<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN">
<html><body>
<p>This is good news. However, Aymara has had an Internet presence for at least a decade and there are several sites dedicated to Aymara, the Aymara course http://aymara.ufl.edu also used by the Bolivian government, and the ILCA site http://ilcanet.org/ are two that have been around for a long time. ILCA was teaching Aymara in the classrooms a 2~3 decades ago; unfortunately, at that time there was no governmental follow-through. Then, when it finally came, they accepted bad advice, which made it unpopular. The implementation of our program was a step in the right direction. I am glad to see that things are better now. </p>
<p>A note: there is an Aymara site in Chile which also carries the name Jaqi Aru https://www.facebook.com/jaqiaru?fref=ts . Not a surprise, given that in Puno as well some people call the language Jaqi Aru. MJ</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>On Tue, 17 Jun 2014 14:29:10 -0700, Phil Cash Cash wrote:</p>
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding-left:5px; border-left:#1010ff 2px solid; margin-left:5px; width:100%"><!-- html ignored --><!-- head ignored --><!-- meta ignored -->
<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><strong>‘Our language is our soul’: saving Aymara<br /></strong></span><br />By Alexia Kalaitzi
<div><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14px; background-color: #f4f3f2;">Published on </span><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-size: 14px; font-family: Cambria; vertical-align: baseline; color: #000000; background-color: #f4f3f2;">June 17, 2014</span><br />
<div><br />
<div>‘Could you imagine yourself speaking a language, your mother tongue, at home and then going to school and learning a foreign language? It is a big shock,’ says Ruben Hilare, an activist from the Bolivian indigenous community of Aymara, trying to describe the reality of many children in the community.<br /><br />Aymara is a language as well as a people: it is a native American language spoken by over a million people in Bolivia and several large communities in Peru, Chile and Argentina. Although it is an official language in Bolivia, it is underrepresented in the public sphere, where Spanish dominates. The only media sources exclusively in Aymara are a handful of television shows and radio programmes, while the language is taught at school for only an hour a week. <br /><br />Until recently, Aymara did not have an online presence, either. But this is changing. Ruben Hilare and other community members are making an effort to save their language and promote it on the internet, establishing a virtual community called Jaqi Aru. </div>
<div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;">Access full article below: </div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><a href="http://newint.org/blog/2014/06/17/endangered-languages-aymara/">http://newint.org/blog/2014/06/17/endangered-languages-aymara/</a></div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"></div>
<br />
<div>
<div class="gmail_default" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: large;"><span style="color: #000000; font-family: Cambria; font-size: 14px; background-color: #f4f3f2;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p> </p>
<div> </div>
</body></html>