RNLD Twitter - Siraya grammar and lexicon

[Huang,Chun]

Thank you, Peter, for raising the question - a very important one.
and "yes" to Margaret, and "yes" to Anthony.

sorry I can't write much now. I just spent 30 hours flying from Manila, 
Philippines (where I teach now) to Gainesville, FL (where I studied 
linguistics). I am super sleepy right now *_* I have a two-week break 
from work, so I am here in FL learning from Dr. M. J. Hardman's 
experience with Aymara on the Internet (http://aymara.ufl.edu/). We are 
to discuss the possibility of creating something like that for Siraya.

and yes like Margaret said, me and my friends in the Tainan Pepo Siraya 
Culture Association have been active in reclaiming the Siraya language 
and fighting for official recognition of the people. We have organized 
summer camps, trained some teachers, sent some of them to some local 
elementary schools to teach some Siraya, and published a dictionary and 
a few language learning materials. In fact, a 5-book series of Siraya 
learning books we published last year, with nice illustrations, just won 
a national publication award. for a glimpse, see: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRWLwMzTtW4

We design all our publications for practical learning-and-teaching 
purposes. We reduce "academese" to minimum because we just want these 
books to be useful, and USED, by those who are learning the language 
(not the linguistics of the language). And all of our publications are 
trilingual in Siraya, English, and Mandarin so people in Taiwan, 
including casual readers, can comprehend.

We have also just started a facebook group where the 
teachers-in-training can practice Siraya.

Adelaar has been helpful for us. He is supportive and he acknowledges 
our work. To some extent, good academic work like Adelaar's helps us 
defend against the bad work (or linguists) that the govt would reference 
and use against our official recognition. that's it. I won't name names. 
Let me just say that those of us in the association who do know 
linguistics -- like myself, Chaokai Shih (a non-Siraya volunteer who has 
been with us for 6 years and currently a phd student at Tsing Hua 
Univ.), and Edgar Macapili (main author of most of our publication, one 
of those "naturally good" at linguistics) -- do read Adelaar, learn 
useful things from his work, and are excited whenever we see he has a 
new publications. We do make our own decisions in terms of coming up 
with a descriptive grammar suitable for teaching and learning.

Jimmy

Chun (Jimmy) Huang
Assistant Professor,
Department of English and Applied Linguistics,
De La Salle University - Manila



On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:04:16 +1100, Anthony Jukes wrote:
> Hi all
> I'm the first to agree that reference grammars intended for linguists
> are not necessarily of use to language communities. But there is no
> reason to presume that the only way Siraya speakers and activists 
> will
> have access to Adelaar's material is by shelling out for the Mouton
> book. In addition, the Siraya people have been fighting for official
> recognition by the Taiwanese government, and this scholarly
> publication is likely to be useful in these efforts.
>
> Cheers
> Anthony
>
> On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Margaret Florey <mflorey at rnld.org> 
> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Peter's query is an important one in some contexts. However, I'd 
>> also like
>> to move us along from the assumption that Indigenous people working 
>> to
>> support their own languages are linguistically naive. More and more
>> Indigenous people are getting training in linguistics in a range of 
>> contexts
>> - whether in universities or intensive institutes or informal 
>> workshops.
>>
>> Siraya is a good case in point. Dr Jimmy (Chun) Huang is a linguist 
>> (PhD,
>> University of Florida) and a Siraya language activist, and has 
>> researched
>> and published on his own language. I expect he will be well placed 
>> to draw
>> on this new material.
>>
>> Another perspective to add to the discussion.
>>
>> cheers,
>> Margaret
>>
>>
>> On 19 December 2011 14:36, Greg Dickson <munanga at bigpond.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> A good point to raise Peter.
>>>
>>> In my experience of working in Northern Australia with Aboriginal
>>> languages and language workers, grammars are generally pretty 
>>> indecipherable
>>> anyway, without a decent amount of training and support to help 
>>> language
>>> workers unpack what's in them.
>>>
>>> As for dictionaries, the one that I thought community language 
>>> workers
>>> responded best to was the Rembarrnga Dictionary compiled by Adam 
>>> Saulwick.
>>> It has illustrations and a nice layout and with minimal 
>>> morpho-phonemic
>>> processes, the Rembarrnga language suits the dictionary format 
>>> better than
>>> some other languages I've worked with. It was $50 a pop so not
>>> crazy-expensive, but still - most Rembarrnga speakers wouldn't have 
>>> known
>>> about where/how to get a copy, let alone be able to afford one and 
>>> what's
>>> worse is that the Art Centre that produced has sold them all and 
>>> doesn't
>>> seem interested in printing any more!  So while this was a 
>>> resource
>>> community members found useful, accessibility was still a problem.
>>>
>>> The issue remains a difficult one... I feel that if you have a few 
>>> people
>>> working on the ground in language communities who can share the 
>>> information
>>> that is contained in grammars and dictionaries in a meaningful way, 
>>> then
>>> you're doing more than a book on a shelf can do. Furthermore, if 
>>> producers
>>> of such materials have involved community members in their 
>>> production, then
>>> you've already make good headway even before publication. A good 
>>> training
>>> program, support for community language work and/or involvement in 
>>> resource
>>> production will counter the expense or inaccessibility of published
>>> resources, in my opinion.
>>>
>>> You can't really tell from the outside anyway - some linguists may 
>>> have an
>>> expensive publication but disseminate dozens of PDFs or printouts 
>>> to
>>> community for free. Others may have a great publication but move on 
>>> to
>>> another language or job and become inaccessible to community 
>>> members.
>>>
>>> My two cents on an important issue...
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Greg.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> On 19/12/2011 9:41 AM Peter Keegan wrote:
>>>
>>> From  RNLD Twitter
>>>
>>> >A new grammar and lexicon of #Siraya language of Taiwan has been
>>> > published. Great news for those revitalising
>>> >Siraya
>>> > 
>>> http://www.degruyter.de/cont/imp/mouton/detailEn.cfm?id=IS-9783110252958-1
>>>
>>> This is excellent news for those of us that are Austronesians 
>>> and/or
>>> Austronesianists.
>>>
>>> But I can't help but wondering that, at USD $195 (eBook same price) 
>>> and
>>> written in English, whether or not
>>> that this is really going to be of much use to Siraya speakers and 
>>> those
>>> interesting in revitalizing Siraya.
>>>
>>> Can anyone provide me with an example of a recent grammar/lexicon 
>>> produced
>>> by a Linguist
>>> that is accessible and that indigenous people actually find useful 
>>> ?
>>>
>>> regards,
>>>
>>> Peter J Keegan (Auckland, New Zealand)
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr Margaret Florey
>> Co-Director and Senior Linguist
>> Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity
>>
>> ph: +61 03 9662-4027 (office)
>> skype: RNLDorg
>> PO Box 627
>> Carlton South, VIC 3053
>> Australia
>>
>> www.rnld.org
>> ABN 24 215 634 040
>>