Faculty works toward preserving languages (fwd)

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Faculty works toward preserving languages

By: Jeremy Hunt
Posted: 9/24/07
by Jeremy Hunt
Daily Lobo
http://media.www.dailylobo.com/media/storage/paper344/news/2007/09/24/News/Faculty.Works.Toward.Preserving.Languages-2986911.shtml

Every two weeks, one of the world's 7,000 languages becomes extinct.

UNM faculty is working to keep American Indian languages alive in New Mexico
and trying to establish a center to help preserve them.

"The issue of language maintenance is not just some academic exercise," said
Christine Sims, a professor in the language literacy and sociocultural
department. "These indigenous languages are spoken nowhere else in the
world."

The American Indian Language Policy Research and Teacher Training Center
would give tribes the support they need to preserve their languages, Sims
said.

The center will hold workshops and help tribal leaders develop curriculum to
fit the needs of their people, she said.

Congress passed legislation with a $200,000 appropriation to fund the
center, said Rep. Heather Wilson, who introduced the bill.

"We're losing languages," she said. "With that, we lose culture and who we
are."

The legislation is waiting consideration by the Senate, Wilson said.

Sims said there are about 20 indigenous languages still spoken in New
Mexico, and they are in danger of extinction.

Of those languages, there are three spoken only by older adults in the
communities, including the Mescalero and Jicarilla pueblos, Sims said.

When a language dies, so does the culture and identity of the people who
speak it, she said.

"The challenge, for the rest of us, is how do we make sure that doesn't
happen?" she said. "These languages can't be revitalized from any one other
source except within their community."

The only way to keep the languages alive is to have older generations
encourage and teach the youth to speak it, said Melissa Axelrod, a
linguistics professor who works with the Nambé tribe.

"A lot of people think all pueblo languages are the same, but they're
completely different," she said. "We have this incredible, exciting
diversity in New Mexico."

Axelrod said the University has a responsibility to revitalize indigenous
languages, because for a long time, educational institutions discouraged
American Indians from speaking their languages.

"They would torture little kids just for speaking their language," she said.
"That was educational policy in this country for many years."

Sometimes, American Indians discourage their children from learning their
native languages, said Roseann Willink, a linguistics professor in the
Navajo program.

"Some parents are against teaching their kids because they had a hard time
growing up speaking a native language," she said. "The young people are the
ones that don't really care about it or don't really have any use for the
native languages."

Younger generations need to realize the value of their native languages,
Axelrod said.

Without their languages, they can't understand where they came from or who
they are, she said.

"You want to think about your own language," she said. "People in other
communities speak (English) differently than others. You look at those
differences, and you see something about what binds communities together
and how we use language to express our identity."

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