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<DIV>Robert Mirabal has a new album, "Indians, Indians", and on it is a song
called Morrison, where he tells the story of Morrison and his uncle in
Albuquerque. On the album, Mirabal sings in English, and in his native Tiwa. On
one song, the two languages are layered together, with one voice, a woman,
singing in English, and Mirabal in Tiwa. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>When Ilse replied to my post earlier, I Googled "Fairfield Language
Technologies", and retrieval algorithms being what they are today, I was given
opportunities to explore products characterised as "the best" in some way. I
encountered this: "<FONT size=2>Choose any dialect in the world, and you're
virtually assured of finding it among <B>Instant Immersion™ 33 Languages</B>,
the revolution in foreign language learning. Ideal for travel or <U>scholarly
pursuits,</U> each of the 33 CD-ROMs is devoted to one global language,
exploring <U>essential vocabulary</U> and phrases in subjects ranging from
<U>Food</U> to <U>First Words</U>; <U>Colors</U> to <U>Countries</U>."
</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The underlinings are mine, and I call your attention
specifically to the sequence. The initial mention of "scholarly pursuits" leads
one to believe that you will be able to converse with your peers and colleagues
after having mastered the lessons. But look at the content: "essential
vocabularly" is very basic. "Concept" and "anthropomorphize" are not <EM><FONT
color=#008080>food</FONT></EM> nor <EM><FONT color=#008080>first
words</FONT></EM>, not <EM><FONT color=#008080>colors</FONT></EM> or <EM><FONT
color=#008080>countries</FONT></EM>, and there is no mentioned category that
would be a placeholder for words such as these. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>A bit ago, I asked if anyone on the list had a strong,
indigenous lexicon for representing arithmetic and mathematics. I received a few
replies, but there is apparently nothing sufficiently robust (lexicon, native
speakers, cultural concepts) that would faciliate the development of math
.learning materials in an Indigenous language. Here, we are looking at building
it from scratch. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>The Kauffman Foundation Thoughtbook noted that if
intellectuals and academics are convinced of something, then others follow.
Every revolution has demonstrated its latent belief in this precept by
eliminating intellectuals as one of its first steps. And this takes me back to
Morrison, to Robert Mirabal, and the sentiment of the Doors ever-popular song:
<FONT color=#000080>The time to hesitate is through</FONT>. (The entire song is
easily found by Googling the title of this email). </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Day after day, Phil sends out articles and links to articles
that talk about how languages are dying. I believe, especially after the
informative comments I have received in response to my earlier posts, that we as
academincs need to be rethinking how we are concepualizing what we do with
indigenous languages. Language information that sits on a page like yesterday's
dead fish may be very helpful to generative linguists, but it doesn't help solve
the problem of insufficient lexicon to do even the most basic learning
materials. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Personally, I think Revitalization will happen if people can
create Teams, instead of top-down structures that are limited by the expertise
of the person at the top. (This is where lots of people will feel immediately
intimidated and perhaps angry, says the Cognitive Psychologist in me). But think
about it: Good learning materials require knowledge of the IL, knowledge of the
subject matter, and a solid grounding at the level of Native Speaker in
Technology. Not too many people have all of that. So if the Teams took advantage
of the strong skills of each participant, we could reduce the number of links to
sad and desperate articles that Phil sends out. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Best to all, </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2>Mia</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV>"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them. Alfred North
Whitehead</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Mia Kalish, M.A. <BR>PhD Student, C&J<BR>Tularosa, New Mexico USA
88352</DIV> </BODY></HTML>