language documentation & Linguists

[Jon Allan Reyhner]

All:

Some of the tensions between local activists and professional linguists are discussed in the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th papers in Indigenous Language Revitalization: Encouragement, Guidance & Lessons Learned (2009), which is on-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/ILR/

The subtitle is courtesy of Darrell Kipp, who has the first paper in the collection in which he writes about the Blackfeet Immersion School he helped found. The second paper by Margaret Noori discusses some of her experience raising her children as speakers of her Native language.

Jon Reyhner
Professor of Bilingual Multicultural Education
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/
________________________________________
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Zane Smith [rzs at WILDBLUE.NET]
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 6:52 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] language documentation

Hi Bernadette, and Claire,

thanks for sharing these insights Bernadette,
you are fortunate to have fluency yourself and among many speakers and obviously the problems you
all face ( eg. dialect differences) are going to be different than those of us struggling to revive
dormant languages as us Wyandot and Wendat (of the old "Huron" Confederacy)
Our efforts are much more like putting the shock paddles to a heart that stopped beating;
a little rough but necessary for survival.

Knowing what we know now what would we do different?
 Claire, these are several I've thought about:

It is important NOT to wait for funding before starting. (we lost precious elders and much time)
And of course,practically, its important for grant application to have an existing record of effort.
But i strongly feel that If our passion for language exists only when its convenient
or when our projects are supported financially,then there is something wrong with us.
language has evolved and survived without money for eons of time.

Because we are relying heavily upon academia,written materials and very little audio,
We should NEVER again rely upon the work of one professional linguist,and assume that
just because he is a well trained professor that his decisions are "good enough"
This has happened with us and unfortunately now there is much "undoing to do".
Now some tribal members are resentful that anyone would doubt his professionalism.

We should have started out with a tribally active Language Committee
even if it means some are not well-versed in the language ,we need to
make decisions of OUR OWN. Even if it calls for the re-designing of a word
if the committee feels its necessary. Its OUR language. Our cultural property.
And we should have started with atleast three trained linguists who are not
merely interested in publishing their own favored "conclusive" materials,
but are actively dedicated in seeing our language revived.

Ok and for all you NON-tribal professional linguists:
When those of us are preparing lessons to teach and we run things by you,
If there is ambiguity or uncertainty we can accept that, and you can help us alter our plans
to redirect into areas that are more certain.  But Children need some certainty and predictability.
Please try not to shut a door on us. please don't halt our efforts with; "you can't do it that way",
offer us some options because this is an uphill journey as it is.
Shut doors can be discouraging at a time when progress is difficult already.

well, these are ones that seem like biggies for now!
thanks!

Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte, Oklahoma



On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 4:21 PM, Bernadette Santamaria <bernisantamaria at gmail.com<mailto:bernisantamaria at gmail.com>> wrote:
Ms. Bowern:

For our ANA project years back to assess, plan, etc for lang programming on our rez, one of the issues that became touchy & political was one that other Tribes have also complained of at certain conferences--the issue of disagreement on which community "dialect" (don't really like use of that term but...) or "correct" language to use for various purposes. There isn't any "correct" version, only differences in local pronunciations & word usage.

We have various "versions" among our communities (total tribal population of over 15,000 located in over 20 communities with distances from 5 to 60 miles inbetween them on a large reservation), and due to these disagreements, planning disintegrated.

Our Apache language status is an "A" (still spoken by some children) and we do have numerous speakers among the communities but not as high among the younger people from a certain age on down.  We want to do curriculum development, improve on a previously published error-laden dictionary, but some of us are discouraged because of the dialectal differences and disagreements about them.  It is still an issue....but we will apply for an ANA grant for a another project.

Another issue is the one on the importance of types of grammars to be taught to language learners - some researchers state that teaching all types of grammar is the rule and not to concentrate on only nouns or verbs.  But as a fluent speaker of Apache, an Athabaskan Family language, I know that our language is full of sentences that are verb-driven as most Athabaskan language family languages are.  Researchers do agree that Athabaskan languages have complex and rich verb morphologies and verb classificatory systems that are larger than in other language families.  I believe that Apache-language learners need to learn more of the verb conjugations and not to concentrate on nouns as they will always be learned along with the verbs.  I have had some success at the university level of teaching in the past and my students praised this method after they had learned mostly nouns in earlier language classes in schools.

Hope this is something that will assist your seeking of info.

Berni


Bernadette A. SantaMaria
White Mountain Apache Culture Advisory Board Member
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 10:12 AM, Claire Bowern <clairebowern at gmail.com<mailto:clairebowern at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
I'm writing an article for the Cambridge Handbook of Language Documentation on planning a documentation project. I'd be interested in comments from anyone here about things they wish they'd known when they started (I have a long list of those...). It's a fairly general article but I'll be illustrating it from a fair number of projects, I hope. I'd be particularly interested in stuff that looked promising but which didn't end up working for various reasons.

Also, I remember a quotation somewhere by David Costa and Daryl Baldwin on the Miami project that was essentially 'follow your heart', don't get caught up agonising too much over the right orthography, etc. Does anyone know the source for this?

Thanks,
Claire




--
"if you don't know the language you will only see the surface of the culture..The language is the heart of the culture and you cannot separate it."
Elaine Ramos, TLINGIT