CHILE: Keeping Indigenous Languages Alive (fwd link)

[Luke Kundl Pinette]

The title seems a bit misleading.
So what is this supposed to do exactly?
If they don't teach them any language to near conversancy, it hardly 
helps to preserve the language.  I know a few words in French, German, 
and Portugese, I even know a couple of words in Aymara, which doesn't 
mean I speak any of those languages.

If they're really concerned about teaching them about other cultures, it 
seems to me that there are better ways.
And if they want to teach them the languages, they should only try to 
teach as many as they have time and funding for, but in depth.
Teaching them a few words devoid of grammar and conversation seems about 
as useful for teaching them about the culture as those sugar cube igloos 
we made in grade school.

Does anybody have any possible benefit from this program?  It sounds 
well intentioned severely misdirected to me.

Regards,
Luke

phil cash cash wrote:
> CHILE:  Keeping Indigenous Languages Alive
> By Daniela Estrada
>
> SANTIAGO, Sep 1 (IPS) - "Mari, mari!" shout the excited group of 20 Chilean,
> Peruvian and Ecuadorean three- and four-year-olds, using the Mapuche language
> greeting to welcome a visitor to their intercultural day care centre in
> Santiago.
>
> Some of the pupils at the Adkintun preschool are descendents of the Mapuche, the
> largest indigenous group in Chile, while others belong to the Aymara ethnic
> group, native to the Andean highlands of Bolivia, Peru and northern Chile. In
> the past there have also been children descended from the Rapa Nui, the native
> Polynesian people of Easter Island.
>
> But the majority of the 60 children enrolled at the day care centre do not
> belong to any indigenous ethnic group, which makes it genuinely intercultural,
> said Jorge Clavería of the Coordinadora Nacional Indianista (CONACIN), the
> non-profit indigenous network that founded the centre in 2005.
>
> Access full article below:
> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43752
>
>