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L O W L A N D S - L - 01 December 2010 - Volume 04<br>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
<span class="gd"><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Marcus Buck</span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:list@marcusbuck.org">list@marcusbuck.org</a>></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
<span class="gi">LL-L "Language politics" 2010.12.01 (02) [AF-EN]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">From: dealangeam <<a href="mailto:atdelange@iburst.co.za" target="_blank">atdelange@iburst.co.za</a>>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Al die geld in die wêreld gaan nie Laag-Saksies regruk nie. Dit is
die mense wat dit praat wat dit sal regkry. Hulle moet daarna streef om die
taal sorgsaam te gebruik in plaas van om geld na te jaag soos die geval was
gedurende die Hansa tydperk.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">A person who is hungry will
sell his mothertongue for a bread.<br>
<br>
For somebody who feels that he - in the context of his own society - is a
relative "loser" the number 1 priority is becoming a non-loser. Only
after the person has become a non-loser the person considers to engage in
causes that are not directed at personal improvement.<br>
<br>
I know many native speakers of Low Saxon who feel very sad about the decline of
their mothertongue. It's not that they hate their language and give it up for
that reason. They actually love their language! But if you ask them why they
didn't do anything about the decline, they'll answer: "Oh, we had debts
and we had a farm to run. We had other things to worry about. What impact would
the voice of a peasant have anyway?" But if you put money in the language,
people can personally improve, become non-losers, and help their beloved
mothertongue at the same time. That's the reason why money helps languages.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">Ek wonder hoeveel laaglanders is bewus daarvan dat Afrikaanse (let
wel, nie Engelse) plekname geteiken word om swart name te kry. Daar word
verskeie redes aangevoer, onder andere regstelling van Apartheid se gevolge.
Dit kos biljoene Rand om dit te doen, geld wat
veel beter bestee kon word.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">I do not approve of renaming
places like that. If a language community doesn't want to use imposed or
colonial names they should be free to use names based in their own local
tradition, but they shouldn't force other language communities and the world to
adopt these names.<br>
<br>
But I don't buy your number. Billions of Rand?
Some placename signs and some changed letterheads. Doesn't cost much. I think
there are good reasons against the renaming of places but money is none of
them.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><br>
From: <span style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Mark Dreyer</span> <<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net" target="_blank">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">You suggest money be taken from black parents to subsidise schools
they do not want. Now, it's their money; they earned it, & what right have
you to take it away for sometthing you want but not them?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">They want it. They just
cannot afford the investments necessary to achieve their wish.<br>
<br>
Are you familiar with the concept of metastability: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability" target="_blank"><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability></a>?
It means a system that is in a stable condition. No matter in what direction
you alter the system it will always cost energy. However if you invest enough
energy you can overcome an existing barrier and the system will change into a
much more stable state. (Look at the graphic in the Wikipedia article.)<br>
<br>
The situation of the Black language communities is metastable. Look again at
the Wikipedia graphic. The current situation is state 1. It's a stable state.
The parents feel okay with their situation, because every change to their state
would mean that the ball had to move upwards (in our system that means money is
spent for things that have no immediate benefit resulting in parental
discontent). If we move the ball and do not continuously push it, it will roll
back in its old position. However, if we spent enough money (causing parental
discontent for a limited amount of time) to reach state 2, the ball will fall
into state 3 all by itself (state 3 is a Black language education system with
the same quality as the Afrikaans or English education systems). And if that
happens parental contentment will rise to much higher rates than ever before.<br>
<br>
To give a more wordly and less theoretical example of metastability: imagine a
bunch of castaways on a lonesome island. They have fresh water and just enough
coconuts to eat to survive. The island is state 1. State 2 is the ocean. You
have to do a long journey to cross it and it will be harsh. Food and water will
be rationed and you will experience hunger. But if you have crossed the ocean
you will reach civilization (state 3) and everything will be better than on the
island.<br>
<br>
It's obvious that people who do not know concepts like
"metastability" will not like the time when the ball rolls upwards.
But the time of rolling upwards is limited. The time of enjoying the stable
state 3 will be non-limited.<br style="">
<br style="">
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: navy;">I know what we did & I am proud of what we did.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">If this statement includes
the Apartheid time it doesn't astonish me but disgusts me. I guess most
Afrikaners even during Apartheid times were sweet people and I have no reason
to believe that you personally did anything bad. And of course not everything
was bad in Apartheid times. It sure had _some_ positive aspects. But Blacks
were second class citizens, actually not even real citizens, because they were
re-declared as being citizens of some pseudo-independent Bantustans,
segregated and often forcefully relocated. At the same time South Africa
build nuclear bombs.<br>
<br>
Marcus Buck</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
"Elsie Zinsser" <<a href="mailto:ezinsser@mweb.co.za">ezinsser@mweb.co.za</a>></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
LL-L "Language politics" 2010.11.27 (01) [AF-EN]</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Thanks, Roger.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">I am surprised
that it is believed that Afrikaans-medium schools have more capacity. My
grandson is in Grade 4 and there are 42 pupils in his class, which seems to be
the norm in the school. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">His school has
reached agreements with various pre-schools in the feeding area to send their
Grade 1’s there and thus ensuring full capacity each year. It is a multi-racial
Afrikaans-medium school.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">There is an
annual demand to the government to get organized and to start building schools
and distribute learning materials to schools <b>before</b> the school year
starts, not only after May, or later, as happens each year, according to media
reports. [uhum...that is the same media that is now being threatened by a media
tribunal and a clamp-down on reporting on government’s failures; corruption,
incompetence, cronyism and nepotism.]</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">The truth behind
the lack of capacity in government schools is the government’s failure to plan
ahead and to invest tax monies into development rather than into ideological
principles. Then they ‘solve’ their failure by forcing the schools that do plan
ahead to change from single language into dual language medium. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">The SA regime
also has a somewhat laissez-faire attitude on border control, which resulted in
millions of non-South Africans flooding SA and overextending its already
limited resources. (Besides education being in a crisis, health services have
practically imploded and the 300 informal housing settlements that existed in 1994
have mushroomed into 3000, from lack of a structured and honest approach).</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">The income-tax
base of 5 million people provides welfare grants to some 13-million poorest of
the poor while government officials drive the latest German autos and produce
litters of 20 children at the tax payers’ account.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Heck, they need
English to make the masses understand ideology. It has happened before and it
is happening again. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Regards,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Elsie Zinsser</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">>></span>From: <img src="file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Ron/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msohtml1/01/clip_image001.gif" name="upi" width="1" border="0" height="1"><span style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Roger
Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc.</span> <<a href="mailto:roger.thijs@euro-support.be" target="_blank">roger.thijs@euro-support.be</a>></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">Subject: LL-L Language
Politics</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">In SA there is apparently an
increasing demand for education in English, putting pressure on Afrikaans
schools for opening their infrastructure for solving the demand for English
programs.</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
"Elsie Zinsser" <<a href="mailto:ezinsser@mweb.co.za">ezinsser@mweb.co.za</a>></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
LL-L "Language politics" 2010.11.28 (01) [AF-EN]</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Hi All,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Marcus, I found
the following reference to Gauteng schools </span><a href="http://www.education.gpg.gov.za/" target="_blank">http://www.education.gpg.gov.za</a><span style="color: black;"> and used a search focus on Soweto (suburb) schools but be
warned; unless you know Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Venda, Sotho, Tsonga or Pedi, you
might not know which school uses which language and indeed, if it is not an
English medium school. You will not find Zulu schools in predominantly Swazi
areas or Xhosa schools in predominantly Zulu areas. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Here is also a
link to top performing schools and they list all, even though some have a 0%
pass rate:</span> <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.education.gpg.gov.za/Documents/top_performing_schools-2007_thru_2009.xls" target="_blank">http://www.education.gpg.gov.za/Documents/top_performing_schools-2007_thru_2009.xls</a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Incidentally,
the man doing my garden service sent his two primary school daughters back to
KwaZulu Natal in January because he was frustrated that his kids were forced
(and threatened) to use Xhosa in a Zulu medium school in Tembisa, a township
north-east of Johannesburg. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Upliftment?
Prior to Apartheid being scrapped (1993) there were more black school kids
entering Grade 1 than the overall total of all white pupils from Grade 1 to
Grade 12. <span style=""> </span>Indeed a vast number of people
to uplift at a single person’s very average salary from which the government
already takes 28% income tax and in turn provides no health benefits and no
safety benefits. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Marcus, I think
you are being indoctrinated into believing that ‘white race’ equals ‘wealthy
person’. Is that not racist? </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Elsie Zinsser </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">----------</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From:
"Elsie Zinsser" <<a href="mailto:ezinsser@mweb.co.za">ezinsser@mweb.co.za</a>></p>
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject:
LL-L "Language politics" 2010.11.30 (07) [EN]</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Hi all!</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Mike, I am happy
that you enjoyed the sign language inserts and programmes on SABC TV.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">I like to sit
and watch to improve my limited knowledge (had a few youth friends who signed) and
often wonder about how similar (or not) SA sign language was compared to, say,
Indian or US sign language?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Thanks for
thinking about it.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Regards,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">Elsie Zinsser </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black;">>></span>As a SIgn Language linguist (who also still
"does" other languages), although I was delighted to see the various
spoken language newses, I was THRILLED to see so much South African Sign
Language. I think I calculated that one could watch 2.25 HOURS of signed
language news every day Monday through Friday: one hour each on the public
channels (with HALF the screen devoted to the sign language interpreter rather
than a tiny bubble in the bottom corner as you see in most countries), and then
15 minutes on eTV (which I think is a private network). Now, this was all
HEARING interpreters interpretting what the regular isiZulu or siSwati or
Sepedi or English-speaking newscaster was saying, so not exactly Deaf signing,
but still...<br>
<br>
Also, there was a half hour Deaf produced sign language variety/newsmagazine
programme called DTV on Saturdays (?), produced every two weeks and then rebroadcast
on the off week. THIS was REAL SASL ... and had a 8-10 minute or so comedy
serial which takes place in a Deaf bar that was HILARIOUS!</p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"> </p>
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