Endangered Languages in Museum

[Marion Gunn]

A close relative of mine this year lost a little girl to illness. Only 
eight years old. Her favourite flower was the sunflower. Two grew in my 
garden this summer. Not planted by me. Grew from seeds I fed the birds 
during the harder days of winter. I think that makes a better image. 
Sunflowers turning their faces to the sun, every day, as she rises, the 
way children wake up with a smile. A faith in their land and in their 
language. Better than coffin posters on their bedroom walls. Yesterday, 
we buried one of our own greatest poets. Winner of a Nobel Prize. He had 
many stories to tell. One of them related to his filling in a form for 
his child's admission to school, where there was a space to state 
father's occupation and finding that, wiithout his saying anything, the 
school entry form already had pre-entered on it the word "file" (the 
Irish for "poet'). Maybe this is a cultural thing, a dislike of the 
coffin image. Maybe, in some other cultures, children need to have such 
words screamed at them, such images as to scare them into doing 
something or other, into carrying a burden for which their shoulders are 
still too small. Not here. Not now. Never, I trust.
mg

Scríobh 01/09/2013 21:41, Doug Whalen <whalen at HASKINS.YALE.EDU>:
>    It is great that you are trying to do language in a museum--it's 
> not easy.  And the endangered language issue is complex enough to be 
> that much harder.
>    Still, the education parallel is somewhat mistaken--support for 
> education in general is enough of a given that the coffin metaphor can 
> be taken in context.  The context is, as you point out, completely 
> lacking for the general public.  That is where the confused messages 
> come in...