the book discussion

[Heather Souter]

Taanshi kiiyawaw, hello all,

I really appreciate this thread!
I am working on a book in Michif with an Elder and was thinking about
this very issue.  I am thinking bout doing subtitling but binding a
thin cardboard or plastic strip(s?) between pages so that this (these)
can be used to "hide" the English and also having a recording of our
Elder reading/telling the story....  Any other ideas?

Eekoshi pitamaa.  That is it for now.
Heather


On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Bernadette Santamaria
<bernisantamaria at gmail.> wrote:
> I agree with T. DeCoteau's assessment on whether to use subtitles--I've
> taught Apache at the university level--English subtitles "interfere" with
> teaching.  I found that students depend on them instead of learning the
> words on their own with my oral-only presentations in class. They would
> concentrate instead, on writing the word in Apache & English for their notes
> & not be concentration on listening or pronouncing.
>
> I switched to not writing the words on the board or anything but used only
> immersion methods and got better results at end of semester. One thing in
> our favor for Apache students from our tribe is that they still have
> speakers all around them at various domains at our reservation--speakers of
> ages 40 and over. Those under that age are less fluent but still do have a
> higher percentage of fluent speakers among younger people than other
> Indigenous groups, even some children but we know that we need to be
> conducting language maintenance and revitalization programming too to avoid
> further attrition of our language.
>
> Just contributing my comments.....
>
> Bernadette A. SantaMaria
> Language/Cultura Consultant
> White Mountain Apache Tribe
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Tammy DeCoteau <tdc.aaia at verizon.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> Han Mitakuyapi,
>>
>> I have been following the book discussions going on.  Two very important
>> things have been brought up.
>>
>> To subtitle or not to subtitle.
>>
>> This is something that our program has struggled with.  Initially, we were
>> attempting an immersion program in a daycare at the local tribal college.
>> The problem was everything was in English.  And then another problem was
>> that most of the people in the videos and books were non-Indian.
>>
>> This was when we started creating our own materials.  First we tried
>> handwriting the Dakotah.  What happened was that the English looked all nice
>> and the Dakotah looked second-class.  So then we tried printing the Dakotah
>> on stickers.  That didn't look so great either.  So eventually we decided to
>> create our own.
>>
>> It was then, that the discussion on whether to subtitle was held.  On the
>> reservation where we are located, we are fortunate (by many standards) to
>> have around 100 speakers.  But of those, even less ever learned to read in
>> Dakotah.  However, we have the date of birth of 54 of those speaking elders
>> and have determined that the average age of those speakers is 76.
>>
>> The next generation, in their 40's or 50's has only a handful of
>> speakers.  And the young parents of today, still another generation away,
>> has no speakers.  So these young parents, and the grandparents of our
>> children are not speakers.  So they can neither speak nor read in
>> Dakotah.  We have had some of our books narrated and tell parents these cds
>> are for them to learn to read to their children.  But because of all of
>> this, we did subtitle.
>>
>> I think subtitling would depend on whether you are an immersion program --
>> then absolutely no English -- and whether your population could read the
>> book.
>>
>> Tammy DeCoteau
>> AAIA Native Language Program
>