it sure didn't sound like the Navajo i am familiar with. any second opinions? later, Phil Cash Cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Hello, Everyone, > > > > I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math > teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I > constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of > Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called > Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 > languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations > in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain > Apache. > > > > There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The > rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to > move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, > and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. > > > > It's really easy, despite all the yapping. > > > > http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to > show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the > teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create > their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. > > > > > I would like very much to hear what people think. > > > > Best, > > Mia From jtucker at STARBAND.NET Sun Jul 31 01:26:22 2005 From: jtucker at STARBAND.NET (Jan Tucker) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:26:22 -0400 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted In-Reply-To: <20050730223754.47D262A0B@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Hi Mia, It's been a while, been busy with all kinds of workshops and grading, yikes. Hope you are well. I liked the part where you spoke while things were happening in "show me" I thought that your presentation was packed full of information and I think I'd have some kind of summary our outline of the basic information you want to present. There might be too much commentary. Possibly hyperlinks for some of your footnotes would make it less wordy. I think editing it like a poem, where only essential information is provided up front and other information is footnoted. Navigation was not intuitive for me. That doesn't mean it won't be for others. Maybe the menu should include something like Start here. I had to play around with things for some time to figure out what I was doing and where things moved to. Hope this is the feedback you were looking for. I think Phil was right on the Navajo, it sounded like Spanish to me. -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Mia Kalish (LFP) Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 6:38 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted Hello, Everyone, I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain Apache. There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. It's really easy, despite all the yapping. http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. I would like very much to hear what people think. Best, Mia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 19:27:24 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:27:24 -0700 Subject: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd) Message-ID: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain For four days, 150 people gather near La Grande for a sun dance, a sacred Native American ceremony Sunday, July 31, 2005 RICHARD COCKLE The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1122803785257970.xml&coll=7 LA GRANDE -- Bob Dirty Moccasins lay on his back in the hot sun as another man pierced the skin of his chest with a knife. More than 20 bare-chested men in feathers and red skirts danced around him while drums beat and everyone sang. Two men inserted chokecherry sticks into the slits in his chest and tied them off with red ribbons. With the help of other dancers, Dirty Moccasins, 60, struggled weakly to his feet. A rope connected the sticks to a cottonwood tree. Bernie Cliff, one of the organizers, shouted: "Pray for your families!" At his words, the singing crescendoed, dancers and onlookers cheered and raised their arms. The scene is the centerpiece of the fourth annual Blue Mountain Sun Dance, a four-day Native American spiritual event that drew more than 150 people to a high, lonely forest canyon north of La Grande. The sun dance blends deprivation, pain, drumming, prayer and dancing to achieve help and enlightenment through physical sacrifice to the creator. The loosely organized gathering here usually is private and attracts little attention. Participants allowed a reporter to watch the ceremony, but they didn't allow photographs or sketches to record the dancing. The federal government discouraged sun dances from 1888 until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. About 300 of the ceremonies are held in the United States each year, Bernard Red Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance chief, told a Lincoln, Neb., newspaper in 2003. Sun dances, a Great Plains tribal ceremony that has spread to other regions, are controversial among Native Americans. Some tribal leaders promote them as public events and allow nontribal participants, but others say the sacred ceremonies should not even be viewed by outsiders. They generally closely guard details to protect the intensely personal nature of the rite and to head off misunderstandings about the piercing. Walla Walla Tribal Chief Bill Burke, 74, of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, said he's heard criticism that sun dances aren't part of this region's religion. But he said he supports the Blue Mountain gathering. "I helped them out, as a matter of fact," he said. "I believe there has to be some spiritual experience there." Neither is he disturbed by the issue of non-native people taking part, he said. "It is a religious practice, and who am I to say who should be practicing it?" he said. After a few moments recovering from the piercing, Dirty Moccasins backed up to the cottonwood tree and began dancing slowly in place. He blew a wooden whistle with a feather attached while four other men had their chests pierced and were tied to the tree. All would dance that way for at least an hour before freeing themselves by jerking violently backward and ripping their flesh free of the sticks and rope. "If you are in prayer enough, you don't feel it," said dancer Tom Futter of Olympia, a veteran of the practice who planned to undergo the painful ritual today. "I feel the knife for only a half-second." People at the gathering came from as far as Canada, Texas and Oklahoma. It's a mix of Native Americans and people with connections to tribal members. Bob Dirty Moccasins, for example, said his wife is Apache. "There is blood that runs through my heart like a buffalo," he said. This is Futter's eighth sun dance. His chest is scarred from piercings, as are the chests of several other dancers. "I do it for my family, mainly, for the people I have lost in the past year," said Futter, whose ancestors include members of the Umatilla and Cayuse tribes and French-Canadians. This year's ceremony began Thursday morning in heat and dust with rhythmic dancing, insistent drumming and singing. Participants consume no food or water for four days, although they rest from time to time in the shade of a circular lodgepole arbor covered by fir boughs. Dancers aren't required to be pierced and tied to the tree, and it wasn't clear how many would do so. The sun dance includes a healing ceremony and ends with a feast of native dishes, including elk and smoked salmon. Some people take part in the dances as a way to sacrifice when a family member or loved one is ill, said Bernie Cliff, who is Cayuse, Sioux and Arapaho. For others, the sun dance is a declaration of independence. "We've had our languages taken away and our religion," said Cliff, who also lives in Benton City, Wash. "We've lost our land, our buffalo. The last thing we have is this." The Cliff family organized the gathering and has studied and taught the ceremony for years to keep it alive, members said. Women normally aren't pierced during sun dances because they suffer during childbirth and don't need to suffer more, he said. But women dancers tie eagle feathers to their arms as a symbol of their solidarity. They also go without food or water for four days like the men, he said. When the dance is over, Cliff said, the participants are exhausted. "Grumpy, too. And thirsty," he said. "They are going to want to go home." Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle at oregonwireless.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 19:34:51 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:34:51 -0700 Subject: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050731122724.t0mgisk8s0cs0cs4@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Note from ILAT listserv manager: this news item was sent in error, my apologies. it was intended for a local language/news listserv i manage. Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT listserv manager Quoting phil cash cash : > Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain > > For four days, 150 people gather near La Grande for a sun dance, a > sacred Native American ceremony > > Sunday, July 31, 2005 > RICHARD COCKLE > The Oregonian > > http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1122803785257970.xml&coll=7 > > LA GRANDE -- Bob Dirty Moccasins lay on his back in the hot sun as > another man pierced the skin of his chest with a knife. More than 20 > bare-chested men in feathers and red skirts danced around him while > drums beat and everyone sang. > > Two men inserted chokecherry sticks into the slits in his chest and tied > them off with red ribbons. With the help of other dancers, Dirty > Moccasins, 60, struggled weakly to his feet. A rope connected the > sticks to a cottonwood tree. > > Bernie Cliff, one of the organizers, shouted: "Pray for your families!" > At his words, the singing crescendoed, dancers and onlookers cheered > and raised their arms. > > The scene is the centerpiece of the fourth annual Blue Mountain Sun > Dance, a four-day Native American spiritual event that drew more than > 150 people to a high, lonely forest canyon north of La Grande. > > The sun dance blends deprivation, pain, drumming, prayer and dancing to > achieve help and enlightenment through physical sacrifice to the > creator. The loosely organized gathering here usually is private and > attracts little attention. Participants allowed a reporter to watch the > ceremony, but they didn't allow photographs or sketches to record the > dancing. > > The federal government discouraged sun dances from 1888 until the > American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. About 300 of the > ceremonies are held in the United States each year, Bernard Red > Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance chief, told a Lincoln, Neb., > newspaper in 2003. > > Sun dances, a Great Plains tribal ceremony that has spread to other > regions, are controversial among Native Americans. Some tribal leaders > promote them as public events and allow nontribal participants, but > others say the sacred ceremonies should not even be viewed by > outsiders. They generally closely guard details to protect the > intensely personal nature of the rite and to head off misunderstandings > about the piercing. > > Walla Walla Tribal Chief Bill Burke, 74, of the Confederated Tribes of > the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, said he's heard criticism that > sun dances aren't part of this region's religion. But he said he > supports the Blue Mountain gathering. > > "I helped them out, as a matter of fact," he said. "I believe there has > to be some spiritual experience there." > > Neither is he disturbed by the issue of non-native people taking part, > he said. "It is a religious practice, and who am I to say who should be > practicing it?" he said. > > After a few moments recovering from the piercing, Dirty Moccasins backed > up to the cottonwood tree and began dancing slowly in place. He blew a > wooden whistle with a feather attached while four other men had their > chests pierced and were tied to the tree. > > All would dance that way for at least an hour before freeing themselves > by jerking violently backward and ripping their flesh free of the > sticks and rope. > > "If you are in prayer enough, you don't feel it," said dancer Tom Futter > of Olympia, a veteran of the practice who planned to undergo the painful > ritual today. "I feel the knife for only a half-second." > > People at the gathering came from as far as Canada, Texas and Oklahoma. > It's a mix of Native Americans and people with connections to tribal > members. Bob Dirty Moccasins, for example, said his wife is Apache. > > "There is blood that runs through my heart like a buffalo," he said. > > This is Futter's eighth sun dance. His chest is scarred from piercings, > as are the chests of several other dancers. > > "I do it for my family, mainly, for the people I have lost in the past > year," said Futter, whose ancestors include members of the Umatilla and > Cayuse tribes and French-Canadians. > > This year's ceremony began Thursday morning in heat and dust with > rhythmic dancing, insistent drumming and singing. Participants consume > no food or water for four days, although they rest from time to time in > the shade of a circular lodgepole arbor covered by fir boughs. > > Dancers aren't required to be pierced and tied to the tree, and it > wasn't clear how many would do so. > > The sun dance includes a healing ceremony and ends with a feast of > native dishes, including elk and smoked salmon. > > Some people take part in the dances as a way to sacrifice when a family > member or loved one is ill, said Bernie Cliff, who is Cayuse, Sioux and > Arapaho. For others, the sun dance is a declaration of independence. > > "We've had our languages taken away and our religion," said Cliff, who > also lives in Benton City, Wash. "We've lost our land, our buffalo. The > last thing we have is this." The Cliff family organized the gathering > and has studied and taught the ceremony for years to keep it alive, > members said. > > Women normally aren't pierced during sun dances because they suffer > during childbirth and don't need to suffer more, he said. But women > dancers tie eagle feathers to their arms as a symbol of their > solidarity. They also go without food or water for four days like the > men, he said. > > When the dance is over, Cliff said, the participants are exhausted. > > "Grumpy, too. And thirsty," he said. "They are going to want to go > home." > > Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle at oregonwireless.net From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 20:34:56 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 13:34:56 -0700 Subject: Dictionary For Sale Message-ID: Below please find an offer for an original Version of Bill Bright?s Dictionary and book entitled ?The Karok Language?. They are also available reprinted from Susan Gehr at the Tribe for a mere $19.95 1.800.50.KARUK http://www.ncidc.org/karuk/index.html susan at karuk.org Bright, William... The Karok Language UC Pub in Linguistics Volume 13 ? ? 8vo paper wrappers 449pp + appendix slight cover wear otherwise? very good $125.00 ?LOUIS COLLINS BOOKS? ABAA 1211 East Denny Way ? ? Seattle,WA? 98122? USA ph (206) 323-3999 "We rather successfully find out-of-print books in all fields" mailto:collinsbooks at collinsbooks.com VISIT OUR WEB SITE: http://www.collinsbooks.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- We accept VISA/ MasterCard/American Express. Books are returnable within 10 business days. POSTAGE DOMESTIC: ?MEDIA MAIL (6-8 days delivery) - add $4.00 per order; ?PRIORITY MAIL (2-3 days) - add $8.00 per order. ?? - method determined by weight and locale mailed to. POSTAGE FOREIGN:? Postage is extra on ALL orders. ?Via GLOBAL PRIORITY cardboard envelope when possible, ?? - add $10.00 to most locales ($7.00 to Canada & Mexico). ?Items too large or fragile for GP envelope or requiring more ?protective packaging are sent via AIRMAIL LETTER POST, ?Airmail Parcel Post, or Economy Letter Post (Surface Mail), ?depending on weight and locale (often Airmail is minimally more ?than Economy, and MUCH faster and reliable and thus our preference). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2898 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 20:37:07 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 13:37:07 -0700 Subject: Submissions Requested Message-ID: Call for Submissions (please forward to interested parties): ? UNESCO Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation ? In accordance with its mission to protect and promote cultural diversity, and in particular to encourage the safeguarding of endangered languages as an essential part of the living heritage of humanity, UNESCO calls for submissions to its online 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation' under the Endangered Languages Programme. We are interested in collecting reports on both ongoing and past projects. ? ? PURPOSE: ? The purpose of this Register is to identify and collect reports concerning efforts in language preservation, as a means to facilitate the dissemination of Good Practice knowledge, expertise and experience in this area, and thus to encourage future application and adaptation worldwide. To this end, we ask speaker communities, governmental and non-governmental organisations, and related experts to share their good experiences in the preservation, revitalisation and promotion of endangered languages with a wider public, via our Good Practices database. Registry in this database is also meant to ensure the visibility, recognition, and accessibility of the projects entered (the UNESCO portal recording over 10 million hits on average every month). ? ? SUBMISSIONS: ? We solicit the submission of case reports on any form of community-based projects concerning language preservation, - e.g. reports on local/ regional projects in education, revitalisation, standardisation, community development, awareness raising, capacity building, documentation, use of new technologies, etc. (Note: These can be projects that do not focus on language exclusively but include language as one aspect among their concerns) ? For submission, please use the form and the guidelines available on the Register website of the UNESCO Endangered Languages Programme: ? http://www.unesco.org/culture/endangeredlanguages/goodpractices ? Submissions will be reviewed by UNESCO experts prior to web publication to ensure consistency. ? Your participation is greatly appreciated ? it helps establish a valuable service of knowledge transfer in language preservation, for future efforts and projects worldwide that safeguard language diversity as an important aspect of our living heritage. ? Best regards, ? The Endangered Languages Programme Team ? Intangible Heritage Section UNESCO 1 rue Miollis, F-75015 Paris, France Fax: +33.1.45.68.57.52 E mail: ling.diversity at unesco.org -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2704 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue Jul 5 22:12:36 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 15:12:36 -0700 Subject: Bright Dictionary Message-ID: I misinformed you earlier. Susan Gehr is not the person to contact for the reprints of "The Karuk Language" dictionary and grammar guide by the eminent Dr. William Bright To order the Bright Dictionary for $19.95 go to http://www.legalbooksdistributing.com/lbsearch/index.html when you arrive at search page... type "BRIGHT" FOR AUTHOR AND CLICK SEARCH, then ADD TO CART -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 425 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 00:24:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:24:11 -0700 Subject: Indigenous Television Channel Launched in Taiwan (fwd) Message-ID: INDIGENOUS TELEVISION CHANNEL LAUNCHED IN TAIWAN (2 July 2005 1:30 pm) http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k5/july/july21.htm MUMBAI: Touted as Asia's first indigenous television channel, iTV was formally launched in Taiwan. The new channel can be seen on cable channel 16 and presents programming that focuses on indigenous issues, culture and enterprises, and hopes to help preserve and pass on indigenous languages. Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has been quoted in media reports as saying that the opening of iTV was in line with the United Nations' slogan, "dissemination means human rights" and represented another step forward in Taiwan's democratization. iTV will air Taiwan's first indigenous-themed soap opera, Hunter, starting 4 July. The soap opera details the lives of young indigenous people living in Taiwan's urban areas, including their experiences of being discriminated against and bouts with identity crises. Apart from such indigenous language programs, iTV will also offer various Chinese and English programmes. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 00:27:52 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 17:27:52 -0700 Subject: Culture Camp bridges Native teaching gap (fwd) Message-ID: CULTURE CAMP BRIDGES NATIVE TEACHING GAP By Nate Traylor Leader Staff http://leaderadvertiser.com/articles/2005/06/29/news/news03.txt Valley teachers spent several days at Blue Bay campground this week, learning Native languages and cultures at the Flathead Reservation Culture Camp as part of the Leadership Development for Master Teachers Project funded by the National Science Foundation. Every school district in the valley was represented as about 60 K-8 teachers spent time with tribal elders, gaining knowledge from those who are deeply connected with customs of the past in order to better help students in the future. It was the third year the culture camp has been held. "Teachers will not only learn how to teach better, but they will be more contextually responsive," explained program manager Gina Sievert. Using the valley's environment and culture, and integrating local issues like air and water quality, land management, and timber practices into everyday curriculum will not only enable Native American students to relate to their studies, but it will also give other students a unique perspective on those issues, she explained. Vernon Finley, Director of the Kootenai Language Curriculum Project for the Kootenai Culture Committee, saw teachers expressing an interest in Native American studies a few years back when he was invited to tell stories to Cherry Valley students. "They were concerned that a significant part of the school's population was being ignored," Finley said. After several visits to the school, he saw that his stories had a big influence on the students. "They had [Kootenai] words that I had used in the story written on their books and on the walls," he said. Since then, public schools were inviting elders to speak in classes, but the students' exposure to tribal traditions "had nothing to do with curriculum and it became kind of a stand-alone thing," Finley explained. "They [teachers] wanted to learn how to make it more meaningful," he said. When SKC came into a grant to fund the camp, interest started to grow, he said. Teachers participated in activities led by elders such as beading, sewing, plant identification and crafts. Elder Frances Vanderburg led a group through the campground and identified various plants in her Native tongue. Vanderburg is a Salish Language teacher in Arlee and also teaches botany. "It's been a long time coming," she said when asked about the inclusion of Native traditions in public schools. "The resistance isn't as blatant as it was when we were the minority in schools. The doors have been opening slowly." She attributes these recent efforts to new teachers who have come here without prejudices. "I'm going to use this to talk about the knowledge the indigenous people have," said Polson fifth grade teacher Charles Bertsch when asked how he plans on using what he learned in the classroom. First grade Ronan teacher Sheila Hoback is going to have her students learn Salish and Kootenai words for various animals. She estimates that 15 percent of her students are Native American. Tim Ryan of Ancestral Skills and Technology Northwest taught his group how to make cordage out of dogbane. After fibers are separated from bark, it can be rolled into long strands of cord. Native people used the cord to make everything from fishing wire to heavy duty rope, he explained. Ronan elementary teacher Renee Kelch was occupied with making snow shoes. She enjoyed the project so much that she is going to teach it to her students. "It's really fun to make," she said. "The kids will enjoy this." Sievert emphasized how beneficial it is to have non-Tribal teachers building relationships with Tribal elders. "It's helping teachers develop relationships with community members and bridging the gap between the Indian and Non-Indian community," said former Indian Education Coordinator Julie Cajune. She said the culture camp was the most worthwhile teaching endeavor she's ever been involved in. "What I hope teachers get out of this is that they have a little more respect for Native teaching and culture," said SKC student Naida Lefthand who helped coordinate the event. "I'd like this experience to go beyond the school. I'd like to see it influence neighbors and family members and build a larger bridge." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 38087 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:32:34 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:32:34 -0700 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) Message-ID: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language Date: Wednesday, July 06 @ 00:00:30 Topic Top Stories In a region well known for its penchant for family history, Eileen Quintana takes a somewhat less traditional approach to her heritage. She helps 250 area American Indian children learn the Navajo language, traditions and culture, from pronunciation of the vowels to the ceremonies. "The reason why we believe it's very, very important to teach Navajo ... is we want to keep the language," she said. "So much of our culture is within the language." Quintana is the program manager of the Nebo/Juab Title VII Indian Education program. She works with several children from throughout the area from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday during the regular school year, teaching them to speak, read and write Navajo. Quintana said many of them have family who still speak Navajo, and the students are excited about being able to visit their relatives and greet them or carry on a short conversation in the family's native language. Plus, she keeps records of grades, school attendance and any problems the children may be having, and the program provides access to tutors. They also can log onto an electronic high school program and earn credits through online courses. The students and their families go on field trips to BYU, Thanksgiving Point and area museums. About 85 percent of the students are Navajo; the rest belong to one of about 16 tribes represented in Utah and Juab counties. So far the reaction has been good; the program has grown from less than a dozen to 249 students, and funding has more than quadrupled since 1998. The program is funded by federal grants, including one from the Utah Arts Council for the Artists-in-Residence program, which pays to bring artists to class. "We really see a lot of benefits because we feel like their culture is validated," said Brenda Beyal, on-site coordinator for the Artists-in-Residence program. "They're able to see minority adults as role models." Learning about art and creating their own is a good way to experience culture as well, she said. For Betty Tanner's three children, the program is a fun way to learn. They have been involved in the program for several years, and her children have made pouches, learned songs and dances and performed at the Olympics in the Navajo village, in her oldest son's case. The irony is, her children aren't even Navajo. "My kids are actually Chippewa, so they haven't necessarily learned a lot about their heritage," she said. Tanner still wants to keep them participating as long as possible, though. The most important part, Quintana said, is teaching the students about their Navajo heritage and helping them to understand how important that heritage is to them, even far away from the reservation. "For a people to survive, they had to rely on each other," she said. "My clan and my family history are more important than my name." She hopes to instill self-identity and a connection with the past in her students, which will then inspire the students to work harder and accomplish those things they want to. Plus, knowing another language is beneficial for every child; Quintana said students who are bilingual tend to earn higher scores on national tests and do better in school. The program, so far, has accomplished that. The graduation rate for American Indians in the area was about 37 percent in 1998, Quintana said. Last year it was 94.2 percent. And while she is proud of the work accomplished here, Quintana said there is much more to be done, as the national average graduation rate for American Indians is below 50 percent. "And how the hell we allow that to stay baffles me," she said. HEIDI TOTH can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth at heraldextra.com. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1. This article comes from The Daily Herald http://www.newutah.com/[1] The URL for this story is: http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58978[2] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:38:19 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:38:19 -0700 Subject: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors (fwd) Message-ID: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors Speaker gives lesson in culture, language. By JASON ROSENBAUM of the Tribune?s staff Published Sunday, July 3, 2005 Jenna Isaacson photo Truman Black, a full-blooded Otoe Indian, tries to recall the Otoe word for ?mama? while discussing tribal culture and language yesterday at Van Meter State Park. ?If you don?t speak it, you lose it,? Black said. MIAMI, Mo. - After taking a sip of water, Truman Black placed the tips of his fingers against his chest and closed his eyes. He swayed slightly as he sang a soft, deeply powerful melody. "The Flag Song," as Black called it, honors Otoe predecessors who fought for their culture at home as well as for the United States abroad. "Our tribe, many a tribe, have great honor in their warriors," said Black, who calls himself one of the last full-blooded Otoe American Indians. Black, 68, of Oklahoma City, spoke about the Otoes? history, language and culture yesterday at Van Meter State Park, some 75 miles west of Columbia. About a dozen people came to the event, which was sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. The Otoes originated in what is now the Upper Midwest in the 1300s or 1400s. They moved west in the 1500s to 1600s before settling in the 1750s with the Missouri and Ioway American Indians in what are now Nebraska and Iowa. Connie Winfrey, historical site administrator for Van Meter State Park, said that after the Missouri, Ioway and Otoe tribes migrated from the Great Lakes, the Missouri Indians stayed near the Missouri River in what is now Saline County, and the Otoes went up the river to Nebraska. In the late 1700s, when the Sauk and Fox tribes defeated the Missouri Indians, they went up the river and joined the Otoes. "When Lewis and Clark came through here, the Missouri Indians weren?t living here. They found them with the Otoe," Winfrey said. "The Missouri Indians and the Otoe were the first tribes Lewis and Clark encountered on their trek west." Black said the Missouri, Ioway and Otoes share similar languages. The Ioway language, he said, has only a handful of words with meanings that differ from the Otoe language. The Missouri Indians spoke the same language but at a quicker pace, he said. "If we got the people to slow down enough, we could understand them," Black said. At its peak, Black said, the Otoe tribe had about 2,300 members. Today, he said, there are a little more than a dozen "full-blooded" Otoes. Language is the key to the preservation of culture, Black said. "You lose your language, you lose your culture," he said. Black said that because the Otoes do not have a written language, he learned the tribe?s customs and language from Arthur Lightfoot, an uncle of Ioway and Otoe descent. Black said he is among only a handful of people who know how to speak the language. Black said descendants of the Otoe tribe don?t know American Indian history because their parents no longer talk about it. "They are no longer told stories as I was when I was growing up," he said. During a question-and-answer session, Black explained how to say the word "daughter" in Otoe but struggled to recall the word for "mama." "If you don?t speak it, you lose it," he said. Black also discussed his confrontations with bigotry. He told how he was refused service in 1957 at a Ponca City, Okla., bar while wearing his Navy uniform. The server told him that because he was an American Indian, he could not buy beer. Black said he once was confined to a segregated portion of a cafe.But he said he?s never been ashamed of his heritage. "I have never had a reason not to be prideful of my heritage." He said that it was emotional remembering his past because many of the people who know the Otoe culture are dying off. "I?m of an age where I knew the elders that lived the culture, still spoke the language and were still in the cultural customs of our Indian history," he said. "There are many people of my age today who don?t have that spiritual feeling that I have because of knowing of the language and the customs." ------------------------- _Reach Jason Rosenbaum at (573) 815-1723 or jrosenbaum at tribmail.com[1]._ Links: ------ [1] mailto:jrosenbaum at tribmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/jpeg Size: 25200 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 16:42:45 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 09:42:45 -0700 Subject: Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706093819.bk0wwsww4o8c80sw@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: fyi, here is the url to the previously posted article: http://www.columbiatribune.com/2005/Jul/20050703News007.asp phil cash cash UofA, ILAT Quoting phil cash cash : > Tribal elder recalls Otoe predecessors > Speaker gives lesson in culture, language. > > By JASON ROSENBAUM of the Tribune?s staff Published Sunday, July 3, > 2005 > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 6 16:48:15 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 10:48:15 -0600 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706093234.mssgg4o8cgkgokok@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: The article url doesn't work. . . . -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 10:33 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language Date: Wednesday, July 06 @ 00:00:30 Topic Top Stories In a region well known for its penchant for family history, Eileen Quintana takes a somewhat less traditional approach to her heritage. She helps 250 area American Indian children learn the Navajo language, traditions and culture, from pronunciation of the vowels to the ceremonies. "The reason why we believe it's very, very important to teach Navajo ... is we want to keep the language," she said. "So much of our culture is within the language." Quintana is the program manager of the Nebo/Juab Title VII Indian Education program. She works with several children from throughout the area from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday during the regular school year, teaching them to speak, read and write Navajo. Quintana said many of them have family who still speak Navajo, and the students are excited about being able to visit their relatives and greet them or carry on a short conversation in the family's native language. Plus, she keeps records of grades, school attendance and any problems the children may be having, and the program provides access to tutors. They also can log onto an electronic high school program and earn credits through online courses. The students and their families go on field trips to BYU, Thanksgiving Point and area museums. About 85 percent of the students are Navajo; the rest belong to one of about 16 tribes represented in Utah and Juab counties. So far the reaction has been good; the program has grown from less than a dozen to 249 students, and funding has more than quadrupled since 1998. The program is funded by federal grants, including one from the Utah Arts Council for the Artists-in-Residence program, which pays to bring artists to class. "We really see a lot of benefits because we feel like their culture is validated," said Brenda Beyal, on-site coordinator for the Artists-in-Residence program. "They're able to see minority adults as role models." Learning about art and creating their own is a good way to experience culture as well, she said. For Betty Tanner's three children, the program is a fun way to learn. They have been involved in the program for several years, and her children have made pouches, learned songs and dances and performed at the Olympics in the Navajo village, in her oldest son's case. The irony is, her children aren't even Navajo. "My kids are actually Chippewa, so they haven't necessarily learned a lot about their heritage," she said. Tanner still wants to keep them participating as long as possible, though. The most important part, Quintana said, is teaching the students about their Navajo heritage and helping them to understand how important that heritage is to them, even far away from the reservation. "For a people to survive, they had to rely on each other," she said. "My clan and my family history are more important than my name." She hopes to instill self-identity and a connection with the past in her students, which will then inspire the students to work harder and accomplish those things they want to. Plus, knowing another language is beneficial for every child; Quintana said students who are bilingual tend to earn higher scores on national tests and do better in school. The program, so far, has accomplished that. The graduation rate for American Indians in the area was about 37 percent in 1998, Quintana said. Last year it was 94.2 percent. And while she is proud of the work accomplished here, Quintana said there is much more to be done, as the national average graduation rate for American Indians is below 50 percent. "And how the hell we allow that to stay baffles me," she said. HEIDI TOTH can be reached at 344-2543 or htoth at heraldextra.com. This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1. This article comes from The Daily Herald http://www.newutah.com/[1] The URL for this story is: http://www.newutah.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=589 78[2] From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 6 17:02:37 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 10:02:37 -0700 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706164822.CC2233185@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: thats odd as i tried it too and it doesn't work.? here is a url that works... http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58978&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 phil cash cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > The article url doesn't work. . . . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 6 17:31:12 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 11:31:12 -0600 Subject: American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050706100237.pwcccg0040gks4w8@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Try this one: http://www.newutah.com/ The article is on the front page. _____ From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 11:03 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] American Indian program aims to preserve Navajo language (fwd) thats odd as i tried it too and it doesn't work. here is a url that works... http://www.harktheherald.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&s id=58978&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0 phil cash cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > The article url doesn't work. . . . > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu Jul 7 00:22:31 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 6 Jul 2005 17:22:31 -0700 Subject: Voices Of The World Message-ID: International project seeks speakers of Native languages Goal is to create online database 7/6/2005 Dear colleagues around the world, Voices of the World aims to build international popular awareness of the diversity of mankind through a worldwide documentary film and media project. We want to portray the peoples of the world, giving face and voice to each culture and empowering every language community to speak. The goal of Voices of the World is to strengthen our global mutual belonging. The peoples of the world speak over 6,500 separate languages. Each language employs a vocabulary and a grammar that is unique to the communities that use them. Each reflects cultures that are equally unique, rich in folklore, history and humanity. In a time of globalization and the telecommunications revolution that is accompanying it, most of those languages have come under threat. A surprisingly large number, about 50%, will probably not survive this century. Many are already in terminal decline. Indigenous peoples speak most of these languages. Linguists calculate that planet earth is losing one language every two weeks - and with each one that vanishes, a means of communication, a method of expression and a way of looking at the world, disappears. Voices of the World is an international non-profit initiative of UNESCO?s Goodwill Ambassador for Languages Mrs. Vigdis Finnbogadott?r, based on an original idea by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Janus Billeskov. Jansen is supported by the Danish Government, the UN and by leading linguists from all over the world. Our first task is to create a media event in connection with the UN's 60th anniversary in October 2005. All the Nordic public service TV stations are already committed to this broadcast. We are presently working on similar arrangements with other European and international TV-stations. Our aim is to reach a global TV-audience. In order to make this a truly global event we want to invite you to participate in creating key elements of the central documentary film - Voices. Voices will tell the story of the cultural and linguistic loss the world is suffering from the threat of language endangerment. But the main elements of the film are to be based on you contributions. We seek case stories, which pinpoint the various stages from language endangerment to language death. We look for storytellers who can explain what it feels like to lose one's language. We aim to include material from as many different languages as possible in the film, but we have a limited budget. Thus we are looking for local contributions. You can participate in three different ways. Firstly, you can submit new material. Secondly, you can submit material already recorded. And thirdly, you can send us contacts to speakers of endangered languages. We are looking for charismatic storytellers who can tell moving personal stories to the world in their own language. The issues to be covered are: 1. The language generation gap - for example how does it feel to live in a family where grand parents and grand children find it hard to communicate, because the language of the older generation was not passed on? 2. The last speakers - for example how does it feel to be among the last few speakers of a language? 3. Language suppression (economic, social, political, cultural) - for example how do people cope with situations, when their language is not given space in the public sphere? What does it mean to a person or a community, if their language is forbidden or drained of resources? 4. Language and technology - for example how are speakers of endangered languages affected by globalization and the new information technology? We are also looking for success stories such as: 5. Language revitalization - for example how did a particular endangered language community manage to turn the situation around and revitalize their language? 6. Other vital language issues? - You might come up with something brilliant, which we were not even able to conceptualize - given the limitations of our language. If you want to participate in "Voices", please start by sending us an email introducing yourself, your language or the language you are engaged with. Please also describe your contribution and in what way you would like to collaborate with us. We will then send you more information about the project, more precise specifications of what we are looking for and technical requirements. We will do our best to support you in your filmmaking efforts and to make use of your material in the best possible way. Don't miss this opportunity to present your language as part of the bigger picture. After the film is finished, all the footage collected and shot for the Voices of the World project will be handed over to the Vigdis Finnbogadott?r Institute of Foreign Languages at University of Iceland. The aim of Voices of the World and the university is to create a database of all the world's languages, accessible to everybody via the Internet. Contact: Voices of the World Project manager: Signe Byrge S?rensen e-mail: byrge at final-cut.dk Address: Forbindelsesvej 7; 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark Tel: +45 35 43 60 43, Fax: +45/ 35 43 60 44 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5491 bytes Desc: not available URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri Jul 8 07:21:01 2005 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 00:21:01 -0700 Subject: Big Valley Pomo Message-ID: American Indian Youths Preserve the Past, One Word at a Time Pacific News Service, Youth News Feature, Shadi Rahimi, May 11, 2005 Editor's Note: Though only a few elders of the Big Valley band of Pomo Indians are still fluent in their language, young tribal members are picking up words and phrases with the help of technology. Eighteen-year-old Kristin Amparo, a tribal member of the Big Valley band of Pomo Indians, lives with her parents and five siblings in a large house on their reservation in Clear Lake, about three hours north of San Francisco. She likes bouncing on a trampoline to slam-dunk a basketball in her back yard, zooming past the creamy white Konocti Vista Casino in a yellow all-terrain vehicle and, now, speaking Bahtssal with her 14-year-old sister Felicia. The flat and green Big Valley reservation sits two miles from tiny downtown Lakeport on 153 acres encircling the banks of Clear Lake, whose blue-green waters host international bass-fishing tournaments and traditional Pomo tule boat races. On sunny days, kids fish for bluegill and catfish from the dock near the tribe's Konocti Vista Casino. Only a few elders of the Big Valley tribe are fluent in Bahtssal, a tribal dialect that began to fade after settlers forced Northern California Pomos off their lands. Today, Amparo and her sister are among a small group of young people on the 470-member reservation who are learning to speak the dialect as part of a newly formed language program. "We tell our mom stuff in Bahtssal, like, 'I have to go,'" says Amparo, who had never heard the language spoken before she began studying it under the new initiative. "It's really fun to learn." According to tribal historians, the decline in fluency in Bahtssal dates back to 1852, when the United States Senate refused to ratify a federal treaty that had promised the Big Valley tribe 72 square miles of land on the south side of Clear Lake. Settlers began claiming plots of land the following year, making private property of the areas where Big Valley ancestors had gathered food for more than 11,000 years. As tribal members began working in fields and on ranches owned by settlers, and their children began learning English in white schools, Bahtssal began to fade. James Bluewolf, who directs the language program, sees it as an exercise not just in cultural preservation, but also in healing. "People are still suffering from post-traumatic stress after being forced to give up everything they had," he says. "But every culture comes to a point where they are ready to make a change." In Clear Lake, the epicenter of that change sits among piles of scrap metal, wood and rusty cars, in a building that looks like it has dropped from the sky. It is tiny and tidy, and painted a bright swimming-pool blue. Inside this building, which houses the tribal language program, young mothers watch their chubby-cheeked toddlers play in a preschool class held by the nonprofit Lake County Tribal Health Consortium. In a cramped office past the play area, James Bluewolf smiles at the children's squeals. A stocky, soft-spoken man who once ran a landscaping business, Bluewolf has been using technology tribal ancestors could not have imagined to preserve and promote the tribal language. Bluewolf records hours of Bahtssal spoken by elders, which he edits into half-hour audio segments that air on the community radio station, and are available free on CD to tribal members. Bluewolf is also writing a curriculum for a 15-week course in Bahtssal. In a program Bluewolf directs, local teenagers perform skits that teach words and phrases such as "Chiin the'a 'eh" ("How are you?") and "Q'odii" ("Good"). Bluewolf videotapes the skits and makes them into videos that are played on the Lake County television station, and made available on DVD. In the play area, Alisha Salguero, 21, rocks her 5-month-old daughter to sleep while her 3-year-old son Brian plays. Brian has learned several words in Bahtssal in the preschool class, where Bluewolf uses hand puppets to teach the language. "He's really picked it up," Salguero says with a smile. "I don't really know it, so I think it's good for him to learn his language." While traditional song, dance, and tule boat races have always been part of the cultural life of Big Valley children, holding on to their tribal language has been more difficult, says Marilyn Ellis, 21. "That's why this language program is important," says Ellis, whose father, Ray, was the spiritual leader of the tribe. Before he died several years ago, Ray Ellis revived the tribe's "Big Time" spiritual celebration. The gathering, held every September on the grassy banks of Clear Lake, includes prayer, dancing and singing -- and now, perhaps, the sound of children trying out their ancestral tongue. "Our language is part of us," says Ellis, who does not speak the tribal dialect herself, but whose daughters can now name their cat and dog in Bahtssal. "If we don't know it, we're pretty much dead." PNS contributor Shadi Rahimi, 24, is the co-founder and an editor of Seventh Native American Generation (SNAG) magazine, and an associate editor of YO! Youth Outlook, www.youthoutlook.org. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 5324 bytes Desc: not available URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jul 8 13:48:52 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 06:48:52 -0700 Subject: Inuktitut computing takes shape (fwd) Message-ID: July 8, 2005 Inuktitut computing takes shape Shamanism revived in Inuktitut computer programs SARA MINOGUE http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/nunavut/50708_09.html [photo inset - Leena Evic lights her seal oil lamp before firing up her laptop in her summer office. (PHOTO BY SARA MINOGUE)] Leena Evic and Eva Aariak of Iqaluit's Pirurvik Centre are mixing old worlds with new as they take their summer project to their traditional canvas tents on the Sylvia Grinnell River. The pair are working outdoors as much as they can on an Inuktitut translation of Microsoft Office as part of a Microsoft initiative funding similar translations in India, Ethiopia and the Ukraine. The goal is to have a first draft of the new words ready by October, along with a functional Windows operating system in roman orthography. A syllabics version will follow. The group plans to complete a language review with the help of the department of culture, language elders and youth this fall, but some of the suggested terms are likely to stick. The word for Internet, for instance, is "ikiaqqivik," or, "traveling through layers," which Aariak believes is an appropriate metaphor, even though young people may not recognize the term as it falls out of use. The word comes from the term used to describe what a shaman does when asked to find out how loved ones were doing, or where animals had gone, by traveling through time and space. "They used to travel all over the world - even to the moon," says Aariak, who was Nunavut official languages commissioner before joining Pirurvik. "The 1969 moon landing did not impress local elders, Aariak adds. "They said: 'We've already been there.'" The word for email is "irngiinaaqtauq," the Inuktitut word for "instant." Both Aariak and Evic are aware that not all of the terms will catch on, but both say that usage will be the test. The pair also say they've striven to include as many dialects as possible, rather than stick to one regional version of Inuktitut. Contributors have come from the North and South Baffin, Nunavik, the Kivalliq and Greenland. Nonetheless, they expect they will likely have to produce a glossary of the new terms. "We are not practicing shamans anymore, but we feel that it's part of keeping our language alive," Aariak says. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri Jul 8 13:55:26 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2005 06:55:26 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) Message-ID: Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time=14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 ?????? BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of Invention" to 37. ?????? The 2005 awards go to: ?????? - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life Sciences, Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of growing neurons; ?????? - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics Division -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, warping, mold, and other effects of age; ?????? - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. ?????? "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important role in both our economic and national security." ?????? "We're looking for products and processes that can change people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D 100 Awards annually since 1963. ?????? "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." ?????? The Neural Matrix CCD: ?????? Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved mental functions in patients. ?????? In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the neural network. ?????? Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). ?????? The Optical Sound Restoration System: ?????? Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional restoration. ?????? By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high fidelity. ?????? Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of recordings in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab technology. ?????? Ion Mobility Analysis: ?????? For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels of total cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. ?????? Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for counting. ?????? Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and research labs. ?????? The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on October 20. ?????? - - - - ?????? CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov ?????? NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with images, is available at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. ?????? ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. ?????? ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: ?????? For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . ?????? For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . ?????? For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . ?????? For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . ?????? Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at info at cellularbioengineering.com. ?????? For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . ??????Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Sun Jul 10 09:52:41 2005 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (d_z_o) Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2005 09:52:41 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Conf. on Undescribed & Endangered Languages, 29 Sep. 05 Message-ID: FYI. (BTW, I still can't post directly to ILAT due to an unresolved misunderstanding between my host and the Arizona.edu server, but will reforward items that others haven't caught to ILAT from MINEL, a list with a different though overlapping purpose than that of ILAT)... DZO --- In MINEL at yahoogroups.com, "d_z_o" wrote: FYI (fwd from the Linguist list)... DZO Date: 11-Jun-2005 From: Amedeo De Dominicis Subject: Conference on Undescribed & Endangered Languages Conference on Undescribed & Endangered Languages Date: 29-Sep-2005 - 29-Sep-2005 Location: Viterbo, Lazio, Italy Contact: Amedeo De Dominicis Contact Email: dedomini at unitus.it Meeting URL: http://www.obiettivouomoambiente.com/ Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics Meeting Description: At present, most human languages are spoken by exceedingly few people. And that majority, the majority of languages, is about to vanish. Ethnologue, the most authoritative source on the languages of the world, lists just over 6,500 living languages. Population figures are available for just over 6,000 of them (or 92%). Of these 6,000, 52% are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people; 28% by fewer than 1,000; and 83% are restricted to single countries, and so are particularly exposed to the policies of a single government. On the other hand, 10 major languages, each spoken by more than 109 million people, are the mother tongues of almost half (49%) of the world's population. This loss of linguistic diversity is weakening the unique ethnoscientific knowledge hidden in such languages. >From the scientific point of view, the loss of a knowledge system also implies another kind of loss. Linguistics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology lose another precious source of data, another diverse and unique way the human mind can use to express itself through a language structure and vocabulary. Particularly, linguistic theories miss a crucial part of their objects because the value of endangered or undescribed languages often lies in the complexity that characterises them and and through which they challenge linguistic theories. That is the reason why in the title of this conference we put together 'undescribed and endangered languages': both cases induce a loss in linguistic knowledge and in the complexity of linguistic theories. 10:00-10:30 Welcoming Remarks 10:30-11:15 Suzanne Romaine (Merton College, University of Oxford): Planning for survival- some responses to language endangerment. 11:15-12:00 Ian Maddieson (University of California, Berkeley): Endangered Languages, Endangered Sounds. 12:00-12:45 Peter Ladefoged (University of California, Los Angeles): Archiving the sounds of an endangered language. 12:45-13:30 Maurizio Gnerre (Istituto Universitario Orientale, Napoli): Fading out voices, prosodies and rhythms: a neglected aspect of language endangerment. 13:30-15:30 Lunch Break 15:30-16:15 Roberto Ajello (Universita' di Pisa): The importance of having a description of the endangered languages: the case of Gizey (Cameroon). 16:15-17:00 Antonino Melis (Universite' de N'Djamena, Tchad): Ham: une langue et une culture en danger de disparition au Tchad. 17:00-17:45 Amedeo De Dominicis (Universita' della Tuscia, Viterbo): Tonal patterns of Gizey (Cameroon): first description and language preservation. Languages of the conference: English and French. --- End forwarded message --- From pmeyer at SDCOE.K12.CA.US Sat Jul 9 19:09:16 2005 From: pmeyer at SDCOE.K12.CA.US (Paula Meyer) Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 12:09:16 -0700 Subject: TPR Message-ID: I would like to discuss the interface of TPR (and TPR-S) with elder Native language teachers. This can include culture, modes of communication, etc. If you are a language bearer, what are your experiences with TPR? What do you think of it as a method for getting your students to know the language? If you are a program coordinator, how has TPR worked in your program? If not TPR, what? Paula ----- Original Message ----- From: "phil cash cash" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:33 AM Subject: [ILAT] Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami (fwd) > Wednesday, June 29, 2005 > Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami > > The Associated Press > http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050629/NEWS01/50629039 9/1056 > > MIAMI, Okla. - Without a fluent speaker left, the Miami Tribe of > Oklahoma hopes to revive its language through the publication of a > dictionary. > > Daryl Baldwin, a co-editor of the dictionary, said the book is drawn > from records spanning three centuries, beginning with dictionaries > created by French missionaries of the late 17th and early 18th > centuries and including word lists and texts collected in the 19th and > early 20th centuries. The project, a collaborative effort with Miami > University of Ohio, began in 1991. > > "Our language is rich and complex," said Baldwin, 42. "The dictionary > proves it is a lie that the 'savage' Indian only needed 2,000 or 3,000 > words to communicate." > > The language died out as part of an English-only campaign the U.S. > government conducted in an assimilation policy that lasted into the > 1960s. > > "I never learned the language," said Floyd Leonard, the tribe's > 78-year-old chief. "It wasn't something that was done when I was a > child." > > Baldwin, an Ohio native and Miami Tribe of Oklahoma member, said a > language is part of what defines a people. > > "Most of us have been removed from our cultural heritage," Baldwin said. > "We started asking, What is Miami? Without speakers of the language, > it's hard to get a glimpse of what that means. Language is culture." > > The dictionary came out about two weeks ago. Other projects planned > include a field guide to plant species found in the tribe's historical > lands in Ohio and Indiana expected to be finished later this year, and > a mapping project that will reclaim tribal place names, which is under > way. > > An audio CD of Miami speakers that contains vocabulary, phrases, > conversation, the Miami origin story and the Lord's Prayer was > completed in 2002. > From ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US Tue Jul 12 04:17:06 2005 From: ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US (Sarah Supahan) Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:17:06 -0700 Subject: TPR In-Reply-To: <00b201c584b9$b4188850$3035a8c0@paulaklm5qo59p> Message-ID: In my opinion, TPR is a GREAT tool. Learning kinesthetically helps language retention immeasurably. If TPR is the only method used, then that would be ok and much preferred over many other methods, most especially the old fashioned translation method. However, using what is referred to as Communication Based Instruction provides a larger, over-reaching method that includes TPR. Sarah On Jul 9, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Paula Meyer wrote: > I would like to discuss the interface of TPR (and TPR-S) with elder > Native > language teachers. This can include culture, modes of communication, > etc. > If you are a language bearer, what are your experiences with TPR? > What do > you think of it as a method for getting your students to know the > language? > If you are a program coordinator, how has TPR worked in your program? > If > not TPR, what? > Paula > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "phil cash cash" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:33 AM > Subject: [ILAT] Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami (fwd) > > >> Wednesday, June 29, 2005 >> Dictionary may preserve language of the Miami >> >> The Associated Press >> > http://news.enquirer.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050629/NEWS01/ > 50629039 > 9/1056 >> >> MIAMI, Okla. - Without a fluent speaker left, the Miami Tribe of >> Oklahoma hopes to revive its language through the publication of a >> dictionary. >> >> Daryl Baldwin, a co-editor of the dictionary, said the book is drawn >> from records spanning three centuries, beginning with dictionaries >> created by French missionaries of the late 17th and early 18th >> centuries and including word lists and texts collected in the 19th and >> early 20th centuries. The project, a collaborative effort with Miami >> University of Ohio, began in 1991. >> >> "Our language is rich and complex," said Baldwin, 42. "The dictionary >> proves it is a lie that the 'savage' Indian only needed 2,000 or 3,000 >> words to communicate." >> >> The language died out as part of an English-only campaign the U.S. >> government conducted in an assimilation policy that lasted into the >> 1960s. >> >> "I never learned the language," said Floyd Leonard, the tribe's >> 78-year-old chief. "It wasn't something that was done when I was a >> child." >> >> Baldwin, an Ohio native and Miami Tribe of Oklahoma member, said a >> language is part of what defines a people. >> >> "Most of us have been removed from our cultural heritage," Baldwin >> said. >> "We started asking, What is Miami? Without speakers of the language, >> it's hard to get a glimpse of what that means. Language is culture." >> >> The dictionary came out about two weeks ago. Other projects planned >> include a field guide to plant species found in the tribe's historical >> lands in Ohio and Indiana expected to be finished later this year, and >> a mapping project that will reclaim tribal place names, which is under >> way. >> >> An audio CD of Miami speakers that contains vocabulary, phrases, >> conversation, the Miami origin story and the Lord's Prayer was >> completed in 2002. >> > From dzo at BISHARAT.NET Tue Jul 12 04:51:02 2005 From: dzo at BISHARAT.NET (Don Osborn) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 04:51:02 -0000 Subject: Fwd: Transcription of Tera (Nigeria); comparisons with work on Welsh (UK) Message-ID: FYI... According to Ethnologue, this language has about 100,000 speakers. DZO --- In AfricanLanguages at yahoogroups.com, "Donald Z. Osborn" wrote: FYI. This is an interesting item about language work in part of Nigeria with comparisons to work on Welsh. (Link from H-Hausa).. DZO 'It is the year of Africa. Let's support them in education' Jul 7 2005 http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=15708302 &method=fu\ ll&siteid=50082&headline=--it-is-the-year-of-africa--let-s-support- them-in-educa\ tion--name_page.html Jenny Rees, Western Mail Dr Paul Tench has been working with a community in Nigeria to record their language in written form for the first time since the 1930s. Here he describes the work done to form a new written language and the comparisons between the Tera language and Welsh. AGAINST the background of tensions and conflict in Nigeria in recent years, a new determination has emerged to assert local self-identity, their language and culture, a distinctiveness from the majority culture. Compare to Wales in the 1950s: monolingual Welsh-speaking children having to be educated in primary school in a "foreign" language. The political will transformed the linguistic landscape of Wales and brought about a sense of nationhood, respect for the local language, government support for initiatives in education, and the media, literature, and public bilingualism. This sense of concern in Gombe State, in north-east Nigeria, led to an approach to an American linguistics charity, The Seed Company. They respond to local initiatives with expertise in developing a spelling system and training in translation, principally for Luke's Gospel. They assembled a small team of linguists to analyse the local languages of Gombe State, in response to these local initiatives. Small teams gathered for a three-week workshop held in Gombe State. One such team represented the Tera language - two retired men, a civil servant and a teacher, educated and able to read and write in Hausa and English. We recorded a story, played it back word by word, phrase by phrase and they attempted to spell their language from their knowledge of Hausa and English spellings. The theory behind the project is that language is in the mind; we carry a large stock of words in our minds - all the words we know. They represent all the things, qualities, actions and so on that we have ever experienced for ourselves. We carry all the grammatical patterns we know - they represent all the kinds of situations we have experienced (who does what to whom). We know what is acceptable, what is not and what is marginal. We know how to be polite and impolite, how to put a message across, how to get things done. All this is stored in the mind. We also know how to pronounce all our words - there may be a few that we feel rather uncertain about, but we are able to learn how to pronounce any new word we come across. We have in our minds a pronunciation system for English which consists of a number of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables, rhythm and intonation. The whole of this pronunciation system is in the mind, ready for use any time we speak. Even illiterate people have all this in their minds - what they don't have is a spelling system in their minds that they can use. We can teach them. But what about people who don't have a spelling system at all in their language? Our methodology was to use the skills they have developed for reading and writing the other languages that they know. An alphabet - spelling system - might as well conform as closely as possible to the other languages that they have to engage with, so that people can transfer skills from one language to another. The ideal spelling system matches sounds to letters in a regular and consistent way, much as Welsh does - and Hausa - and not like English! The Tera team used Hausa spelling as a basis for the vowels and consonants as far as they could, and supplemented it with a few items from English like p and ch. They got the idea of using h to mean "something like"; for example, as sh is a bit like an s in sound (think of how Welsh spells the sh sound), so zh is used for a sound a bit like z (actually like the middle sound of leisure and vision - and just like in Dr Zhivago!). They use kh for a sound similar to k, equivalent to Welsh ch; and parallel to kh, they need a gh. They use ng at the beginning of words just like in Welsh, and also mb and nd, but the most amazing thing is that they have exactly the same sound as a Welsh ll. I truly was amazed, because in all my reading and research for this project, there was never a hint that any language in Nigeria had anything like our Welsh ll. But they too were amazed that a visitor - and a white man at that - could say their own special distinctive sound without any trouble! Their own name for themselves also contains the Welsh ll: Nyimatli (Welsh spelling: niumallu). The tl sound does not occur in Hausa or in English, and they could not use ll, because it is possible to have words with a double ll sounding in the middle of their words, but they do not have the possibility of a l sound following a t sound. To complete the consonant chart, Tera has so-called implosive sounds like Hausa, where you get a kind of b, d, g by sucking air in; they simply use the special Hausa letters for the first two and q for the third. The vowels were much simpler, just six of them. Five are easy, and they could use the five vowel letters of our alphabet: a (as in man), e (as in men), i (as in Welsh ni), o (as in Welsh glo) and u (as in glue). Their sixth vowel has a distinctly North Walian flavour to it, just like their pronunciation of ty ('house'), but the Tera have chosen to spell it with u. One enterprising man has produced an alphabet chart and two little booklets of stories from the Bible and is planning to produce a series of wall charts on things they use at home, at school, on types of animals and birds, and so on. Others are undergoing translation training to prepare the Gospels in Tera. One of them is doing a computing course to enable the team to produce their own printed materials in Tera; another, who did his Masters in Education at Cardiff University, has produced a training manual to help teachers to learn to read and write their own language. One great hope is that local governments will be persuaded to introduce reading and writing in Tera in primary schools. Who is paying for all this? Primarily it is the local community. The whole project is theirs; the initiative was theirs and the ongoing support, and The Seed Company has responded in kind. But the planning and the decision making beyond that lie in the hands in the local community. It is their project; we have helped to establish it, but with their orthography and training, and with enthusiasm and enterprise, they will carry it on. Enthusiasm? Goodness me! I couldn't stop them. We began each morning at 8.30am and continued non-stop until 12.30pm, and if lunch was late, we had to carry on until it arrived. We began again after a siesta at 2pm and continued, again non-stop, until 6pm - or later if the evening meal was delayed. We kept this pace up for three intensive weeks. We began work on an elementary dictionary - we needed to do that to be sure of where words began and ended. This is the year for Africa. Don't think of Africa as just a hopeless case, with rampant HIV/AIDS, famine, poverty, corruption and dictatorships. Africa is more than that: there are also plenty of ordinary people with honest hopes and ambitions, great concern and compassion, a will to achieve something good for their community, resourceful, skilled and educated, ready to work with just a little help from others. Let's hope that our governments and NGOs will support all such efforts, in education as well as health and the environment. Paul Tench is Senior Lecturer, Centre for Language and Communication Research at Cardiff University Copyright and Trade Mark Notice ? owned by or licensed to Trinity Mirror Plc 2005 --- End forwarded message --- From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 13:45:37 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 06:45:37 -0700 Subject: Anishinaabe Language Research Assistant (fwd) Message-ID: Subject: [WIN] Language position Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 09:53:36 -0500 From: Jim St. Arnold Reply-To: Win at wisind.net To: win at wisind.net Please pass this on to anyone interested. Miigwetch, Jim St. Arnold POSITION DESCRIPTION: Anishinaabe Language Research Assistant - 2 year position (Due to grant restrictions position ends September 29, 2007) Salary - Starting at GLIFWC Grade 6 Step 3 - $26,041 Closing Date: July 29, 2005 Duties: 1. Conduct preliminary research on books, narratives, treaties, treaty journals and archived maps to locate the traditional names of locations within the 1836, 1837, and 1842 Chippewa ceded territories for meetings with tribal elders and native speakers. 2. Assist in developing database for listing of Anishinaabe names of plant, animal, fish, bird, and other species found in the Chippewa ceded territory and enter collected information into database. 3. Meet with elders and native speakers to complete community research on local Anishinaabe names of locations within each region and the meaning (i.e. translation) of Anishinaabe names and include the information into data bases. 4. Assist in video and audio taping of elder and native speaker meetings. 5. Oversee placement of location names into GLIFWC?s GIS mapping system, ensuring that locations are correctly identified with proper name. 6. Assist in development of Anishinaabe Language Natural Resource Dictionary/Guide CD and book. 7. Assist in archival of all collected information, to include video, audio, meeting minutes, and surveys. 8. Other duties as assigned. Qualifications: 1. A minimum of medium fluency level in Ojibwe language. 2. 2 years experience working with tribal elders and traditional leaders. 3. 2 years experience in a research related field or equivalent educational training. 4. Should have computer knowledge including use of word processing and database programs. 5. Valid driver?s license and must be insurable. 6. Willing and able to travel, must have own vehicle. Native American Preference: All applicants will be considered but a Native American preference will be given if all other qualifications are equal. Send application and/or resume to: Sharon Nelis, Secretary Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission Odanah, WI 54861 715/682-6619 ext 138 fax 715/682-9294 _______________________________________________ Win mailing list Win at wisind.net http://wisind.net/mailman/listinfo/win_wisind.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:48:36 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:48:36 -0700 Subject: Learning an old language (fwd) Message-ID: Learning an old language Thursday, 7 July 2005 http://forbes.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=news&subclass=local&category=general%20news&story_id=406746&y=2005&m=7 Children living along the Lachlan will soon be speaking Wiradjuri again. Forbes North Public School and Yoorana Gunya Family Violence Healing Centre have received an $83,000 grant to teach the regional Aboriginal language. The school will employ four Aboriginal tutors who will be trained to teach the language and then help teachers in the classroom. Their experience will be developed into teaching resources and published for the other schools in the region. Teacher Michele Herbert, whose classes have learned Wiradjuri for the past three years, said she and her students loved the language. "The kids love learning the songs," she said. Performances in Wiradjuri were a highlight of last week's school NAIDOC celebrations as was labelling body parts with their Aboriginal names. Mrs Herbert said the programme would not only keep the Wiradjuri language alive in Forbes, it would provide the children with the skills to learn a second language at a young age. "It is also building higher self-esteem and tolerance in all students," she said. "I think reviving the Aboriginal culture is going to make stronger links between all communities in our region. "We are building positive relationships between the Aboriginal community and the school - and the whole community." It also remains a relevant language for the school to teach, given 30 per cent of students are Aboriginal. "A lot of people use Aboriginal words around this region," Mrs Herbert said. "A lot of place names, for example, are culturally significant." The Wiradjuri unit Mrs Herbert developed for use in her own classes is already due to be published on the Board of Studies website for other schools to use as a resource. There is potential for the joint programme to expand to a three-year project if it is successful this year. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:53:58 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:53:58 -0700 Subject: Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer (fwd link) Message-ID: Language, Thought and Cognition Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer Posted on Sunday, July 10 2005 @ 18:06 CDT http://psychology.plebius.org/article.php?article=780 From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 14:58:15 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 07:58:15 -0700 Subject: Indian community seeks to preserve language (fwd) Message-ID: Indian community seeks to preserve language 7/12/2005 10:18 AM By: The Associated Press http://www.capitalnews9.com/content/headlines/?ArID=139762&SecID=33 A Mohawk Indian village founded more than a dozen years ago in the tribe's ancestral region is seeking to keep its native language alive. The Mohawk community in Palatine in Montgomery County is hosting the Mohawk Indian Language Immersion Program. Students participating in the program said they see the course as a way to embrace their culture. Richard Nolan, 53, was born in a Mohawk community south of Montreal, but told the Daily Gazette that he felt he had lost part of himself because he could speak English, but not Mohawk. He and a dozen other people are now learning the language of their forefathers through the Mohawk immersion course. Some students hail from nearby Schenectady, but others come from Mohawk Indian communities as far away as Kentucky, Rhode Island and Maryland. While staying at the 320-acre village, the students pitch in with chores in between studying eight hours each day for two weeks. Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 12 20:16:31 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:16:31 -0600 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050708065526.84c40gw4ckk0ks4g@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. Thanks, Phil. Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 ?????? BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of Invention" to 37. ?????? The 2005 awards go to: ?????? - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life Sciences, Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of growing neurons; ?????? - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics Division -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, warping, mold, and other effects of age; ?????? - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. ?????? "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and researchers are hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have played an important role in both our economic and national security." ?????? "We're looking for products and processes that can change people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D 100 Awards annually since 1963. ?????? "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." ?????? The Neural Matrix CCD: ?????? Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved mental functions in patients. ?????? In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the neural network. ?????? Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). ?????? The Optical Sound Restoration System: ?????? Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional restoration. ?????? By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high fidelity. ?????? Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of recordings in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab technology. ?????? Ion Mobility Analysis: ?????? For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels of total cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. ?????? Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for counting. ?????? Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and research labs. ?????? The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on October 20. ?????? - - - - ?????? CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov ?????? NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with images, is available at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. ?????? ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. ?????? ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: ?????? For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . ?????? For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . ?????? For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . ?????? For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . ?????? Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at info at cellularbioengineering.com. ?????? For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . ??????Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 12 22:40:31 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:40:31 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050712201639.8BDC91A36@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! Phil UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > Thanks, Phil. > Mia > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > Technology Advances (fwd) > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > Advances > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > > ?????? BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > Invention" to 37. > > ?????? The 2005 awards go to: > > ?????? - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > Sciences, > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > growing neurons; > > ?????? - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > Division > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > > ?????? - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > > ?????? "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > researchers are > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > > ?????? "We're looking for products and processes that can change > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > > ?????? "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > > ?????? The Neural Matrix CCD: > > ?????? Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > mental functions in patients. > > ?????? In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > neural network. > > ?????? Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > Projects Agency (DARPA). > > ?????? The Optical Sound Restoration System: > > ?????? Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > restoration. > > ?????? By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > fidelity. > > ?????? Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > recordings > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > technology. > > ?????? Ion Mobility Analysis: > > ?????? For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > of total > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > > ?????? Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > counting. > > ?????? Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > research labs. > > ?????? The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > Berkeley > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > October 20. > > ?????? - - - - > > ?????? CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > > ?????? NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > images, is > available at > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > > ?????? ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > > ?????? ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > > ?????? For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > > ?????? For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > > ?????? For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > > ?????? For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > > ?????? Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > > ?????? For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > > ??????Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From jtucker at STARBAND.NET Wed Jul 13 01:00:42 2005 From: jtucker at STARBAND.NET (Jan Tucker) Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 21:00:42 -0400 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050712154031.k54w4gck4oc4ggck@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: wow, Are you saying then the technology is available, and you have digitized versions of Ishi's voice? That is truly amazing. I'd love to hear a sample, can you share or post something on your website so I could hear what it sounds like also. Jan -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 6:41 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! Phil UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > Thanks, Phil. > Mia > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > Technology Advances (fwd) > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > Advances > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > > BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > Invention" to 37. > > The 2005 awards go to: > > - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > Sciences, > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > growing neurons; > > - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > Division > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > > - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > > "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > researchers are > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > > "We're looking for products and processes that can change > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > > "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > > The Neural Matrix CCD: > > Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > mental functions in patients. > > In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > neural network. > > Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > Projects Agency (DARPA). > > The Optical Sound Restoration System: > > Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > restoration. > > By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > fidelity. > > Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > recordings > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > technology. > > Ion Mobility Analysis: > > For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > of total > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > > Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > counting. > > Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > research labs. > > The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > Berkeley > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > October 20. > > - - - - > > CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > > NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > images, is > available at > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > > ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > > ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > > For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > > For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > > For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > > For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > > Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > > For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > > Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov From cashcash at U.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 13 16:56:56 2005 From: cashcash at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Phillip E Cash Cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 09:56:56 -0700 Subject: Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology Advances (fwd) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hi Jan (and everybody), no, i do not have recordings of Ishi. ;-) the news article is the one that had the original mention of new work being carried out on recordings of Ishi. my own work with wax cylinder recordings for Nez Perce (Sahaptian) can be found at my website. http://www.u.arizona.edu/~cashcash just go to "Research and downloadable papers" it is pretty basic as i am using commercially available and free audio editing software to digitally enhance the digital copies (of wax cylinder recordings) that i have access to. on my webpage you will find a quicktime movie file containing a Nez Perce speech from circa 1907. the audio content is my first attempt to enhance this particular wax cylinder recording. since this first attempt i am continuing to make slight improvements. nonetheless, i created a Flash-based multimedia movie using Quicktime and in it is contained the enhanced audio with its synchronous translation. but in trying to get examples, several enahanced versions of wax cylinder recordings were sent to me from a professional(or semi?) sound editor and his attempts were not that great. while alot of the noise was removed, they sounded like they were talking through a tin can. i could easily do that myself with SoundForge 6.0. so since then, i have been experimenting with PRAAT (free audio software) with the help of a classmate of mine here at the University of Arizona. nothing spectacular, but if you are interested in the speech itself and are a speaker of that particular language then it is quite spectacular. i think linguists who specialize in sound can do a lot to help endangered language communities who need these recordings to revitalize their language. phil cash cash UofA, ILAT list manager On Tue, 12 Jul 2005, Jan Tucker wrote: > wow, Are you saying then the technology is available, and you have digitized versions of Ishi's voice? That is truly amazing. I'd love to hear a sample, can you share or post something on your website so I could hear what it sounds like also. > > Jan > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology > [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of phil cash cash > Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 6:41 PM > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > Subject: Re: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards > for Technology Advances (fwd) > > > yea, this is pretty cool...recovering Ishi's voice from the wax > cylinders. myself, i have been tinkering with some digitzed wax > cylinder recordings in SoundForge 6.0 but it can allow you to edit only > the most obvious cracks and pops. editing in PRATT (free phonetics > audio editor) took it one step further but still a lot of noise. > > i hope they post a set of samples somewhere containing the original > along with the new high fidelity version. i can't wait to hear it! > > Phil > UofA > > Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > > > Some people ought to be really interested in this Optical Sound Restoration. > > I understand there are hundreds of wax cylinders, and other recordings, of > > Ndn languages. Being able to make them available in an easily-sharable, > > non-destructive format would be really good for Tribes. > > > > Thanks, Phil. > > Mia > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] > > On Behalf Of phil cash cash > > Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 7:55 AM > > To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU > > Subject: [ILAT] Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for > > Technology Advances (fwd) > > > > Thu Jul 7 14:21:14 2005 Pacific Time > > > > Berkeley Lab Wins Three Prestigious R&D 100 Awards for Technology > > Advances > > http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20050707.135603&time > > =14%2021%20PDT&year=2005&public=0 > > > > BERKELEY, Calif., July 7 (AScribe Newswire) -- Scientists at the > > Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have > > garnered three R&D 100 Awards, R&D Magazine's picks for the 100 most > > technologically significant new products of 2005. This is the first > > time since 1992 that Berkeley Lab has captured three of the prestigious > > awards in a single year, bringing the Lab's total of these "Oscars of > > Invention" to 37. > > > > The 2005 awards go to: > > > > - The Neural Matrix CCD, created by members of the Life > > Sciences, > > Accelerator and Fusion Research, and Engineering divisions, being > > further developed in tandem with co-award winners Cellular > > Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) of Honolulu, Hawaii -- the only > > state-of-the-art technology for patterning and monitoring networks of > > growing neurons; > > > > - The Optical Sound Restoration System, from the Physics > > Division > > -- the first "touchless" technology for restoring early sound recordings > > on metal foil, wax, plastic, and other media, regardless of scratches, > > warping, mold, and other effects of age; > > > > - Ion Mobility Analysis, developed by members of the Life > > Sciences and Engineering divisions -- providing fast, inexpensive, > > accurate measurement and counting of individual lipoprotein particles > > to assess the risk of coronary artery disease. > > > > "These awards demonstrate that DOE scientists and > > researchers are > > hard at work developing the technologies of the future," said Secretary > > of Energy Samuel W. Bodman. "In the past, breakthroughs like these have > > played an important role in both our economic and national security." > > > > "We're looking for products and processes that can change > > people's lives for the better, improve the standard of living for large > > numbers of people, save lives, promote good health, and clean up the > > environment," say the editors of R&D Magazine, which has handed out R&D > > 100 Awards annually since 1963. > > > > "Two of this year's winning technologies have already been > > licensed by the Technology Transfer Department to companies that are > > working to bring them to market and benefit the public," says Pam > > Seidenman of Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, which aided > > the scientists in crafting the complex and demanding applications, "and > > the third may be deployed by the Library of Congress." > > > > The Neural Matrix CCD: > > > > Initially designed to help scientists learn how neurons in the > > human nervous system communicate with each other, the Neural Matrix CCD > > is the first step in creating combined biological and electronic chip > > implants that can provide neural networks of living, interconnected > > nerve cells for testing drugs and sensing toxins for homeland security > > -- and, someday, restoring the use of limbs and eyesight and improved > > mental functions in patients. > > > > In 2004, a team of scientists and engineers led by Eleanor > > Blakely and Ian Brown, including Kathy Bjornstad, Jim Galvin, Othon > > Monteiro, and Chris Rosen, developed a technique for growing the first > > large arrays of networked neurons on the prepared optical surface of a > > charge-coupled device (CCD). Diamond-like carbon deposited on the > > optical surface of the CCD is patterned in fine detail, then coated by > > a continuous layer of cell-culture collagen, and finally seeded with > > neurons. The coated CCDs now have millions of individual sensors that > > can record changes in electrical potential from individual nerve cells > > in real time while precisely mapping each neuron's activity within the > > neural network. > > > > Development of the Neural Matrix CCD is now under way in > > collaboration with Cellular Bioengineering Incorporated (CBI), a life > > sciences company focusing on the bioengineering of tissues for the > > replacement and repair of injured and diseased organs; CBI researchers > > Amy Weintraub, Ryan Littrell, Kevin T.C. Jim, Kevin Chinn, Leslie > > Isaki, and Geming Lui have contributed. Current research focuses on > > detection of neurotoxins and is funded by the Defense Advanced Research > > Projects Agency (DARPA). > > > > The Optical Sound Restoration System: > > > > Since 1877, when Thomas Edison recorded "Mary had a Little Lamb" > > on a tinfoil cylinder, recordings on diverse media like foil and wax > > cylinders, shellac and vinyl discs, acetate sheets, and plastic > > dictation belts have captured an incredible range of material: the > > singing voice of Enrico Caruso; the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay; > > the lost language of Ishi, the last Yahi Indian; the words of > > historical figures like Alfred Lord Tennyson and Amelia Earhart. Many > > of these can no longer be played and are too delicate for traditional > > restoration. > > > > By adapting methods for measuring particle tracks in high-energy > > physics experiments, Carl Haber and Victor Fadeyev created a noncontact > > method for restoring damaged and fragile mechanical recordings. Without > > ever touching the cylinder, disk, or belt, their technology produces > > two- or three-dimensional digital images of its surface, which can be > > computer analyzed to reconstruct the original recorded sound in high > > fidelity. > > > > Archivists estimate that 40 percent of the millions of > > recordings > > in the world's major sound archives -- including the U.S. Library of > > Congress, the British National Library, the New York Public Library, > > the Edison National Historical Site in New Jersey (with its trove of > > cylinders), and historical archives in major universities and private > > collections -- could benefit from restoration with the Berkeley Lab > > technology. > > > > Ion Mobility Analysis: > > > > For over fifty years, standard tests that measure levels > > of total > > cholesterol, "bad" low-density lipoproteins (LDL), "good" high-density > > lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides have been used to evaluate the > > risk of heart disease. But half the heart attacks in the U.S. each year > > strike people with normal cholesterol levels. The distribution of size, > > quantity, and type of lipoprotein particles -- which are much more > > various than standard tests can account for -- provides a far better > > indicator of whether or not someone is at risk. > > > > Henry Benner, Ron Krauss, and Patricia Blanche developed ion > > mobility analysis to measure the size distribution and count the number > > of individual particles in all classes of lipoproteins in a single > > analytical step. The technology measures the drift of charged, > > aerosolized lipoproteins as they are dragged through air by the force > > of an electric field. Charge and drift velocity separate the particles > > by weight and size. The sorted particles travel to a detector for > > counting. > > > > Ion mobility analysis is faster and potentially less expensive > > than current technologies and is likely to be used more frequently in > > the evaluation and management of risk for cardiovascular disease. Its > > ability to study the entire range of lipoprotein particles with > > unrivalled accuracy will make it a valuable tool for both clinical and > > research labs. > > > > The R&D 100 Award-winning technologies were nominated by > > Berkeley > > Lab's Technology Transfer Department. All winners of the 2005 award will > > receive a plaque at R&D Magazine's formal awards banquet in Chicago on > > October 20. > > > > - - - - > > > > CONTACT: Pam Seidenman, Berkeley Lab Media Relations, > > 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > > > > NOTE TO EDITORS: An html version of this release, with > > images, is > > available at > > http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/TT-R&Dawards-2005.html. > > > > ABOUT BERKELEY LAB: Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy > > national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts > > unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of > > California. Visit our website at www.lbl.gov. > > > > ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: > > > > For more on the Neural Matrix CCD, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1888.html . > > > > For more on the Optical Sound Restoration System, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl1855.html . > > > > For more on Ion Mobility Analysis, visit > > http://www.lbl.gov/tt/success_stories/lbnl1730.html . > > > > For more about Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department, > > visit http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/ . > > > > Cellular Bioengineering, Inc. (CBI) may be contacted at > > info at cellularbioengineering.com. > > > > For more about R&D Magazine and the R&D 100 Awards, visit > > http://www.rdmag.com/default.aspx . > > > > Media Contact: Pam Seidenman, 510-486-6461, psseidenman at lbl.gov > From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:09:32 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:09:32 -0700 Subject: Mike Steketee: Aboriginal languages the remedy (fwd) Message-ID: Mike Steketee: Aboriginal languages the remedy 14jul05 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/ 0,5744,15920994%255E7583,00.html RICHARD Trudgen is not surprised by this week's report to federal and state governments showing that, with a few exceptions, we are not making much progress on overcoming indigenous disadvantage. A steering committee run through the Productivity Commission found that, although there have been improvements in Aboriginal employment and education, there has been little change in many health indicators and crime and imprisonment rates have worsened. Five years ago, at the request of Aboriginal leaders in northeast Arnhem Land, where he has worked as a (white) community development officer for most of the past 30 years, Trudgen wrote Why Warriors Lie Down and Die. The book gave the indigenous perspective on the crisis facing the once proud, independent and economically self-sufficient Yolngu people of the area. It helped solve the riddle of why nothing governments do seems to make much difference in Aboriginal communities. It highlighted the misunderstandings that arise from the cultural and communications gaps - or, more correctly, gulfs - between black and white Australians. He offered alternatives, based on dealing with people in their first language and giving them back control over their lives, which he argued could solve problems as diverse as poor health, inadequate housing and petrol sniffing. So how is the situation now in Arnhem Land, I asked him this week. "It's worse," he replied. "It's like we never wrote the book and no one ever noticed it. The health indicators have all got worse. Many of the medical people who come here aren't even receiving adequate cultural awareness training any more." Yet Trudgen retains a determined optimism. A radio service for Yolngu started last year, without government support, broadcasting in the local language and English. "We are on the edge of a massive breakthrough in communication," he says. This week is National Diabetes Week and he estimates that the broadcast material is reaching about two-thirds of the 8000 Yolngu, with indications that it is making a big difference in knowledge of the disease. "People who don't have radios know nothing about diabetes," he says. "Some ask whether it is a cancer." It is difficult for other Australians to appreciate the seriousness of what Trudgen describes as a two-way crisis in communication. People ignore advice to change their diets until it is explained to them, usually in their own language, what diabetes is and why giving up salt, sugar and cigarettes can overcome it. Trudgen cites the case of a woman who was unable to explain to her doctor that she had splitting headaches, and was being examined instead for hookworm. A mother lost her five-year-old son to pneumonia after failing to give one of the drugs dispensed for him because she did not know what it would do. Because health clinics and their employees have no authority under traditional law, many men do not attend them. What frustrates Trudgen is the attitude of governments and in particular bureaucracies. "People are rolling out the same old stupid programs for petrol sniffing and the rest," he says. He argues that people are mistaken in thinking that children sniff because they are bored, "so let's go and teach them how to play basketball". Much more important is the virtual disappearance of bilingual education. "They learn almost nothing in school other than that they are incapable of learning," he says. "You may as well be teaching them in Japanese: they cannot process what is being taught. They feel bad about themselves and they sniff because they want to forget who they are." Recreational programs introduced into the Ramingining community in the early 1980s made the problem worse. Organised by non-Aborigines, they alienated the children from elders and parents, while some became sniffers so they could join the programs. Success came when children were educated about the effects of sniffing, including permanent brain damage, and elders were encouraged to revive a traditional ceremony that allowed them to give instruction to sniffers. Sniffing stopped in Ramingining and has never restarted, says Trudgen, although there are other problems with drug abuse. Trudgen shares with Aboriginal leaders such as Noel Pearson views on the destructive effects of welfare dependence. But he parts ways with Pearson and others who emphasise the use of English. "I'm afraid you cannot force people to learn a language: you can only force them to lose a language, particularly academic concepts," he says. "That is why you end up with a lot of urban Aboriginal people who have no academic language capacity. You actually de-educate people." Trudgen argues for the need to give back to the people control over their lives, and he believes the key to that is language. "Government will say it is ridiculous to say everyone who comes to our communities should learn the language," he says. "But to find a teacher or nursing sister, it costs government anywhere between $40,000 and $60,000, and sometimes they don't even last three months. It seems wise to pay them a little bit to learn the language and slow that merry-go-round of people coming in and out." Trudgen's views find some resonance in this week's report from the Productivity Commission. "Indigenous language is fundamentally linked with indigenous culture and law and these are intrinsically linked with indigenous wellbeing," it says. And it attributes the success of the governing council in Wadeye in the Northern Territory to the use of traditional structures that give it legitimacy. Mike Steketee is The Australian's National affairs editor. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 6051 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:17:55 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:17:55 -0700 Subject: Cree language retention spells pride (fwd) Message-ID: Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Cree language retention spells pride http://www.wawatay.on.ca/ Letter to the editor, I?m writing to commend Joyce Hunter for her informative article ?Money is Not Enough to Preserve Languages,? which was published in the March 24 issue of your paper. In the article Hunter reported on the alarming number of speakers of Aboriginal languages across Canada who are choosing to communicate in one of Canada?s two ?official languages,? rather than in their Aboriginal languages (a situation known as ?language shift.?) She noted that if this trend continues many of Canada?s Aboriginal languages could become extinct within just one generation. There is one small correction I would like to make to this article. At one point I am paraphrased as saying that ?there are some socioeconomic indicators which suggest that teaching Aboriginal children an Aboriginal language will not get those children a job.? That is not what I intended to say. What I intended to say is that among some Canadians (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) I have encountered the attitude that teaching Aboriginal children Aboriginal languages will not get those children a job. I happen to think that such an attitude is wrong and I know of no socioeconomic indicators that lend credence to it. It is my opinion that speaking two (or even more) languages enhances the ability of Aboriginal (and non-Aboriginal) people to get well-paying jobs. In a companion article in the same issue of Wawatay News, Hunter reported on a research project in which I am involved in Thompson, Manitoba. The project is ongoing and involves documenting factors which contribute to mastering Cree and English in homes in which both languages are spoken. An 11-page general survey of 61 Aboriginal parents revealed that language shift is affecting all generations. The survey also reveals that parents who grew up speaking Cree when they were children now tend to speak Cree only to their parents and grandparents and speak English and a mixture of Cree and English known as ?Creenglish? to their friends, siblings, and children. In interviews with our Elders advisory group and a focus group of 11 parents, we found that one reason for this language shift may be a sense of shame stemming from residential school experiences and the former federal-government policy of ?assimilation.? Parents in our study valued Cree highly and saw bilingual Cree-English programs to be important for the retrieval and renewal of the Cree language. When our project began we thought, based on anecdotal evidence from teachers, that we might find a few families with preschool or school-aged children experiencing extreme difficulties mastering both Cree and English. Cases such as this ? sometimes called ?semilingualism? ? have been documented in minority language situations in other parts of the world and seem to be related to challenges sometimes faced in mastering two languages in a bilingual environment. No cases of semilingualism were documented in our study. The 61 families participating in our general survey were highly educated (80 per cent have finished high school and 58 per cent have either completed or are completing post-secondary education) and seem to represent an emerging Aboriginal middle class in Thompson. The high value they place on Cree, and the efforts they are now making to instill pride in their children about using it, are one of the best ways of reversing ?language shift? and ensuring a bright future for the Cree language in northern Manitoba. George Fulford, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Winnipeg -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4056 bytes Desc: not available URL: From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Wed Jul 13 17:21:00 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 10:21:00 -0700 Subject: Aboriginal language training to get boost in N.W.T. (fwd) Message-ID: Aboriginal language training to get boost in N.W.T. Last updated Jul 12 2005 11:13 AM MDT http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=nwt-languages12072005 Officials with the N.W.T.'s department of Education Culture and Employment say they want to strengthen aboriginal languages through better training and coordination to ensure more children understand their native tongue. The territorial government is hosting a workshop to help instructors figure out the best way to teach, a welcome and much needed move say some. Teachers say that keeping aboriginal languages alive is an ongoing struggle when English is everywhere. According to Statistics Canada, only 25 per cent of aboriginal children speak or understand their native language. "The language instruction content varies I would say from school to school and from class to class, depending on the instructor," says Sabet Biscaye. "There's no consistent approach." Biscaye, a Chipewyan language coordinator, says many teachers don't have a teaching background. While there is a curriculum, Biscaye says there's little support, prompting many teachers to try to find their own way of teaching. Dr. Stephen Greymorning, an international expert on teaching aboriginal languages, will be part of next week's workshop. He'll show the instructors how to help their students learn faster, through immersion. Deputy Minister Mark Cleveland says it's the first time in years that language instructors will gather to learn new techniques together. "The programming that we have in place now has been successful in a number of areas, but we think we can do better and we think that with the involvement of instructors from across the ages that the programming that is offered can be strengthened. Biscaye says bringing teachers together is, however, not just about learning new teaching techniques. "It's more than about the content of the workshop or the training. It's also the networking and the contacts that the people make because there's some people with some very creative ideasand approaches." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 2100 bytes Desc: not available URL: From masuhchim at SISQTEL.NET Thu Jul 14 15:23:29 2005 From: masuhchim at SISQTEL.NET (jim ferrara) Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:23:29 -0700 Subject: one more curricular factor In-Reply-To: <53def7c3d636cbfa97dc919a53998ce9@humboldt.k12.ca.us> Message-ID: Sarah: By the way, in order to give you a more complete picture of the advanced curriculum situation: Susan, without explanation, underpaid me $1500 when I submitted the draft to her, the capriciousness of which I have yet to protest. I have not heard back from her about the grammar proposal that I made. I suppose that she and Greg have needed the time to figure out what to say to me about it. My experiences with the language teaching crew down at Hoopa during the past few months have been important sources of moral support for me as my personal discouragement with my ANA grant activities has compounded the mass of jello that Susan's and my relationship had already become. Those timely experiences down there have been most helpful to me in nurturing a perspective that is not confined to the Karuk Language Program box. So, life has been good to me anyway. Yew's visiting this week along with a couple of friends. Kai and I spent several days together last week. Still flowing at an above normal rate, the river is perfect for hot weather swimming right now. I've been learning a bit about weaving from Brian and net-making from Ernie Spenks' son... Oh yeh, incidentally, yesterday Silish sent me his list of the Hupa words which correspond to the Karuk ones that I sent him a while back--you know: the "cultural cognates" (Melodie's term) or "comparative semantics" (mine) list? Anyway, vaa v?ra k?ch pay?em. 'Hope all's well with you folks, chim From pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET Fri Jul 15 15:21:54 2005 From: pasxapu at DAKOTACOM.NET (phil cash cash) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 08:21:54 -0700 Subject: Majority of languages on verge of extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Last Updated: 06:00 AM NST Kathmandu - July 15, 2005 - Asar 31, 2062 Nepal Sambat 1125 Tachhalagaa Nawami - Friday Majority of languages on verge of extinction By Namoti Nembang http://www.gorkhapatra.org.np/pageloader.php?file=2005/07/15/nation/ nation4 Nepal is a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country. As stated in the central Bureau of statisties CBS Report 2001, more than 100 social groups speak 92+ languages. Amongst them Tibeto-Burman Languages have the largest number of speakers. Out of these only 16 languages have more than 100,000 speakers of which only three have more than one million speakers. There is no language spoken by 100,000 to 50,000 speakers. Only 18 languages have 50,000 to 10,000 speakers and the rest are spoken by less than 5,000 speakers. These figures show majority of the languages are on the verge of being extinct. However, Tribhuwan University of Nepal and Leipzig University of Germanj are jointly involved in research and documentation of two most endangered languages, Chintang and Puma of eastern Nepal with the financial and technical help of Volkswagon Foundation and Max-Plank Institute of Germany. A programme Lets Talk About Languages coordinated by Kedar Sharma sometime ago depicted the problem and present condition of some of the most endangered languages of Nepal. Among the most dangered languages are Chintang and Puma. There are approximately 2,000 speakers of Chintang in Dhuankuta district. But the Census Report (2001) gives number of speakers only eight (3 men and 5 women). Puma is spoken in certain areas of Khotang district and Udayapur by about 2,500 speakers as against the figure given by CBS Report. The are even other languages such as Lepcha and Bote which are spoken only by the older generations. These are the languages, which only the old people can converse, adults can understand but cannot speak or reply and the children neither understand nor speak. Children having little knowledge of their mother tongue and of which speakers are very less (i.e. 100500) are seriously endangered like Baramu, Tilung and Jerung. Language that is spoken by a handful of people of the older generation and whose number is less than 100 is called a moribund language such as Kusunda and Route. After those speakers die that language is supposed to be dead language. According to Prof. Dr. Nobel Kishor Rai and linguist Bishnu Rai, the seriously endangered Chintang and Puma with only about 2,000 and 2,500 speakers have become multilingual today. They speak Bantawa, Nepali languages and slowly giving up speaking their own mother tongue along with most of the Kiranti languages. Though it is advantageous to be able to speak more than one language, but for a small community like Chintang and Puma, it often becomes deadly because multilingualism also means loosing ones own mother tongue. There are many ways followed for the preservation and revival of languages. For instance, institutionalization research, proper documentation, audio-tapes, audio-video recordings of words, sentences, conversations, folk stories, myths, autobiographical stories, shamanic performances, rituals, transcription of the texts, conversations of child language etc could be done. But it is not sufficient without the State coming forward giving up the policies for language discrimination, they said. Citing examples of language revivals in the world, Nobel Kishore Rai said that the Hebrew language was resurrected after the birth of the state of Israel. Jonkha language whose speakers was not more than 500,000 has been revitalized and now it is the State language of Bhutan and medium of education. Limbu with 50,000-60,000 populations is a living language in Sikkim with rich literature and being taught in schools and colleges. If the community and the speakers are determined to take initiatives, their mother languages can be revitalised. He gave the example of languages like Newar, Limbu, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Magar, Tamang and some of the Rai groups are already moving ahead They say the best way is to speak at home, encourage family members, especially children, to speak in their mother tongue. And by building lexicon, increasing the usage of the language by writing and publishing different kinds of literature, magazines and books. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 4439 bytes Desc: not available URL: From liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Fri Jul 15 15:16:45 2005 From: liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Liko Puha) Date: Fri, 15 Jul 2005 05:16:45 -1000 Subject: Majority of languages on verge of extinction (fwd) Message-ID: Aloha mai, Aole au ma keena ma 15-19/VII/05. E kama?ilio iho me Kala?i no ke noi k?ko?o ?enehana. No ke noi kokua Leok? e leka ia Kamalu Perreira. I am out of the office the 15 thru 19 of July. Na?u me ke aloha, na Liko From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:38:30 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:38:30 -0700 Subject: UNESCO launches Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation (fwd) Message-ID: UNESCO launches Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation 18-07-2005 (UNESCO) http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=19434&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html Increasing its efforts to provide project agents with the necessary tools for the safeguarding of languages in danger of extinction, UNESCO's Endangered Languages Programme is launching a world-wide call for submissions to its new 'Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation'. The Register will serve as a nexus of knowledge supply and demand where experience in language protection projects can be accumulated and made publicly available, in order to give future preservation projects a head start. The rationale behind the newly-launched Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation is simple: a collection of positive experience reports from past and current project agents shall provide a rich source of problem-solving approaches, hands-on solutions, practical information, adaptable models, and do's and don'ts of language preservation, to be easily accessed as a self-help tool by current and future project agents, empowering them in their ongoing efforts. The lessons learned in the face of language endangerment can thus be passed on to a wider circle and a 'new generation' of activists world-wide. For submission to the Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation, reports on any kind of community-based projects by governmental and non-governmental organisations, field agents, community members, and related experts are welcome. A Call for Submissions to the Register is currently being disseminated via international networks and listservs; the Call is also accessible via the Register's website hosted by the Endangered Languages Programme. Each of the world's roughly 6.000 languages reflects a unique world-view and culture complex, thus representing an integral part of living human heritage. Yet experts estimate that today, over 50% of all languages are in danger of extinction. In accordance with UNESCO's Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, it is therefore the Endangered Language Programme's mission to aid in the preservation of linguistic diversity, and to provide assistance to language safeguarding efforts across the globe. The Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation will be a valuable tool for this purpose. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:44:13 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:44:13 -0700 Subject: Saving Oneidas' Language, One Long Word at a Time (fwd) Message-ID: July 18, 2005 Saving Oneidas' Language, One Long Word at a Time By MICHELLE YORK ONEIDA, N.Y. - In 1999, Marion Johns was near death. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/18/nyregion/18oneida.html Advanced Alzheimer's disease had left her bedridden and erased many of her memories. Still, one day, she turned to her daughter, Penny Raymond, and crooned a few words that Penny did not understand. Mrs. Raymond's sister, Shirley Mason, recognized them, though, and translated: "My beautiful little baby." Mrs. Johns had reverted back to an intricate, difficult American Indian language she had learned as a child - Oneida. "She never spoke it to us growing up," said Mrs. Raymond, 51. Few of the 500 members of the Oneida Indian Nation who live on or near this reservation about 30 miles east of Syracuse knew their language. Among Mrs. Raymond's generation, the number of native speakers here was all but nonexistent, and scarce also among Oneida tribes in Wisconsin and Canada. The language was nearly lost. That day, listening to her mother on her deathbed ignited a desire for Mrs. Raymond to keep her language alive. "What's going to happen if we start losing this part of our culture?" she asked. "It's like losing a part of yourselves." Six years later, Mrs. Raymond is not only fluent in Oneida, but she is also passing it on. On a recent summer day, she and Geraldine Feeley were working at their jobs as language teachers, coaxing a handful of young students attending summer camp to count from 1 to 10 in Oneida. The classes were the result of the most unusual and ambitious projects ever undertaken by an American Indian tribe. The Oneida Indian Nation contracted with the language experts at Berlitz to create an intensive curriculum. Then the tribe paid eight people, Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Feeley among them, to study Oneida full time for eight months so they could become fluent. Now, those eight students, who ranged from 26 to 63, have become language instructors and are teaching others, especially the young. "Somebody had to do something to save it," said Sheri Beglen, 45, an instructor. The Oneida Nation has offered language classes since the 1980's. But they were held once or twice a week, too infrequently to be of much use. Then there was the difficulty of the language itself. "The words were so long you had to take a breath to finish pronouncing it," said Brian Patterson, a representative of the Bear Clan, one of three groups that make up the Oneida tribe. He remembered one moment when he stared at a block of words that formed a largely useless phrase. "The interpretation was 'She wears a wristwatch,' " he said. "At that moment, I got so frustrated because I couldn't remember the last time I said that in English, let alone say it in my language. Our elders were not teachers." With no more than the limited financial resources the tribe possessed at the time, the Oneida language might have died out. But in 1993, the tribe opened its Turning Stone casino and resort near Oneida. Today it is the largest employer in a three-county region and generates millions in annual revenue. That allowed the Oneidas to pull themselves out of poverty and invest in cultural projects - chief among them language preservation. >From the outset, the task was daunting. They had few materials to work with. Oneida, like many American Indian languages, was primarily a spoken language, not a written one. In 1939, a Yale anthropologist and expert in American Indian languages, Floyd G. Lounsbury, gave Oneida standardized grammar rules which were embraced by all Oneidas and allowed the language to be written. The tribe first needed to find experts. "I was passing through one year and they were asking me if I knew any fluent speaker who would work with them," said Ray George, 66, who learned Oneida as his first language and lives on the Oneida Nation of the Thames reservation in Ontario, Canada. "Jokingly, I said, 'If you send me a good contract, maybe I'll consider it myself.' Two weeks later I got a call." Mr. George knew how to speak Oneida. A colleague from Ontario knew how to write it. Together they worked with the local Oneidas to translate English phrases into their native language. Then they provided that information to Berlitz so it could develop a curriculum. "For us, it was tough; we don't know Oneida," said Deniz Ghrewati, a Berlitz director, who estimated that among 400 American Indian languages, half are no longer in use. Only one other American Indian tribe, the Lakota tribe, has enlisted the help of Berlitz to preserve its language, but not with the same vigor as the Oneidas, said Ms. Ghrewati. "They were desperate." In the Oneida program, a few tears were shed during the intense training, and one of the students quit. "There were days it was so hard," Mrs. Raymond said. "At night I couldn't sleep cause my mind was going over Oneida words. It was just pounded into our heads." Ms. Ghrewati came to the Oneida reservation for a recent graduation ceremony. "I was actually amazed," she said. "They were joking in Oneida." But the success of the language program will ultimately depend on how well the teachers can spread Oneida among the tribe's youth. One student in Mrs. Raymond's class, Jared Rose, 10, played a few language games with a competitive streak. "It's really fun, actually, to learn the language," he said. "My mom and dad, as soon as I walk in the door, they surround me. They say, 'What have you learned today?' " The time has long passed when Mrs. Raymond could converse with her mother in their native language. Today, she has other goals, saying, "I want to teach my grandchildren." From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon Jul 18 19:49:17 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:49:17 -0700 Subject: Government-backed channel raises concerns about propaganda (fwd) Message-ID: Posted on Mon, Jul. 18, 2005 Government-backed channel raises concerns about propaganda BY GARY MARX Chicago Tribune http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/12160243.htm CARACAS, Venezuela - (KRT) - There were no cameras in place, no anchors and no frenzied producers pushing to make deadline. But Aram Aharonian said everything was on schedule as he toured the partly completed headquarters of a new satellite television station that sees itself as an alternative to CNN, Fox News and European news organizations. "This is a dream, a dream of a lot of people," Aharonian, the station's general director, shouted above the din of construction workers' hammering and drilling. Late this month, Telesur - short for Television of the South - will begin broadcasting 24 hours a day across Latin America. While the network's goal is nothing short of changing the way Latin Americans view themselves and their news, critics say the station could become a propaganda tool for the region's re-emerging left. A pugnacious, pony-tailed journalist, Aharonian argues that United States and other mass media provide a superficial and distorted view of Latin America. He said the cameras show up only to cover disasters and beam images across the region and the world that display ignorance of the continent's complex realities. It is time, he contends, for Latin Americans to determine what is news and how it is reported. "Why do we have to continue seeing ourselves through the eyes of others?" asked Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has lived in Caracas since 1986. "Now we are going to begin seeing ourselves through our own eyes." Instead of fluffy reports about American pop stars or news pieces on distant lands, Telesur plans to focus its lens closer to home, broadcasting weighty documentaries on subjects ranging from the struggle for indigenous rights in Bolivia to the destruction of the Amazon rain forest. One Telesur program will promote tango, vallenato and other Latin sounds while another regular segment will profile groundbreaking Latin Americans. "Nojolivud," a program whose name is derived from a phonetic Spanish spelling of "No Hollywood," will showcase films made outside what Telesur executives call "the Hollywood system." But Telesur's news programs are sure to garner the greatest scrutiny. Although Telesur is a venture involving leftist governments in Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay, its main benefactor is Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a populist who derisively refers to the United States as "The Empire" and blames capitalism for the region's endemic poverty. Critics fear Chavez will use Telesur to project his ideas across Latin America at a time when some media executives and human-rights experts say Chavez has curbed free speech in his own country. "Can you imagine Telesur criticizing Mr. Chavez?" asked Alberto Federico Ravell, executive director of Globovision, a local 24-hour news channel highly critical of the president. "Chavez wants to become the leader of Latin America, and this is a project to support him." Ravell and other critics point to a number of what they see as ominous signs. For starters, Telesur's headquarters is on the same grounds as Venezuela's Channel 8, a state-run television station that flatters Chavez. Telesur's president is Andres Izarra, a veteran journalist who also is minister of communication and information in the Chavez government. Then there is the issue of Cuba, a part owner of Telesur that is providing the station technical support. "If the shareholders of this company belong to a government like Cuba where they have no basic concept of free speech and zero tolerance for independent views, God help us," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch. Jorge Botero, a veteran Colombian television producer and Telesur's news director, acknowledged that Cuba doesn't practice "my ideal of journalism." He also said he admired Chavez, whom he described as a "great leader." "But I am not affiliated with his movement," Botero said. "I am an independent journalist." Aharonian said Telesur will have complete editorial independence from any government and that its only agenda is furthering Latin American unity. Everything else is fair game. "If the programming is bad and full of propaganda, then no one is going to watch it," said Aharonian, who has worked for United Press International, the Mexican newspaper Excelsior and Prensa Latina, the Cuban state news agency. "The only censor is the viewer. They can just click and change the channel," he said. Some dispute the notion that Latin America is getting its television news only from outsiders. Caroline Rittenberry, a spokeswoman for CNN en Espanol, a 24-hour Spanish-language news channel reaching more than 15 million households in the Americas, said the network covers the region in a comprehensive and sophisticated way. "We totally reject the notion that just because we are based in the U.S. we present a U.S. perspective of the news," said Rittenberry. "The overwhelming majority of editorial staff is from Latin America. We have correspondents in every country." The intense debate over a television network that has yet to go on the air reflects a broader ideological battle over the future of Latin America. But the new network also is part of a global struggle over how news is disseminated. The Internet is challenging the mainstream media's grip on information in the United States, with bloggers across the political spectrum assailing what they see as bias in newspapers and on broadcast networks. In the Arab world, the satellite news channel Al-Jazeera has been criticized by U.S. officials who complain that it gives viewers an inaccurate version of events in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera officials say they're merely reporting the truth from an Arab perspective. John Dinges, associate professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, said he did not expect Telesur to toe the middle line. But he said that did not mean the new network was without merit. "Generally in Latin America, the fact that a station has a political point of view does not rule them out of the club of good journalism," Dinges said. "I would love to see a successful television channel with hard-hitting journalism about Latin America." With a first-year budget of about $10 million, Telesur is opening bureaus in six Latin American countries and Washington and also will air material from freelancers across the hemisphere. So far, the only glimpse of what Telesur might offer is an 11-minute video aired in May during a signal test. The video shows street demonstrations by peasants and images of leftist heroes such as former Chilean socialist President Salvador Allende, killed in a U.S.-backed coup in 1973. Telesur's look will be different from the high gloss of American network television. One anchor, Ati Kiwa, is an indigenous Colombian who will appear on camera in her tribe's traditional dress. The key to Telesur's success is not going head-to-head against the giants of broadcasting but providing an alternative to them, Aharonian said. "We are losing this (information) battle because we are not doing anything right now," he said. "We are simply setting up an alternative to the hegemonic communications industry that has one way of thinking and one message." --- ? 2005, Chicago Tribune. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 16:18:04 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:18:04 -0700 Subject: How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages (fwd) Message-ID: July 19, 2005 How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages By MICHAEL ERARD http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/science/19lang.html Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a sprawling compendium of the world's languages, are that 119 of them are sign languages for the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one artificial language has native speakers. (Yes, it's Esperanto.) Most languages have fewer than a million speakers, and the most linguistically diverse nation on the planet is Papua New Guinea. The least diverse? Haiti. Opening the 1,200-page book at random, one can read about Garo, spoken by 102,000 people in Bangladesh and 575,000 in India, which is written with the Roman alphabet, or about Bernde, spoken by 2,000 people in Chad. Ethnologue, which began as a 40-language guide for Christian missionaries in 1951, has grown so comprehensive it is a source for academics and governments, and the occasional game show. Though its unusual history draws some criticism among secular linguists, the Ethnologue is also praised for its breadth. "If I'm teaching field methods and a student says I'm a speaker of X, I go look it up in Ethnologue," said Tony Woodbury, linguistics chairman at the University of Texas. "To locate a language geographically, to locate it in the language family it belongs to, Ethnologue is the one-stop place to look." Yet Ethnologue's most curious fact highlights a quandary that has long perplexed linguists: how many languages are spoken on the planet? Estimates have ranged from 3,000 to 10,000, but Ethnologue confidently counts 6,912 languages. Curiously, this edition adds 103 languages to the 6,809 that were listed in its 2000 edition - at a time when linguists are making dire predictions that hundreds of languages will soon become extinct. "I occasionally note in my comments to the press," said Nicholas Ostler, the president of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, "the irony that Ethnologue's total count of known languages keeps going up with each four-yearly edition, even as we solemnly intone the factoid that a language dies out every two weeks." This dissonance points to a more basic problem. "There's no actual number of languages," said Merritt Ruhlen, a linguist at Stanford whose own count is "around" 4,580. "It kind of depends on how one defines dialects and languages." The linguists behind the Ethnologue agree that the distinctions can be indistinct. "We tend to see languages as basically marbles, and we're trying to get all the marbles in our bag and count how many marbles we have," said M. Paul Lewis, a linguist who manages the Ethnologue database (www.ethnologue.com) and will edit the 16th edition. "Language is a lot more like oatmeal, where there are some clearly defined units but it's very fuzzy around the edges." The Yiddish linguist Max Weinrich once famously said, "A shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot" (or "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy"). To Ethnologue, and to the language research organization that produces it, S.I.L. International, a language is a dialect that needs its literature, including a Bible. Based in Dallas, S.I.L. (which stands for Summer Institute of Linguistics) trains missionaries to be linguists, sending them to learn local languages, design alphabets for unwritten languages and introduce literacy. Before they begin translating the Bible, they find out how many translations are needed by testing the degree to which speech varieties are mutually unintelligible. "The definition of language we use in the Ethnologue places a strong emphasis," said Dr. Lewis, "on the ability to intercommunicate as the test for splitting or joining." Thus, the fewer words from Dialect B that a speaker of Dialect A can understand, the more likely S.I.L. linguists will say that A and B need two Bibles, not one. The entry for the Chadian language of Bernde, for example, rates its similarity to its six neighboring languages from 47 to 73 percent. Above 70 percent, two varieties will typically be called dialects of the same language. However, such tests are not always clear-cut. Unintelligible dialects are sometimes combined into one language if they share a literature or other cultural heritage. And the reverse can be true, as in the case of Danish and Norwegian. In Guatemala, Ethnologue counts 54 living languages, while other linguists, some of them native Mayan speakers, count 18. Yet undercounting can be just as political as overcounting. Colette Grinevald, a specialist in Latin American languages at Lumi?re University in Lyon, France, notes that the modern Maya political movement wants to unite under one language, Kaqkchikel. "They don't want that division of their language into 24 languages," she said. "They want to create a standard called Kaqkchikel." Beyond its political implications, the Ethnologue also carries the weight of a religious mission. The project was founded by Richard Pittman, a missionary who thought other missionaries needed better information about which languages lacked a Bible. The first version appeared in 1951, 10 mimeographed pages that described 40 languages. "Hardly anyone knew about the Ethnologue back then," said Barbara Grimes, who edited the survey from 1967 to 2000. "It was a good idea, but it wasn't very impressive." In 1971, Ms. Grimes and her husband, Joseph Grimes, a linguistics professor at Cornell, extended the survey from small languages to all languages in the world. What emerged was just how daunting a global Bible translation project was. "In 1950, when we joined S.I.L., we were telling each other, maybe there are about 1,000 languages, but nobody really knew," Ms. Grimes said. In 1969, Ethnologue listed 4,493 languages; in 1992, the number had risen to 6,528 and by 2000 it stood at 6,809. The number will probably continue to rise - 2,694 languages still need to be studied in detail, and in 2000, S.I.L. officials projected that at the current rate of work, a complete survey would not be completed until 2075. (They now say they are working to speed it up.) As for their goal of translating the Bible, Ethnologue's figures show that all or some of it is available in 2,422 languages. Ethnologue lists 414 languages as nearly extinct in 2000, a figure that rises to 497 in the new edition. However, a few linguists accuse the publisher of promoting the trends it says it want to prevent. Denny Moore, a linguist with the Goeldi Museum in Bel?m, Brazil, said via e-mail: "It is absurd to think of S.I.L. as an agency of preservation, when they do just the opposite. Note that along with the extermination of native religion, all the ceremonial speech forms, songs, music and art associated with the religion disappear too." Dr. Moore, who won a MacArthur "genius" grant in 1999 for his 18 years of linguistic work in Brazil, adds: "There is no way to resolve this contradiction. The only options are fooling yourself about it or not." S.I.L. officials say missionaries are giving another option to people who are already experiencing cultural shift. "The charge of destroying cultures has been around for a long time," said Carol Dowsett, a spokeswoman for the publisher. "Basically we're interested in people, and we're interested in helping them however we can." Though the Ethnologue is intended to help spread the word of God, it is being mined for more secular reasons. Computer companies that are developing multilingual software for foreign markets turn to the Ethnologue. "You've got a developer in Silicon Valley, and a person in the field calls them and says, 'We need to provide support for Serbian' or some language the developer's never heard of, so they can pop open the Ethnologue and find out, 'What is this thing?' " says Peter Constable, a former S.I.L. linguist who now works at Microsoft. Ray Gordon, the editor, says producers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" once contacted him, and according to Brian Homoleski, the manager of the publisher's bookstore, several copies were bought after the Sept. 11 attacks by "a U.S. government agency." According to S.I.L. staff members, the American Bar Association, the Los Angeles Police Department, the New York Olympic Committee and AT&T all called for help. Ethnologue's newest step toward worldwide influence has been in the arcane world of the International Organization of Standards. The survey assigns a three-letter code to each language (English is "eng"), and the 7,000-plus codes (for living and dead languages) is near acceptance in library indexing and multilingual software standards. The codes also form the backbone of the Open Language Archives Community, a Web-based technical infrastructure. Most linguists are unfazed at S.I.L.'s affiliations. "If you took away all the literature done by the S.I.L. people done in the last 60 years," said Dr. Ruhlen of Stanford, "you'd be taking away a lot of language documentation for a lot of languages for which there's nothing at all." From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 16:42:20 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 09:42:20 -0700 Subject: THE CASE FOR PRESERVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE (fwd audio link) Message-ID: SBS Radio THE CASE FOR PRESERVING INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE 19.7.2005 16:23:47 http://www9.sbs.com.au/radio/index.php?page=wv&newsID=116273 [note: go to link to hear audio] How much is your culture tied in with the language you speak? And, in today's globalised economy, is there still a case for teaching languages other than English at Australian schools? Darcel Moyle is a Goori woman from Minjerribah -- otherwise known as North Stradbroke Island, just off the coast of Brisbane. She's also an Aboriginal Education Officer with the Australian Education Union, as well as the Indigenous representative on the ACTU. Darcel was one of the speakers at a national language teachers' conference in Melbourne, exploring the topic, Languages and Cultures Education - Why? Here are Darcel Moyle's views -- after she gave her "you-rah", which means "greetings" in her native language. It was produced by Caroline Davey. SOURCE: World View From anguksuar at YAHOO.COM Tue Jul 19 20:20:48 2005 From: anguksuar at YAHOO.COM (Richard LaFortune) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 13:20:48 -0700 Subject: How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of 6,912 Languages (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050719091804.e9z6hmo4wco80www@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: "Conclusion SIL/WBT propaganda describes the organization as "a private, non-profit, non-sectarian scientific education, international organization." But the reality of its insidious work around the world, both in terms of its objectives and its effects is its truly destructive impact upon the languages, the cultures, and the beliefs of indigenous peoples who are targets of SIL/WBT programs. The illegitimacy of their work is compounded when they make room for U.S. (or other) business interests, either by driving indigenous groups out of their homes and land, or by providing the business interests with a pool of cheap labor. 'There is an obvious question that must be asked: Are the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the Wycliffe Bible Translators, and the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service working directly or indirectly for the CIA?" --ibid p46 http://www.cwis.org/fwdp/International/russell.txt "Declaration of Indigenous Peoples [item 6.] ..."In particular we would ask the Tribunal to immediately condemn, and in the future, completely investigate the activities of that great common danger, The Summer Institute of Linguistics." "However, Colby & Dennett had heard of a darker side to SIL. Numerous critics had alleged that SIL was the vanguard of the destruction of both the rainforests and their native inhabitants. They had heard from Latin American acquintances that SIL was, in military fashion, a scouting party that surveyed the Amazonian hinterlands for potential sources of opposition to natural resource exploitation (read cattle ranching, clearcutting and strip mining) among native peoples and that it employed avirulent brand of Christian fundamentalism that relied on linguistics to undermine the soical cohesion of aboriginal communities and accelerate their assimilation into Western culture. In addition to all this, numerous articles in the Latin American press accused SIL of being funded by the American intelligence community." --Dark Night, no.14, Chicago "On 13 March 1987 El Nacional of Caracas revealed that missionaries of the Summer Institute of Linguistics had entered Venezuela illegally in August of the previous year and had been able to establish a base among the Panare Indians in the neighbourhood of Caicar. The newspaper noted that this missionary sect - following denunciation by the United Nations and the Organization of American States- had already had its contract rescinded or been actualy expelled by the governments of Mexicao, Ecuador, Brazil, Panama and Colombia." --The Missionaries, Norman Lewis, p242 "The activities of the SIL and other North American evangelical groups have earned the hostility of indigenous peoples and, after widespread protests those missionaries have been banned altogether in some countries." -Report from the Frontier, Julian Burger, p51 April 18,1981- 'a communique released to the press calling SIL/WBT (Wycliffe Bible Translators): "an affront to...our national sovereignty....a means by which the plunder of our national resources is institutionalized," proponents of enforced sterilization of the Indians, and a front for the CIA.' [Philadelphia Inquirer, 01/28/81; Los Angeles Times, 02/08/81; Boston globe, 03/08/81] -CAQ, #18,Winter 83 'The connection between WBT & SIL was repeatedly denied until Aug 1953, when the Catholic bishops in Lima denounced the Summer Insitute of Linguistics...' --ibid p42 '"Twenty-five years ago the Shell Oil Company lost many workers to Auca spears. For several reasons Shell decided to leave Ecuador. Suddenly with the discovery of a vast reserve of oil under the Eastern Jungle, twenty-one companies are working 1500 men there. As they advance, we fly ahead of them & explain to Aucas living in their path that they are coming. We persuade them that they should move out of the way. This is done by Auca Christians through a loudspeaker mounted on the plane. As the Indians move, we notify the oil companies. As a result of this close coordination by radio & telephone through our Quito office, there has not been one life lost to date. PRAISE GOD!!." -Laurie Hart, "Pacifying the Last Frontiers: Story of the Wycliffe Translators, NACLA's Latin American & Empire Report, Dec 1973, page 22." ' --ibid p45 "Cam's effort to get Bible translators into the muslim world through its back door, the Soviet Union,was no more successful. It was not for want of trying. He made eleven trips to the Soviet Union, mostly to the oil-rich Caucasus. But the charges that SIL had had links to the CIA in Vietnam and Latin America were having their effect, Pravda calling SIL a "nest of spies."' --Thy Will be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil. Colby & Dennett pp798-99. - some interesting citations from field literature re: SIL Richard --- phil cash cash wrote: > July 19, 2005 > How Linguists and Missionaries Share a Bible of > 6,912 Languages > > By MICHAEL ERARD > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/science/19lang.html > > Among the facts in the new edition of Ethnologue, a > sprawling compendium > of the world's languages, are that 119 of them are > sign languages for > the deaf and that 497 are nearly extinct. Only one > artificial language > has native speakers. (Yes, it's Esperanto.) Most > languages have fewer > than a million speakers, and the most linguistically > diverse nation on > the planet is Papua New Guinea. The least diverse? > Haiti. > > Opening the 1,200-page book at random, one can read > about Garo, spoken > by 102,000 people in Bangladesh and 575,000 in > India, which is written > with the Roman alphabet, or about Bernde, spoken by > 2,000 people in > Chad. Ethnologue, which began as a 40-language guide > for Christian > missionaries in 1951, has grown so comprehensive it > is a source for > academics and governments, and the occasional game > show. > > Though its unusual history draws some criticism > among secular linguists, > the Ethnologue is also praised for its breadth. "If > I'm teaching field > methods and a student says I'm a speaker of X, I go > look it up in > Ethnologue," said Tony Woodbury, linguistics > chairman at the University > of Texas. "To locate a language geographically, to > locate it in the > language family it belongs to, Ethnologue is the > one-stop place to > look." > > Yet Ethnologue's most curious fact highlights a > quandary that has long > perplexed linguists: how many languages are spoken > on the planet? > > Estimates have ranged from 3,000 to 10,000, but > Ethnologue confidently > counts 6,912 languages. Curiously, this edition adds > 103 languages to > the 6,809 that were listed in its 2000 edition - at > a time when > linguists are making dire predictions that hundreds > of languages will > soon become extinct. > > "I occasionally note in my comments to the press," > said Nicholas Ostler, > the president of the Foundation for Endangered > Languages, "the irony > that Ethnologue's total count of known languages > keeps going up with > each four-yearly edition, even as we solemnly intone > the factoid that a > language dies out every two weeks." > > This dissonance points to a more basic problem. > "There's no actual > number of languages," said Merritt Ruhlen, a > linguist at Stanford whose > own count is "around" 4,580. "It kind of depends on > how one defines > dialects and languages." > > The linguists behind the Ethnologue agree that the > distinctions can be > indistinct. "We tend to see languages as basically > marbles, and we're > trying to get all the marbles in our bag and count > how many marbles we > have," said M. Paul Lewis, a linguist who manages > the Ethnologue > database (www.ethnologue.com) and will edit the 16th > edition. "Language > is a lot more like oatmeal, where there are some > clearly defined units > but it's very fuzzy around the edges." > > The Yiddish linguist Max Weinrich once famously > said, "A shprakh iz a > dialekt mit an armey un a flot" (or "a language is a > dialect with an > army and a navy"). To Ethnologue, and to the > language research > organization that produces it, S.I.L. International, > a language is a > dialect that needs its literature, including a > Bible. > > Based in Dallas, S.I.L. (which stands for Summer > Institute of > Linguistics) trains missionaries to be linguists, > sending them to learn > local languages, design alphabets for unwritten > languages and introduce > literacy. Before they begin translating the Bible, > they find out how > many translations are needed by testing the degree > to which speech > varieties are mutually unintelligible. "The > definition of language we > use in the Ethnologue places a strong emphasis," > said Dr. Lewis, "on > the ability to intercommunicate as the test for > splitting or joining." > > Thus, the fewer words from Dialect B that a speaker > of Dialect A can > understand, the more likely S.I.L. linguists will > say that A and B need > two Bibles, not one. The entry for the Chadian > language of Bernde, for > example, rates its similarity to its six neighboring > languages from 47 > to 73 percent. Above 70 percent, two varieties will > typically be called > dialects of the same language. > > However, such tests are not always clear-cut. > Unintelligible dialects > are sometimes combined into one language if they > share a literature or > other cultural heritage. And the reverse can be > true, as in the case of > Danish and Norwegian. > > In Guatemala, Ethnologue counts 54 living languages, > while other > linguists, some of them native Mayan speakers, count > 18. Yet > undercounting can be just as political as > overcounting. > > Colette Grinevald, a specialist in Latin American > languages at Lumi?re > University in Lyon, France, notes that the modern > Maya political > movement wants to unite under one language, > Kaqkchikel. "They don't > want that division of their language into 24 > languages," she said. > "They want to create a standard called Kaqkchikel." > > Beyond its political implications, the Ethnologue > also carries the > weight of a religious mission. The project was > founded by Richard > Pittman, a missionary who thought other missionaries > needed better > information about which languages lacked a Bible. > The first version > appeared in 1951, 10 mimeographed pages that > described 40 languages. > > "Hardly anyone knew about the Ethnologue back then," > said Barbara > Grimes, who edited the survey from 1967 to 2000. "It > was a good idea, > but it wasn't very impressive." In 1971, Ms. Grimes > and her husband, > Joseph Grimes, a linguistics professor at Cornell, > extended the survey > from small languages to all languages in the world. > > What emerged was just how daunting a global Bible > translation project > was. "In 1950, when we joined S.I.L., we were > telling each other, maybe > there are about 1,000 languages, but nobody really > knew," Ms. Grimes > said. In 1969, Ethnologue listed 4,493 languages; in > 1992, the number > had risen to 6,528 and by 2000 it stood at 6,809. > > The number will probably continue to rise - 2,694 > languages still need > to be studied in detail, and in 2000, S.I.L. > officials projected that > at the current rate of work, a complete survey would > not be completed > until 2075. (They now say they are working to speed > it up.) As for > their goal of translating the Bible, Ethnologue's > figures show that all > or some of it is available in 2,422 languages. > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue Jul 19 20:43:43 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 13:43:43 -0700 Subject: Aboriginal languages neglected and endangered: task force (fwd) Message-ID: Aboriginal languages neglected and endangered: task force Last updated Jul 19 2005 10:28 AM MDT CBC News http://north.cbc.ca/regional/servlet/View?filename=aboriginal-language19072005 A task force on aboriginal languages and culture says that more than half of the 60 aboriginal languages in Canada are endangered while 10 other languages have become extinct over the past century. The task force, which released a report last week, also found that only about 25,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis speak their original languages. The group, created by Heritage Canada in 2002 to preserve and revitalize First Nations, Inuit and Metis languages, made 25 recommendations to the federal government, including the creation of a language commissioner for all of Canada. Another recommendation suggests funding for aboriginal languages that's in line with what's spent preserving and promoting French and English. Members are also recommending that federal departments such as justice, health and human resources provide service in aboriginal languages. "It took a hundred years to tear our languages down. We are going to need seven generations to rebuild and strengthen our languages," says Ron Ignace, the task force chair. One of the members of the task force from Nunavut, Alexina Kublu, says the effort comes a little too late, but at least it's a start. Ottawa has committed $160 million for the next ten years to try to preserve what is left of the aboriginal languages in Canada. From rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 20 19:38:41 2005 From: rtroike at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Rudolph C Troike) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:38:41 -0700 Subject: SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: It is sad to see the radical libels and distortions of SIL's fine work being recycled after so many years. I have known many SIL members and visited their sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and can testify that many of the politically-motivated distortions about their work can be matched a thousand-fold by factually accurate reports of outstanding humanitarian accomplishments they have performed. The attacks on SIL have often been motivated by personal political agendas. It would be fair if those who have made such attacks had made any scientific, educational, or humanitarian contributions comparable to SIL members, but this has rarely been the case. Few linguists or anthropologists have been willing to sacrifice as much to study un- or under-documented languages and produce scientific contributions, as have SIL members. Much of our knowledge of the world's least-documented languages comes from SIL research and publication. Politically or ideologically-motivated attacks on the work of SIL need to be seriously questioned, and the often distorted claims balanced with attention to the many documented but often unadvertised contributions that SIL and its members have made and continue to make to the welfare of indigenous peoples around the world. Rudy Troike Department of English University of Arizona From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Wed Jul 20 23:11:03 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:11:03 -0600 Subject: SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I musta missed something here. What happened? Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Rudolph C Troike Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 1:39 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] SIL's scientific, humanitarian, and educational contributions It is sad to see the radical libels and distortions of SIL's fine work being recycled after so many years. I have known many SIL members and visited their sites in Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru, and can testify that many of the politically-motivated distortions about their work can be matched a thousand-fold by factually accurate reports of outstanding humanitarian accomplishments they have performed. The attacks on SIL have often been motivated by personal political agendas. It would be fair if those who have made such attacks had made any scientific, educational, or humanitarian contributions comparable to SIL members, but this has rarely been the case. Few linguists or anthropologists have been willing to sacrifice as much to study un- or under-documented languages and produce scientific contributions, as have SIL members. Much of our knowledge of the world's least-documented languages comes from SIL research and publication. Politically or ideologically-motivated attacks on the work of SIL need to be seriously questioned, and the often distorted claims balanced with attention to the many documented but often unadvertised contributions that SIL and its members have made and continue to make to the welfare of indigenous peoples around the world. Rudy Troike Department of English University of Arizona From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu Jul 21 16:16:02 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 09:16:02 -0700 Subject: China, UNESCO jointly protect endangered languages (fwd) Message-ID: China, UNESCO jointly protect endangered languages www.chinaview.cn 2005-07-21 21:40:35 http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-07/21/content_3250194.htm BEIJING, July 21 (Xinhuanet) - Bouchenaki Mounir, assistant director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said here Thursday that China and UNESCO are now jointly protecting the endangered languages in China. At the on-going World Chinese Conference, which opened here on July 20, Mounir said more and more languages in the world were endangered, including Shui Shu, a Chinese language specially used by the local women in south China's Hunan Province. Some languages have a large population of speakers while some have few, therefore the native speakers for the less-spoken languages are no longer willing to use them. Statistics from the UNESCO showed there are 6,000 languages in the world. China's 56 ethnic groups speak more than 70 languages, among which mandarin holds the largest number of speakers totaling more than one billion. And the Chinese speakers also speak in 100-plus dialects. "The UNESCO is dedicated to promoting local people's consciousness of using their native language," Mounir said. To this end, a joint project between UNESCO and the Chinese government has been launched in south China's Yunnan Province in an effort to help the local minority ethnic groups compile specific textbooks, and cultivate their own teaching staff. According to Mounir, the UNESCO is now collecting information of endangered languages worldwide, marking them on the map on-line and showing them to the public. The UNESCO also joined hands with TV stations and Discovery channels to record endangered languages. "Language is the carrier of the human intangible culture, and we should attach much importance to the protection of them," Mounir concluded. The two-day conference, with the theme of "the Development of Chinese in a Multi-cultural World", attracted nearly 600 government officials, Sinologists and Chinese learners from 67 countries and regions, among which more than 350 came from overseas. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jul 23 17:58:36 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 10:58:36 -0700 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) Message-ID: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected 2005-07-23 07:12:55 By InterPress Correspondent http://www.ippmedia.com/ipp/guardian/2005/07/23/45135.html Very few of us worry that one day our tribal language may die. On September 20th 2004, China?s last woman proficient in probably the world?s only single-sex (female-specific) language, ?Nushu?, died. Linguists believe Yang Huanyi?s death put an end to a tradition that was at least 400 years old in which women shared their innermost feelings through a set of codes that were incomprehensible to men. Why should we all care? What effect will their loss have on those of us who speak English? Afterall, replacing a minor language with a more widespread one allows easier communication amongst people. Well actually, language diversity is as important as biological diversity. The Pacific linguist Stephen Wurm, once told the story of a medical cure that depended on knowing a traditional language. Northern Australia had an outbreak of severe skin ulcers that resisted conventional treatment. Aborigines acquainted with the nurse told her about a lotion derived from a local medicinal plant that would cure the ulcers. The nurse applied the lotion and it healed the ulcers. Similar incidents have happened in other parts of the world. As a result, searches are being carried out for medicinal plants known to people through their languages and traditional cultures. When the languages die, the medical knowledge stored in them will go too. Sadly, language extinction is accelerating today due to population pressures and the spread of industrialization. Small, unindustrialized communities have to choose between their traditional language and participation in the larger world. East Africans need to speak Swahili for success; Central Europeans Russian; and lately, the whole world seems to need to speak English. Many times, these languages eventually replace other languages as older speakers die and younger ones adopt the more-useful tongue. No one knows exactly how many languages exist in the world today. Western linguistics estimate around 6,800. Roughly 2,400 are spoken in Africa (35%), 28% in Asia, 19% in the Pacific, 15% in the Americas, and 3% in Europe. Bear in mind, only about a quarter of the languages and few dialects have writing systems and not all languages have even been ?discovered? by Western linguistics. Most linguists however, agree that half of the world?s languages are headed for extinction; many fear that 90% will disappear by the end of this century. More than 750 languages are already extinct or nearly extinct (according to data from ?Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 14th Edition?). Michael Krauss, director of the Alaska Native Language Center, suggests that 20% to 40% of languages are already dying, and only 5% to l0% are ?safe? in the sense of being widely spoken or having official status. Tanzania has 135 spoken living languages as said by ethnologues, and two extinct languages, namely Aasax and Kw?adza, the latter found in Mbulu district. The former, found in northern Tanzania and dependant on the Maasai, became linguistically extinct in 1976. All is not lost though. Languages can be revived, infact even after they have died. The Celtic language, Cornish, once spoken in southwestern England, expired in 1777 when its last living speaker died. Using surviving written documents, descendants of Cornish speakers began to learn their language and speak it to their children. Now, about 2,000 people speak Cornish. Another example is modern Hebrew. Hebrew survived for centuries as a religious and scholarly language. In the late nineteenth century, a movement led by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda reintroduced Hebrew into Palestine as a spoken language. After the founding of Israel, Hebrew was taught in schools and is now the common language of Israeli citizens. Other languages have also risen to new life. Welsh and Navajo speakers revitalized their dying languages through ?immersion? schools where children used their ancestral language every day. Both languages have grown in numbers of speakers over the past few decades. A healthy language is one that acquires new speakers. No matter how many adults use the language, if it is not passed to the next generation, its fate is already sealed. Some of our tribal languages do not have monolingual speakers (people who speak only that language), and when they are spoken by a minority of people in the nation, they are held in low esteem causing their speakers to avoid using them or passing them on to their children. For some, 20 years ago, all of the children spoke that language; now the youngest speakers are in their 20?s. Speaking the majority language better equips children for success in the majority culture than speaking a less prestigious language and as a result some of our tribal languages are dying. It is very unfortunate that this is the case, as a language is the most efficient means of transmitting a culture. Should we let our minority cultures and their languages get swept away in the oncoming tide of standardization? The accumulated knowledge of millennia will disappear, leaving the world a poorer place. Or should minorities keep their cultural integrity, and minor languages continue to exist alongside larger ones? The scenario that comes to pass depends to a large extent on our actions now. (AllAfrica.com) SOURCE: Guardian From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat Jul 23 18:03:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 11:03:11 -0700 Subject: Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) Message-ID: Saturday, 23 July 2005, 07:39:23 AEST Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch http://abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1420730.htm A language used in Australia for thousands of years before the arrival of colonial settlers is being revived. A Wiradjuri dictionary is being launched in the heart of Wiradjuri country in Wagga today. Retired academic Dr John Rudder has been helping to develop the dictionary for the last eight years. Dr Rudder says it builds on what Wiradjuri people living in south and central western New South Wales remember. "The language was down to remaining words that people had, and what they did was confirm the pronunciation and the accuracy of the words from the old lists. So all told we've put about 5,000 words into the dictionary." A large crowd is expected at the property Yalbalingada in Wagga this afternoon, for the launch of the Wiradjuri Dictionary. From phonosemantics at EARTHLINK.NET Sun Jul 24 03:09:01 2005 From: phonosemantics at EARTHLINK.NET (jess tauber) Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 23:09:01 -0400 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) Message-ID: This is not the first time I've seen espoused the notion that a native language's worth is largely in its potential utility to the industrial world- I guess once we have tracked down all the medically useful plants, animals and inanimate substances known to native speakers we can then sigh in relief and let the languages in question die peaceful deaths. Nice attitude. A hell of a way to get the general public to care about language endangerment. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 24 17:50:26 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 10:50:26 -0700 Subject: Learning Tlingit language is challenge and joy for children (fwd) Message-ID: Web posted July 24, 2005 Learning Tlingit language is challenge and joy for children Samp weaves education with whale and animal activities By ANDREW PETTY JUNEAU EMPIRE Juneau hosts several opportunities for children to learn about Tlingit culture. Some involve canoeing and fishing; this camp focuses on language. About 20 children ages 3 to 5, plus a dozen older elementary students, are spending their afternoons at Gastineau Elementary School, singing songs and doing activities related to killer whales, frogs, wolves and beavers. "It ties back to who we are," teacher Nancy Douglas said. Native clans were named after animals. The animals are archetypes in the Native culture as well as the centerpieces for educating children about Tlingit words for numbers, colors, the weather and other subjects. "I like whales because they can hold their breath for a long time," said 8-year-old Cora Bontrager, who added she cannot hold her breath as long as a whale. Making whale puppets and dorsal fin hats and then singing Tlingit-language whale songs to the tune of "Bingo" helps kids relate to a culture steeped in tradition, said teacher Kitty Eddy. "We have to create a lot of what we do," she said. There are no catalogues of Tlingit education materials to choose from, so teachers make their own curriculum. At the end of the two week-camp, each student takes home a CD of the Tlingit songs to listen to at home. Some students make journals. As instructors develop more materials, Eddy hopes elementary schools can share the tools used in the camp. This is the first summer the camp is educating pre-schoolers. Children too young to read and write English are picking up Tlingit. "They can say words back to me right away," teacher Hans Chester said. It's typically harder for adults to learn vocabulary and pronunciation, he added. Because of programs like the camp, Chester said, many Tlingits are no longer afraid their culture and language are disappearing. The camp starts its second week on Monday. The group will perform Saturday for a Tlingit memorial party at the Alaska State Museum. ? Andrew Petty can be reached at andrew.petty at juneauempire.com. Click here to return to story: http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/072405/loc_20050724029.shtml From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 26 02:04:04 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:04:04 -0600 Subject: Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) In-Reply-To: <17562332.1122174541732.JavaMail.root@wamui-norfolk.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Message-ID: You know, I think things have to be useful to get people's interest. I think there is a lot to be learned from native language revitalization efforts. . . I don't think that is a bad thing. I think it's a good thing because it gets people to think. It gets people to consider things they hadn't considered before. :-) ?? Mia -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of jess tauber Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 9:09 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Re: [ILAT] Tribal languages dying could later be resurrected (fwd) This is not the first time I've seen espoused the notion that a native language's worth is largely in its potential utility to the industrial world- I guess once we have tracked down all the medically useful plants, animals and inanimate substances known to native speakers we can then sigh in relief and let the languages in question die peaceful deaths. Nice attitude. A hell of a way to get the general public to care about language endangerment. Jess Tauber phonosemantics at earthlink.net From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Tue Jul 26 02:05:40 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 20:05:40 -0600 Subject: Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050723110311.hq8okcccsc0c400o@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Wooooooohw. I sure would like to see that. I wonder what words hundreds of years old look like. . . besides Hebrew and Yiddish of course. . . -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of phil cash cash Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 12:03 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch (fwd) Saturday, 23 July 2005, 07:39:23 AEST Indigenous language revived with dictionary launch http://abc.net.au/message/news/stories/ms_news_1420730.htm A language used in Australia for thousands of years before the arrival of colonial settlers is being revived. A Wiradjuri dictionary is being launched in the heart of Wiradjuri country in Wagga today. Retired academic Dr John Rudder has been helping to develop the dictionary for the last eight years. Dr Rudder says it builds on what Wiradjuri people living in south and central western New South Wales remember. "The language was down to remaining words that people had, and what they did was confirm the pronunciation and the accuracy of the words from the old lists. So all told we've put about 5,000 words into the dictionary." A large crowd is expected at the property Yalbalingada in Wagga this afternoon, for the launch of the Wiradjuri Dictionary. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed Jul 27 01:00:09 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:00:09 -0700 Subject: Cultural identity for toddlers (fwd) Message-ID: Education Today Newsletter JULY - SEPTEMBER 2005 Cultural identity for toddlers Until 1995, education in Papua New Guinea, an island nation in the South Pacific, was in English. As the world?s most linguistically diverse nation, with 823 living languages spoken by a population of 5.2 million, there may have been some logistic value in this, but it did little to foster a sense of national and cultural identity. In 1979, parents in Bougainville Island, in North Solomons Province put forward the idea of providing their children with two years of pre-school education in their own language, before the first grade of primary school, which would be in English. The Viles Tok Ples Skul (village language school) was born, later becoming the Tok Ples Pri Skul (vernacular language pre-school). During the 1980s three other provincial governments and four other language communities followed suit. Vernacular language pre-schools sprung up elsewhere over the next decade, but remained informal, with no national curriculum, and with teaching materials prepared by NGOs. The education reforms of 1995 finally led to the development of a national curriculum, encouraging vernacular language teaching in the two years before primary school, with a gradual introduction of English after that. By fifth grade, teaching is 30 per cent in the local language, 70 per cent in English. At the end of 2000, vernacular language pre-schools were teaching in 380 language groups. A similar initiative is just beginning in Vanuatu, also in Melanesia, which has some 106 local languages for a population of just 200,000. And, in New Zealand, Te k?hanga reo (?language nest?) is a total immersion programme for Maori children from birth to age 6, where they speak Maori and learn within an indigenous cultural context. The programme started in 1982. >From UNESCO Policy Briefs on Early Childhood, October 2002 From miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US Sat Jul 30 22:37:52 2005 From: miakalish at LEARNINGFORPEOPLE.US (Mia Kalish (LFP)) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 16:37:52 -0600 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted Message-ID: Hello, Everyone, I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain Apache. There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. It's really easy, despite all the yapping. http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. I would like very much to hear what people think. Best, Mia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 00:10:11 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:10:11 -0700 Subject: digital audio... Message-ID: Dear ILAT, this just in from Gizmodo (www.gizmodo.com). i could note resist letting people know about a new digital audio recorder. take a peak at: MicroTrack 24/96 Professional 2-Channel mobile Digital Recorder http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrack-main.html this looks like an ideal field recorder, something mobile, something digital but not akward in terms of transferring audio data to your computer. later, Phil Cash Cash UofA From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 00:13:42 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 17:13:42 -0700 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted In-Reply-To: <20050730223754.47D262A0B@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Hi Mia, looks really nice, though i quickly took a listen to some Navajo shapes it sure didn't sound like the Navajo i am familiar with. any second opinions? later, Phil Cash Cash UofA Quoting "Mia Kalish (LFP)" : > Hello, Everyone, > > > > I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math > teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I > constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of > Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called > Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 > languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations > in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain > Apache. > > > > There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The > rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to > move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, > and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. > > > > It's really easy, despite all the yapping. > > > > http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to > show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the > teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create > their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. > > > > > I would like very much to hear what people think. > > > > Best, > > Mia From jtucker at STARBAND.NET Sun Jul 31 01:26:22 2005 From: jtucker at STARBAND.NET (Jan Tucker) Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:26:22 -0400 Subject: Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted In-Reply-To: <20050730223754.47D262A0B@listserv.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Hi Mia, It's been a while, been busy with all kinds of workshops and grading, yikes. Hope you are well. I liked the part where you spoke while things were happening in "show me" I thought that your presentation was packed full of information and I think I'd have some kind of summary our outline of the basic information you want to present. There might be too much commentary. Possibly hyperlinks for some of your footnotes would make it less wordy. I think editing it like a poem, where only essential information is provided up front and other information is footnoted. Navigation was not intuitive for me. That doesn't mean it won't be for others. Maybe the menu should include something like Start here. I had to play around with things for some time to figure out what I was doing and where things moved to. Hope this is the feedback you were looking for. I think Phil was right on the Navajo, it sounded like Spanish to me. -----Original Message----- From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Mia Kalish (LFP) Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2005 6:38 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: [ILAT] Mathematics of the Petroglyphs workshop posted Hello, Everyone, I was invited to teach a workshop at the recent PMET conference for math teachers at Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute in Albuquerque. I constructed my workshop materials in a web format and used lots of Macromedia Flash movies to demonstrate the principles. It is called Mathematics of the Petroglyphs. I have numbers and shapes in 8 and 7 languages respectively, some with native speaker voicing. I have equations in White Mountain Apache, and diagrams of principles, also in White Mountain Apache. There is the sound of an elk from Mescalero (click the blue elk movie). The rule is that 98% of the movies have action. There are click me buttons to move the action forward. In one case, the task is to explore the petroglyph, and click on the movie buttons to show the detail. It's really easy, despite all the yapping. http://learningforpeople.us/PMETABQ2005/ My idea with this workshop was to show how (Greek ethno) mathematics is not the only "Math". I gave the teachers CDs with copies of the Flash source so their students could create their own materials, and modify the movies for use with their own languages. I would like very much to hear what people think. Best, Mia -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 19:27:24 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:27:24 -0700 Subject: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd) Message-ID: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain For four days, 150 people gather near La Grande for a sun dance, a sacred Native American ceremony Sunday, July 31, 2005 RICHARD COCKLE The Oregonian http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1122803785257970.xml&coll=7 LA GRANDE -- Bob Dirty Moccasins lay on his back in the hot sun as another man pierced the skin of his chest with a knife. More than 20 bare-chested men in feathers and red skirts danced around him while drums beat and everyone sang. Two men inserted chokecherry sticks into the slits in his chest and tied them off with red ribbons. With the help of other dancers, Dirty Moccasins, 60, struggled weakly to his feet. A rope connected the sticks to a cottonwood tree. Bernie Cliff, one of the organizers, shouted: "Pray for your families!" At his words, the singing crescendoed, dancers and onlookers cheered and raised their arms. The scene is the centerpiece of the fourth annual Blue Mountain Sun Dance, a four-day Native American spiritual event that drew more than 150 people to a high, lonely forest canyon north of La Grande. The sun dance blends deprivation, pain, drumming, prayer and dancing to achieve help and enlightenment through physical sacrifice to the creator. The loosely organized gathering here usually is private and attracts little attention. Participants allowed a reporter to watch the ceremony, but they didn't allow photographs or sketches to record the dancing. The federal government discouraged sun dances from 1888 until the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. About 300 of the ceremonies are held in the United States each year, Bernard Red Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance chief, told a Lincoln, Neb., newspaper in 2003. Sun dances, a Great Plains tribal ceremony that has spread to other regions, are controversial among Native Americans. Some tribal leaders promote them as public events and allow nontribal participants, but others say the sacred ceremonies should not even be viewed by outsiders. They generally closely guard details to protect the intensely personal nature of the rite and to head off misunderstandings about the piercing. Walla Walla Tribal Chief Bill Burke, 74, of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, said he's heard criticism that sun dances aren't part of this region's religion. But he said he supports the Blue Mountain gathering. "I helped them out, as a matter of fact," he said. "I believe there has to be some spiritual experience there." Neither is he disturbed by the issue of non-native people taking part, he said. "It is a religious practice, and who am I to say who should be practicing it?" he said. After a few moments recovering from the piercing, Dirty Moccasins backed up to the cottonwood tree and began dancing slowly in place. He blew a wooden whistle with a feather attached while four other men had their chests pierced and were tied to the tree. All would dance that way for at least an hour before freeing themselves by jerking violently backward and ripping their flesh free of the sticks and rope. "If you are in prayer enough, you don't feel it," said dancer Tom Futter of Olympia, a veteran of the practice who planned to undergo the painful ritual today. "I feel the knife for only a half-second." People at the gathering came from as far as Canada, Texas and Oklahoma. It's a mix of Native Americans and people with connections to tribal members. Bob Dirty Moccasins, for example, said his wife is Apache. "There is blood that runs through my heart like a buffalo," he said. This is Futter's eighth sun dance. His chest is scarred from piercings, as are the chests of several other dancers. "I do it for my family, mainly, for the people I have lost in the past year," said Futter, whose ancestors include members of the Umatilla and Cayuse tribes and French-Canadians. This year's ceremony began Thursday morning in heat and dust with rhythmic dancing, insistent drumming and singing. Participants consume no food or water for four days, although they rest from time to time in the shade of a circular lodgepole arbor covered by fir boughs. Dancers aren't required to be pierced and tied to the tree, and it wasn't clear how many would do so. The sun dance includes a healing ceremony and ends with a feast of native dishes, including elk and smoked salmon. Some people take part in the dances as a way to sacrifice when a family member or loved one is ill, said Bernie Cliff, who is Cayuse, Sioux and Arapaho. For others, the sun dance is a declaration of independence. "We've had our languages taken away and our religion," said Cliff, who also lives in Benton City, Wash. "We've lost our land, our buffalo. The last thing we have is this." The Cliff family organized the gathering and has studied and taught the ceremony for years to keep it alive, members said. Women normally aren't pierced during sun dances because they suffer during childbirth and don't need to suffer more, he said. But women dancers tie eagle feathers to their arms as a symbol of their solidarity. They also go without food or water for four days like the men, he said. When the dance is over, Cliff said, the participants are exhausted. "Grumpy, too. And thirsty," he said. "They are going to want to go home." Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle at oregonwireless.net From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sun Jul 31 19:34:51 2005 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (phil cash cash) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 12:34:51 -0700 Subject: Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain (fwd) In-Reply-To: <20050731122724.t0mgisk8s0cs0cs4@www.email.arizona.edu> Message-ID: Note from ILAT listserv manager: this news item was sent in error, my apologies. it was intended for a local language/news listserv i manage. Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT listserv manager Quoting phil cash cash : > Plains ritual reaches Blue Mountain > > For four days, 150 people gather near La Grande for a sun dance, a > sacred Native American ceremony > > Sunday, July 31, 2005 > RICHARD COCKLE > The Oregonian > > http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1122803785257970.xml&coll=7 > > LA GRANDE -- Bob Dirty Moccasins lay on his back in the hot sun as > another man pierced the skin of his chest with a knife. More than 20 > bare-chested men in feathers and red skirts danced around him while > drums beat and everyone sang. > > Two men inserted chokecherry sticks into the slits in his chest and tied > them off with red ribbons. With the help of other dancers, Dirty > Moccasins, 60, struggled weakly to his feet. A rope connected the > sticks to a cottonwood tree. > > Bernie Cliff, one of the organizers, shouted: "Pray for your families!" > At his words, the singing crescendoed, dancers and onlookers cheered > and raised their arms. > > The scene is the centerpiece of the fourth annual Blue Mountain Sun > Dance, a four-day Native American spiritual event that drew more than > 150 people to a high, lonely forest canyon north of La Grande. > > The sun dance blends deprivation, pain, drumming, prayer and dancing to > achieve help and enlightenment through physical sacrifice to the > creator. The loosely organized gathering here usually is private and > attracts little attention. Participants allowed a reporter to watch the > ceremony, but they didn't allow photographs or sketches to record the > dancing. > > The federal government discouraged sun dances from 1888 until the > American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978. About 300 of the > ceremonies are held in the United States each year, Bernard Red > Cherries, a Northern Cheyenne Sun Dance chief, told a Lincoln, Neb., > newspaper in 2003. > > Sun dances, a Great Plains tribal ceremony that has spread to other > regions, are controversial among Native Americans. Some tribal leaders > promote them as public events and allow nontribal participants, but > others say the sacred ceremonies should not even be viewed by > outsiders. They generally closely guard details to protect the > intensely personal nature of the rite and to head off misunderstandings > about the piercing. > > Walla Walla Tribal Chief Bill Burke, 74, of the Confederated Tribes of > the Umatilla Reservation near Pendleton, said he's heard criticism that > sun dances aren't part of this region's religion. But he said he > supports the Blue Mountain gathering. > > "I helped them out, as a matter of fact," he said. "I believe there has > to be some spiritual experience there." > > Neither is he disturbed by the issue of non-native people taking part, > he said. "It is a religious practice, and who am I to say who should be > practicing it?" he said. > > After a few moments recovering from the piercing, Dirty Moccasins backed > up to the cottonwood tree and began dancing slowly in place. He blew a > wooden whistle with a feather attached while four other men had their > chests pierced and were tied to the tree. > > All would dance that way for at least an hour before freeing themselves > by jerking violently backward and ripping their flesh free of the > sticks and rope. > > "If you are in prayer enough, you don't feel it," said dancer Tom Futter > of Olympia, a veteran of the practice who planned to undergo the painful > ritual today. "I feel the knife for only a half-second." > > People at the gathering came from as far as Canada, Texas and Oklahoma. > It's a mix of Native Americans and people with connections to tribal > members. Bob Dirty Moccasins, for example, said his wife is Apache. > > "There is blood that runs through my heart like a buffalo," he said. > > This is Futter's eighth sun dance. His chest is scarred from piercings, > as are the chests of several other dancers. > > "I do it for my family, mainly, for the people I have lost in the past > year," said Futter, whose ancestors include members of the Umatilla and > Cayuse tribes and French-Canadians. > > This year's ceremony began Thursday morning in heat and dust with > rhythmic dancing, insistent drumming and singing. Participants consume > no food or water for four days, although they rest from time to time in > the shade of a circular lodgepole arbor covered by fir boughs. > > Dancers aren't required to be pierced and tied to the tree, and it > wasn't clear how many would do so. > > The sun dance includes a healing ceremony and ends with a feast of > native dishes, including elk and smoked salmon. > > Some people take part in the dances as a way to sacrifice when a family > member or loved one is ill, said Bernie Cliff, who is Cayuse, Sioux and > Arapaho. For others, the sun dance is a declaration of independence. > > "We've had our languages taken away and our religion," said Cliff, who > also lives in Benton City, Wash. "We've lost our land, our buffalo. The > last thing we have is this." The Cliff family organized the gathering > and has studied and taught the ceremony for years to keep it alive, > members said. > > Women normally aren't pierced during sun dances because they suffer > during childbirth and don't need to suffer more, he said. But women > dancers tie eagle feathers to their arms as a symbol of their > solidarity. They also go without food or water for four days like the > men, he said. > > When the dance is over, Cliff said, the participants are exhausted. > > "Grumpy, too. And thirsty," he said. "They are going to want to go > home." > > Richard Cockle: 541-963-8890; rcockle at oregonwireless.net