Language crusaders revitalize dying tongues (fwd link)

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Language crusaders revitalize dying tongues

As Canada's native dialects slide toward obsolescence, aboriginal groups are
finding resourceful ways to ensure linguistic posterity

PATRICK WHITE
>From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
January 16, 2008 at 4:36 AM EST

For a brief time when he was 6, Chief Robert Joseph's schoolteachers rendered
him mute.

If he dared speak Kwak'wala, his only tongue, even to complain of
t'sit'saxsisala (sore feet) or t'ixwa ( a cough), the missionaries at St.
Michael's Residential School in Alert Bay, B.C., would strike.

And if Mr. Joseph's friends mustered the audacity to ask him yalkawa'mas — did
you get hurt? — they risked a smack themselves.

"I certainly saw my share of rulers, straps and cuffs on the ear," Mr. Joseph
says in perfect English, the language forced upon him 62 years ago. "You had to
pick up English or not communicate at all."

Others students had it worse. One common punishment involved a sewing needle
through the tongue.

The last native residential schools closed in 1996, but the silencing of native
tongues continues.

Tuesday, Statistics Canada released data showing nearly all of Canada's native
languages sliding toward obsolescence as fluent elders die and young
aboriginals grow up speaking only English or French.

Link to full article below:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080115.Lcensuslanguages0116/BNStory/lifeMain/home