A Long Fight Begins to Save Philipine Languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

A LONG FIGHT BEGINS TO SAVE PHILIPPINE LANGUAGES

AFP
April 30, 2012, 4:13 pm

PORAC, Philippines (AFP) - Arnel Valencia felt humiliated at school when he
was barred from using the language he spoke at home, part of a decades-long
pattern of linguistic destruction across the Philippines.

"'Stop talking like a bird. You should use English or the national
language'," Valencia, now 39 and a village elder, said his first-grade
teacher told him.

Valencia belongs to a small mountain tribe called Ayta Magindi that has for
centuries inhabited the bone-dry, sparsely forested Zambales mountains just
three hours' drive from the nation's megacity capital, Manila.

There are only 3,000 tribe members left living in and around the small
sugar farming town of Porac, guardians to one of the dozens of little-known
languages in the Southeast Asian archipelago that are under dire threat.

Access full article below:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/entertainment/a/-/entertainment/13559755/a-long-fight-begins-to-save-philippine-languages/
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