Lost Language Day?

[Robin Sabino]

I find this idea very appealing.  I would especially like to see these 
messages go out over the internet--especially to government (e.g. BIA and 
ANA) and funding agencies, both private and public. 

Might we also respond each time a language is lost?

Robin Sabino
Auburn University

On Fri, 17 May 1996, T.Matthew Ciolek wrote:

> ------------------------- forwarded message --------------------------
> BOUNCE endangered-languages-l: Non-member submission from
> [dcheezem at alaska.net (David Cheezem)]
> From: dcheezem at alaska.net (David Cheezem)
> Subject: Lost Language Day?
> 
> 
> I am not a linguist.  I am a poet working toward his Masters in Fine Arts
> in Creative Writing at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  But I've been
> watching the endangered language listerve with interest and I wonder what
> you think of this idea:
> 
> The annual AIDS awareness day called "A day without art" is very effective
> and powerful because of its emphasis on what is being withheld from the
> world when a human being is lost to the disease.  I think it would be just
> as powerful to have an international day mourning the loss of languages and
> cultures -- another kind of withholding.  You could have flyers appear in
> many major cities with an untranslated bit of a lost language.
> 
> It could read something like this:
> 
> 
>                       You will never read these words again
> 
> 
> The following is a statement written in the __________ language. The last
> known speaker of this langauge was ______________ who died in 19__.  We are
> not translating this statement because in a small way, we want to emphasize
> the loss of meaning and knowledge that ocurrs when a language dies.
> Speaking the words will not bring back the fabric of life that accompanies
> a living language, so we share them only in mourning.
> 
> 
> 
> <a short untranslated text, phonetically rendered.>
> 
> 
> For more information about the effort to save endngered languages and
> cultures, write ______.
> 
> ****
> 
> Each flyer could have text from a different language.
> Any thoughts?
> 
> 
> ------------------------- end of forwarded message --------------------------
> 
> 
>