Striving to preserve Aboriginal languages (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Striving to preserve Aboriginal languages

October 8, 2009
British Columbia, CA

With a flock of 17 sheep on her Barnston Island farm, a full-time faculty job at
SFU’s Kamloops satellite campus, and six grandchildren, Susan Russell has a lot
to keep her occupied.

But she still found the time to earn a PhD at age 63.

It all stems from the phonetician’s decades-long obsession with how people
produce sounds and learn languages, along with a "minor" obsession that
includes singing, choral conducting and teaching voice. She has even learned
Inuit throat singing, although she doesn’t do it anymore.

But Russell’s current passion is finding ways to support and sustain B.C.’s
First Nations languages. Her PhD thesis examined how people interact in
endangered-language classrooms. "These languages only exist if people use them,
and the classroom is one of the main places where these languages do live,"
explains Russell.

"How people behave in the classroom has an effect on the language through what
they say and how they say it."

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