spontaneous acquisition

[phil cash cash]

Greetings ILAT,

I just wanted to share this quote found in a UK press article regarding the last
speaker of Eyak.

"I got that strong feeling right here that it's going to come back. God will
send down Eyak to start all over again."  Marie Smith Jones

As an indigenous person, it feels good when I read words like this.

Myself, I can say that I come from a strong spiritual family/community where
words have power, believing has power, and acting in the way of an ancestral
life has power.  Basically, good things can happen from living a strong
traditional life, so long as it can be imagined, modeled, taught, or acted
upon.

What I want to point out though is that there is a fairly unknown/undocumented
element in language revitalization where community people can experience or
otherwise cite instances of spontaneous language acquisition.  Now the linguist
in you is probably asking "how is that possible?" or "language is too variable
and it would be virtually impossible to acquire the full encyclopedic
vocabulary of a language," right?

Our venerable speaker of Eyak believed in it.  I believe it...because I have
witnessed it and heard first-person accounts of spontaneous acquisition.  To
tell the truth, I am not sure how to describe it if asked but I know it
happens.

Just a thought for you all today...

Phil Cash Cash (Cayuse/Nez Perce)
UofA

~~~

In praise of ... the Eyak language
Leader
Friday January 25, 2008
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,,2246576,00.html