FW: [ILAT] How many hours of recorded speech?

[Rolland Nadjiwon]

Hi all...below are:
 
Responses to 'Where Are Your Keys'...
 
I pondered the suggestions and comments in the post for some time upon
receiving it. Somehow, it did not feel satisfactory. Keeping this in mind, I
forwarded the post to a PhD Professor of English Language Literature and
Theory and a PhD in Linguistics and am including their responses with this
post. I realize it is somewhat past the point of presentation of the posting
but I feel conversations of this nature have no 'shelf life' so long as
there are indigenous peoples they(the contents of the posting) are
attempting to apply to. I am not qualified to respond as a linguist so I
will not attempt to deceive anyone by pretending a qualification. However, I
retired two years ago from contractual teaching with a number of
Universities in Canada and the USA. My last contract was at the University
of British Colombia. I was given 'free rein' to develop a course of my
choosing...I finally submitted for a course in 'Ancestral Memory'. I add
this supplemental information only so the list members can realize I have
not, just recently, fallen off a 'turnip truck' and my opinions do carry a
measure of legitimacy...especially since I am usually deemed 'off topic'.
This one is not off topic but only a few days late.
 
Over the past 42 years, I have been involved in almost every aspect of
cultural and linguistic disintegration of so called 'Native Americans'. Over
those 42 years, it became patently clear our indigenous peoples in so called
North and South America and constituent archipelago, have a history that
started only in 1492...after a lot of Papal Bull(s) and resultant
atrocities. Today the 'ancestral memories' of those same generational
perpetrators are now attempting to heal the open wound of their continental
consciousness using the almost identical methods of colonization used by
previous generations. It is still colonization regardless of the intention
or how 'wonderful' it allows the colonizers to feel. Over those years of my
involvement, I have attended uncountable workshops all dedicated to the
proposition that I needed to change my behavior and conducted by
nonindigenous consultants. Some years ago, I stood up in one of the
workshops and started to walk out. The facilitator asked after me, 'Hey,
where are you going...' in his authoritative voice. First off, my name was
not 'Hey' and as a second, I paused turned to the him and the work shoppers
and said, 'I am a Potowatomi...because of what I have been put through for
the last 'blankety blank' years, it has taken me this long to like myself,
my family, my community, my people, our culture and our language. I like who
I am now and who I always was and I am not about to change that for anyone.
If this means my job, I am now a 'free' agent....' and walked out.
 
How is all this of any relevancy....
 
I am a published writer so a few years ago a very fluent speaker of one of
the older versions of 'anishinabehmowin' asked me if he could translate some
of my poems into his language. I told him, '...sure, that would be ok...' I
also told him I would agree under one condition, that he translate it into
his language and then without any reference what so ever, translate what he
had written back into English. He agreed. A week or so later, he handed me a
folder of his translation works with the three versions and with some
laughter told me the version he translated from his language back into
English was so very different from the original poem I had written. We
talked about that for a time and both agreed that kind of harmonization
between the languages could not be possible. He has not attempted to
translate any more of my poems. He said the result really surprised him
since he teaches anishinabehmowin at a local college. I explained to him how
I thought the English language, in particular, is abstraction and
manipulation expressly for the purpose of conquest, colonization and is a
mercantile language...a language of getting the best part of the deal and is
so in its daily living. Also, that English, as we know it, is an
agglomeration of many other languages assimilating those words into their
own thought patterns of trading for the best deal.
 
We talked about how any language is simply a tool and any tool brought
across cultures, if it is integrated into the cultural patterns of the
receiver, it is integration. If the tool is brought across with the 'already
lived in' meanings and culture of the 'other', it is assimilation. When non
native speakers attempt to revitalize or teach a language to or back to the
native speakers, they are doing so with their 'already lived in' cultural
baggage...in other words, it is innately assimilationist unless you are just
doing 'tourist' stuff.
 
In 1967, I was teaching elementary school in a very isolated fly in
community with very few English speakers, including the students. There was
a school in the community for only twelve years before I got there so anyone
older than twelve did not have the experience of attending and 'Indian Day
School'. But to get to my point, I attended my first and only 'teachers
convention' with teachers from the many 'Indian' communities located in the
same 'Indian Affairs School District'...all isolated and all with an already
language and culture dominant in the communities. I know because I worked
with most of them before I began teaching. 
 
At any rate, at this convention people/teachers were sharing their
experiences in these culturally, linguistically foreign communities as a
teacher. Most of what I heard telling felt almost like having a rasp drawn
across my bones. One teacher in particular, I really had the urge to beat
the crap out of him. He said it was really great in 'his' community and he
was accepted like one of the community. Twice a week he said he chose a
student and told them, 'Tonight I am visiting your home for tea so tell your
Mom and Dad to have some tea and cakes ready...' I could not believe what I
was hearing...by the way, I was the only 'indigenous' person there. He went
on to explain to the gathering how he was so respected. He said someone was
the only one with a complete set of dinner dishes and they would pass that
set over to the family who would be hosting him that evening. He concluded
with, '...that is how much they respected me and wanted me to feel as one of
them...' If this has not set you off by now, probably nothing can.
 
Anyhow, this teacher, much worse than the rest had not the slightest inkling
of what he was putting that community through while he unbelievably thought
he was doing a great thing and was in fact teaching the community how to be
good hosts. I was born into such a community and if we saw a complete set of
dishes laid out for tea and a cake, we were definitely in someone's house
who did not live on the reservation. In the community I was in, we drank our
tea out of totally recycled jam jars or what ever could act as a drinking
vessel short of birch bark. Cake...their language did not even have a word
for it...which is probably not the present case. They may have invented a
word by now which may have become a community accepted descriptor, which is
not to say, the next community some air miles away would have worked out the
same descriptor or would know what people from that community were talking
about. They would understand the descriptor but it would not have the
universality of the English word 'cake'.
 
What I am saying, is, if you set up an artificial conversation in an
artificial social situation you will be putting out an artificial language
and it will not work socially or conversationally in the real time lives of
the people. We now have any number of people who speak our language who have
learned it in schools, in a school environment and are now qualified to
teach it back to the communities they have never lived in and may not even
be from or be even the same tribe. In our area it is already causing great
animosity because the teachers are from a totally different dialectic area.
The people do want their language, but they want the 'real McCoy' not an
academic or linguistics' version.
 
There is a bundle of discussion could happen with any of the points I raise
but there is neither time or space and at 5:08 AM, it is almost time to get
up with my Grandchildren so I had best bid 'good morning' to anyone who
reads it this morning. I will also repost this conversation in its entirety
to the two persons I consulted but without the identification of ILAT...
  _____  

  _____  

 
Hi Rolland.

There are many methodologies for teaching adults a new language. They have
various merits and disadvantages.

When we start from statements in English and then translate them into an
indigenous language we are no longer teaching that language but an
appropriated form of it. English is especially adapted to do this for many
reasons. For example, if I wanted to learn how to say, How are you feeling?
in Japanese, I might get an answer, but it's taboo in Japanese to talk about
their own or someone else's feelings. A more usual question might be, Where
are you going?. On the other hand it's quite OK for a younger person,
especially a woman, to ask someone older whom they just met, How old are
you? We might consider that impertinent but it's crucial to establish the
relative age between speakers because it determines which of the different
languages are appropriate. Age and relationship, friend, stranger, family,
all are important to the language choices- grammar and diction. Our standard
sentences require subjects;
Japanese doesn't. One rarely says "I"- watashi- try avoiding it in English.

I can't describe how this applies to Ojibwa, but I know it does in similar
ways and others. I know that it applies in different ways across languages,
including French and English. The heart of the problem is that when we teach
by starting with questions in English and translate them to whatever
language and then learn those we end up colonizing both the native speakers
of the language and the language itself. We distort it, to say the least,
and produce a hybrid, a dead and even deadly language. They translated the
Christian Bible into Japanese, but it wasn't really Japanese any more.
American centered academic Japanese isn't like Japanese anymore either. MLA
rules don't apply, but the language is quite capable of adopting those
distortions. Passive sentences are preferred to direct statement. 'Beating
around the bush' a far more preferable than direct statement. Ambiguity is
fine. Passive sentences are often preferred, partly because the subject
doesn't need to be specified. Silence is the best way to communicate. We
learn to abhor it. He must be bored, we'd say. Maybe stupid.

Cultural differences are embedded in language and languages embed and
promote the values of their cultures.A lot of harm has resulted. is
resulting. from imposing the cultural values embedded in English, that most
English speakers take for granted and common sense. How many English
speakers question the idea that a sentence is a complete thought, and
furthermore, that the though is not complete if the sentence isn't a
complete sentence. Both ideas are false.

It's not a good idea to use fluent native speakers of a language and
transforn them into tape or whatever recorders. I'd call that linguocide, a
form of genocide. There are batter ways; we still have a lot to learn about
teaching languages. 

Sincerely,

Bernie

  _____  

  _____  

From: Karl
 Sent: August-28-12 1:20 PM
To: Rolland Nadjiwon
Subject: Re: FW: How many hours of recorded speech?


Yeah, that's not really teaching the language, in my opinion. It is the
style of language teaching they use for tourists who want to visit foreign
lands. The best way to learn, I think is total immersion. That becomes a
problem with a culture where fewer and fewer people speak the native
language. However, if one could get enough native speakers together to teach
a kind of "summer school" experience, say in a modest camp, with lessons and
recreation each day, then I think that might work a lot better. And no
English allowed, not even when classes are out, or there are "penalties"
(like having to wash the dishes, or do the laundry or something - nothing
too serious but enough to discourage people speaking in anything but the
native language - it would be gentler, wiser, reversal of the rez school
situation where kids were punished severely if they didn't speak English -
and this setting could be outdoors, "woodsy" with canoeing, swimming, games,
music, etc., and there could also be lessons in traditional ways, such as
story-telling, history lessons, learning about flora and fauna, medicines,
proper rituals for special occasions, healing circles and healing circle
traditions, sweat lodge, etc). Set up camps like that for each of the main
tribes, each summer for a couple of months. The kids would be acculturated
by the time they reach their teens (starting with visits each summer at
maybe age 8 yrs. old - so 4 to 5 years of that would help a lot, I'd think).
That's how they do it at Latvian camps in Canada and the U.S. for those who
want to hold onto their culture, but alas, even that is fading now and many
north american Balts are getting slowly assimilated. Agh. Still, they hold
on and at least there are the Baltic states which still exist and help
preserve the culture which is very different from indigenous cultures in
North America which are threatened daily. 
 
Best wishes,
Karl


Dept. of English Language, Literature & Creative Writing


-----"Rolland Nadjiwon" <mikinakn at shaw.ca> wrote: ----- 
To: Karl  and Bernie
From: "Rolland Nadjiwon" <mikinakn at shaw.ca>
Date: 08/28/2012 03:19AM
Subject: FW: How many hours of recorded speech?



Just wondering what you think of  these comments and suggestions for
language learning with indigenous learners. I checked him out and he teaches
'facilitators' to teach language using his 'Where Are Your Keys? Program
methodology....I wanted to respond to his posting but mine always seem to
result in un-resolvable dichotomies or the suggestion I am off topic or
offending someone. This is a list entitled 'Indigenous Languages and
Technology(ILAT)'. Most often they speak of language not as a tool but as a
solution innately assimilationist...not that it is their intention so much
as it is built into the very foundation of their conceptualization of
'other'.
It was suggested to me years ago that I had to learn to speak to officials
of the Christian Religions and academics with more than a grunt. I studied
hard at expanding my grunts only to arrive at a place where a 'grunt' would
still be much easier to work with...

wahjeh
rolland nadjiwon
________________ 
The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does
not own the sun.
Ralph Nader 

-----Original Message-----
From:  On Behalf Of Evan Gardner
Sent: August-27-12 9:13 PM
To:
Subject: Re:  How many hours of recorded speech?

Evan from Where Are Your Keys? here...

What a wonderful question! I instantly started dreaming of the possibilities
and if I could go back in time and record fluent speakers for the purpose of
using the recordings to make new speakers...

My wish would be recordings of people making arrangements to have a party,
gathering, get together... lots of back and forth, question and answer,
present/simple tense dialog.

Ex:
When do you want to have a party?
Who should we invite? why?
Who should we not invite? Why?
Will all my ex-girlfriends be there? Will all your ex-girlfriends be there?
What is the purpose of the party? Why are we having this gathering?
1st birthday? 100th? funeral? wedding? language night? movie?
What will we eat?
Who is bringing what dish? is that a good idea?
How is everyone getting there? Do they need rides?
Which?
Where?
How often?
How many people?
Why? Why not?

This kind of back and forth will give better examples of entry level
conversation. There is a tendency to record word lists (too basic) and high
level story telling (too advanced).  There is seldom enough simple but
complete "get 'r' done" language which shows the simple and elegant
structures and patterns of living languages.  I hope for enough of these
conversations to write appropriate level children's books... See Spot Run.
and then 1st grade 2nd grade 3rd grade through 7th grade readers. Scaffold
grammar to get people speaking using conversations and not word lists.

Another area I would like to see more of is real joking, teasing, arguing in
the language... how do fluent elders rip on each other?
Respect each other? Love each other? Get mad at each other?...
irreverent, bold, loving, but real.  Retelling of actual events by the
participants in those events.

"Can you guys remember a time when you had a fight? What was it about?
Who won?" of course there must be a lot of trust in the room for this kind
of interaction.  But I remember my Grandma wouldn't hold back when she
talked about the wonderful things, and stupid adventures my Grampa had put
her through. I wish the tape player was going then.
Like the time he wrecked their model T in down town New York because he
wanted to see how many red lights he could run without having to stop...4...
the garbage truck suffered minor damage... no-one was harmed... Model T
towed away at Gradma's expense! Now there is a kids'
book using the grammar extrapolated from a documentation exercise! HOW
MANY?...


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