Rosetta Stone

[Mia Kalish]

I have to agree with Bill on this, on all points.
While I know that many people have been working on these issues for entire
lifetimes, and that my 8 years or so is trifling in comparison, I have found
that in the creation of language learning technology, the difficulties are
compounded by issues of information "being snatched out of the air."
However, on a new dimension, these issues are appearing to be relatively
minor in comparison with the issue of preparing technical information in the
Indigenous language. In this regard, I have started an iPod project at the
College where all the information must be in Diné Bizaad. The struggles to
speak the technology are enormous. Discussions of how to talk about "iPod"
(just this one word) are ongoing, and no resolution has been reached. 
Shortly after the Maori announced the availability of Windows and MS Office,
I spoke with the project director. She told me about the incredible effort
they engaged in developing the technical vocabulary. They needed about
675,000 words to define that interface. Although this seems like an enormous
number, this is - relatively speaking - a "small" interface. Imagine the
effort necessary to create a domain lexicon for Cognitive Psychology, or
Physics. How about Mathematics? Some (many) languages don't even seem to
have a memory - or perhaps a cognitive concept - of numericalization and
serialization. How do we go there? I once worked with an Elder, someone
reasonably fluent in 3 related Amerind languages, and who had been a math
teacher, who had difficulty counting to 100 in her first language.  
Personally, I think Powell did the world a huge injustice when his
prescriptive document on words to be collected for Amerind languages did not
include any technical, mathematical, or scientific lexicons. His
anthropological focus on food, clothing, and puberty rites did both the
civilizations and us an enormous disservice from which we may never recover.
[I really think we should unname Lake Powell and rename it something like
Lake Whalen. :-)]
Bill talked about the speaker populations, but didn't mention that in
immersion learning - as when we are children in a cultural and linguistic
milieu - we hear the language being spoken around us. We see signs and
cultural symbols, so we learn by having the information soak into us, so to
speak. Multi-perceptual soaking is much faster, easier, and probably more
reliable than the results of the linear cognitive efforts necessary to
apprehend, relate and assimilate the typical text-based presentations used
in language classes even today, in a world rich and rife with multimedia. 
I have a little vignette to share, one that in its many perspectives flashes
brightly on the different issues we cope with today, not only in
revitalization but also in education: 
	One of my friends, who has a PhD in Linguistics, has a grandson in
1st grade. This child has been raised in a liberal, educated household with
two older brothers, both of whom have sophisticated interests, and both of
whom have found interests that allow them to be totally involved in spite of
a genetic dyslexia that challenges their reading and spelling. 
	This small grandchild has been presented with gray-on-sort-of-white
"worksheets" - especially those things called "Fast Puppies" - in
kindergarten, and in the fall semester of first grade. The child does
between 3 and 6 of the 25 or so repetitive problems, and then stops. His
teachers are frustrated because they can't threaten or intimidate him into
finishing (word choice here - threaten or intimidate - is deliberate and
sadly, accurate). 
	How many people think the child stops because he is incapable of
finishing? None. Good. The child stops because in 3-6 problems he has groked
the entire learning goal of the unattractive, non-interactive and
consequently non-responsive "worksheet." Put in common terminology, He stops
because he is bored. There is nothing there to attract or hold his interest,
and nothing to tell him why he might want to complete the 25 or so problems.

	I should probably now clue you in to the fact that the small child
is also a computer whiz, for his age, and helps his grandmother figure out
things. 
I will end here, because there are many, many entailments in this last
statement. 
Best to everyone,    
Mia
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of William J Poser
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 3:02 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Rosetta Stone

In principle I agree that it is desirable to train members of endangered
language communities to do documentation and develop teaching materials.
However, it is important to note that the relatively large groups with large
numbers of speakers, are not a good model for the much smaller groups that
are more typical at least in much of North America. Here in British
Columbia,
for example, with the exception of a few larger groups that spill over
into BC, such as the Plains Cree, no indigenous language has more than
1,500 speakers and most have far fewer. Furthermore, dialects often
differ considerably from community to community, and the people regard it
as important to document and teach their particular dialect. In the case
of the language that I mostly work with, Carrier, there are perhaps 1,000
total speakers, but they are very unevenly distributed. There are a couple
of dialects that have perhaps 300 speakers each, and then a bunch of
communities that have from a few dozen on down to four fluent speakers
and a few semi-speakers. Not only are the speaker numbers small,
so are the total populations. The Carrier band that has four fluent
speakers left has a total membership of 266 people.

It is also typical of language in BC that there are few if any young
speakers, which means that the work must be done quickly if it is to be
done at all.

The upshot of this is that the people with the specialized skills
to do the documentation and develop teaching materials are likely
not to be available, and even if people with the right talents and
motivation can be found, waiting for them to acquire the necessary
training is undesirable. A further factor is that people with these
talents will also likely be talented in other ways and may,
out of community need, opportunity, or personal preference, spend
their time doing something else. Granting that some tasks can be done by
people without a lot of specialized training, you simply aren't going
to get a good grammar, dictionary, or textbook from people without
both a relatively rare set of talents and a considerable amount
of training and experience. It is true that some people may acquire
the necessary skills without formal education in linguistics and
related fields, but even so, they are people with unusual talents and
interests who have educated themselves over a considerable time.

Given the relative rarity of people with these skills, the odds of
finding even one such person in a group of a few hundred or even a
few thousand people are poor. We can make a crude estimate on the
basis of the Navajo Nation. Out of approximately 200,000 people,
I would estimate that there are no more than 20 who have done
serious work on documentation or the development of teaching materials.
I won't list everyone I am thinking of so as not to insult anybody
or trigger arguments about individuals, but I am including 
people with advanced degrees in linguistics like Elavina Tsosie Perkins
and Mary Anne Willie, people like William Morgan, the co-author of
the Navajo dictionary, and people more focussed on development of
teaching materials, such as Irene Silentman. This yields a crude
estimate of about one person in ten thousand. Even if this estimate
is off by an order of magnitude, it means that in communities of the
size typical in BC the odds of finding a good linguist/materials developer
in the community are poor. Such smaller communities are likely to have
to make use of people from outside the community.

Bill