Web site tries to preserve language (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Web site tries to preserve language

Posted: May 02, 2007
by: The Associated Press
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414916

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) - A University of Wisconsin - Green Bay professor and
an Oneida Nation of Wisconsin tribal elder have created a Web site to help
try to save the Oneida language.

For the past year and a half, professor Clifford Abbott and tribal elder
Maria Hinton have tried to transform a printed dictionary into a searchable
online database that includes sound samples.

''Culture and language goes together,'' said Hinton, 96, who learned the
language from her grandparents as a child. She started speaking English
when she was 7.

The endurance of the language transmits generations of stories, history and
faith, Hinton said.

Oneida is in the Iroquoian family of languages and is more distantly related
to Cherokee. It has an extensive history of oral literature and only has
been written down in the past few generations.

According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are 553 speakers of Oneida - 429 of
them in Wisconsin.

Like other American Indian languages, the danger of extinction has inspired
preservation efforts.

Students at the Oneida Nation schools learn to speak and write it. But only
about a dozen fluent native speakers remain.

Abbott and Hinton say they have put about 4,000 words online, including
about 900 sound samples of pronunciation. The English-to-Oneida part of the
database is only available now.

''We decided what we really needed was sound,'' said Abbott, a professor of
communication and First Nation studies who started studying the Oneida
language as a graduate student. ''It's easy to look up a word, but to know
what it should sound like is another story.''

They're about a quarter of the way through the dictionary, but the Web site
already is being used for one of Abbott's grammar classes. The site
includes texts on grammar and will one day have sample stories in Oneida.

Abbott said she expects it to be a few more years before the online
dictionary is complete.

Besides the Oneida reservation near Green Bay, the other reservations are in
New York and Ontario.