Trip Of The Tongue (language)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Hmm, I wonder what the difference might be with this book and a similar
previous published volume entitled, "Spoken Here, Travels Among Threatened
Languages" by Mark Abley (2003).

Phil
UofA



On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 1:53 PM, Jelyn Gaskell <jelyn_gaskell at yahoo.com>wrote:

> Thanks for your input, can't wait to buy her book. When I worked in a
> school district in Northern CA as Special Ed teacher, I had a 7th grade
> African American student whom the psych and speech path gave diagnosis
> on(mental retardation and other related speech issues). He was placed in my
> SDC class. I worked with him, and he was verbally unintelligible, however
> when I used Visuals and PECS he was quite intelligent. After I consulted
> with three of my professors, (at the time Dr. Rickford's were my
> prof's(Stanford and SJSU) in classes and Dr. Stuart Ritterman SLP speech
> scientist,(CS Fresno emeritus) I took language samples and we discovered
> his father was a Gullah speaker from deep down highway one in Louisiana. He
> had met a woman in Las Vegas and married her and moved his kids to
> Oakland,CA which is how I got his son in my classroom. This boy sat with me
> with the computer and I asked him using LA maps to show me where he was
> from, after that I found his former teacher in his old Parish there. There
> are still Gullah speakers around, but this is an example of language
> displacement and how teachers need to be aware of 1st language issues.
> Also, I blame NCLB and the English Language push without SIOP or Sheltered
> English, and bilingual language enhancement. Districts need to be sensitive
> to 1st language speakers of another language.
>
> --- On *Tue, 3/6/12, Andre Cramblit <andrekaruk at NCIDC.ORG>* wrote:
>
>
> From: Andre Cramblit <andrekaruk at NCIDC.ORG>
> Subject: [ILAT] Trip Of The Tongue (language)
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Date: Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 12:00 PM
>
>
>
> http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147728920/a-road-trip-in-search-of-americas-lost-languages
> LINK TO LISTEN TO THE STORY.
>
>
> The vast majority of the 175 indigenous languages still spoken in the
> United States are on the verge of extinction.
>
> Linguist Elizabeth Little spent two years driving all over the country
> looking for the few remaining pockets where those languages are still
> spoken — from the scores of Native American tongues, to the Creole of
> Louisiana. The resulting book is *Trip of the Tongue: Cross-Country
> Travels in Search of America's Lost Languages*.
>
> "I put, I think, 25,000 miles on my poor, long-lost Subaru that has since
> been consigned to the afterlife for cars," she tells Jackie Lyden, guest
> host of weekends on *All Things Considered*.
>
> The first part of the book deals with Native American languages such as
> Navajo. Little writes the language is disappearing fast. Among
> kindergartners in one reservation school district, fluency dropped from 89
> percent at the beginning of the 1980s to just a few percent by the end of
> the decade. Little says one reason for its decline is that the Navajo
> community is less geographically and technologically isolated.
>
> "Once there is more television, you know, cable television and the
> Internet, and once younger members of the tribe have more ability to be
> exposed to the English language, the heritage language really drops off
> pretty quickly," she says.
>
> Another example is Gullah. Once spoken by slaves and emancipated
> African-Americans in the low country of South Carolina, for years it was
> reviled as simply a butchered version of English. Through the generations,
> speakers became increasingly ashamed of that characterization.
>
> But there is a distinct influence of West African languages in Gullah's
> structure, Little says, showing a depth and complexity that many
> Gullah-speakers themselves didn't appreciate.
>
> In her estimation, that loss of language serves as a break from identity.
>
> "The formation of our whole consciousness is framed by ... language," she
> said. "So when you take that language away, or even if it's forced out of a
> child or out of a adolescent ... that must be an incredible psychological
> trauma."
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20120308/9dde87c7/attachment.htm>