ELL: Cultural production

[deekonda narsingarao]

THANK "U"
deekonda


On Wed, 21 Nov 2001 Lars v. Karstedt wrote :
> > Speakers of a minority are sometimes socially
> isolated from other speakers
> > (e.g. because all their relatives who speak it are
> deceased). In such cases,
> > cultural events are at least an opportunity to meet
> other speakers and 'come
> > out' as speakers of a stigmatised language. They are
> social occasions and
> > offer an opportunity for the audience too, not only
> the performers, to speak
> > the language.
> >
> > I think that regaining pride in a language (as well
> as practising it!) is an
> > important step in promoting it in all domains.
> >
> > Yours
> >
> > Julia
>
> [second post]
>
> > I think this discussion started with revitalization
> strategies and reversal
> > of language death. So, stable multilingual societies
> are not germane here.
> > But you are certainly right there.
> > I also take it for granted that the discussion was
> centered around modern,
> > Western-like societies, not hunter-gatherers in the
> Kalahari desert. There,
> > again, things may be different.
> > But if a language is threatened in Europe, US, and
> the like, I guess it is
> > because its speakers are shifting to another language
> for most "high" uses
> > of the language. "Traditional" culture is not one of
> these; "modern" life
> > is. To stress traditional culture does not seem a
> good strategy in order to
> > reverse the tendency: if you want to revitalize
> Guernesiais (Guernsey Norman
> > French) do not do a poetry-festival, try to have
> McDonald's or Coca-Cola do
> > ads in it. This is a PRACTICAL encouragement to use a
> language, because it
> > makes the language "trendy", appealing, etc. (well,
> maybe not to
> > everybody...).
> > Best,
> >
> > mauro
> >
>
> I think both, Mauro and Julia have a point here. But
> the most
> important factor in saving a threatened language is the
> number of
> first language speakers and that is, naturall
of
> children who learn the language (be it as mono- or
> bilingual
> speakers). I may add some personal experience from
> Amrum, a
> German island off the North Sea coast, where I
> conducted fieldwork
> on the island's dialect of Frisian called Öömrang.
> There are only a
> very few Öömrang-speaking children (probably about ten)
> . The only
> situation where Öömrang is spoken is at home, basically
> with
> parents/grandparents. There where two cases when kids
> (in both
> cases pairs of siblings) where brought up
> Öömrang-speaking but
> ceased to use the language as soon as they entered
> (monolingual
> German) kindergarten. Even at home they wouldn't speak
> Öömrang
> anymore. I think this illustrates Mauro's point:
> Speaker's home as
> linguistic environment is too limited to give children
> the idea that
> Öömrang is something that really matters in the outside
> world. It
> doesn't even need to re-design McDonald's signs (by the
> way, in
> Quebec it's "poulet frit à la Kentucky" instead of
> "Kentucky fried
> chicken") but an Öömrang-speaking storekeeper, teacher,
> bank
> teller etc. would probably do. These people are there,
> they just
> don't practice their language publicly and this is
> where Julia's point
> gets in: the attitude towards minority languages
> matters as well. A
> person being proud of his mother-tongue will more
> likely practice it
> whenever he can than someone who deems his mothertongue
> being primitive, un-modern, un-educated etc. and
> therefore rather
> uses the (official) majority language.
>
> Best, Lars
>
>
>
>
> Lars Karstedt
> Bredeneschredder 7
> 22395 Hamburg
> Germany
> lkarstedt at uni-hamburg.de
> (040) 604 54 53
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