Linguists struggling to preserve endangered immigrant languages (fwd link)

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*Linguists struggling to preserve endangered immigrant languages*

JOSH TAPPER

Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Apr. 18 2014, 3:00 PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Apr. 18 2014, 3:04 PM EDT

Since she arrived in Canada more than two decades ago, Zouriya Jayman has
found few people to converse with in her native tongue, Sri Lankan Malay.
But on a frigid day earlier this year, two linguists turned the living room
of her high-rise apartment in north Toronto into a sort of television
studio in order to document Ms. Jayman’s endangered language.

Ms. Jayman, who is in her 80s, grew up speaking the creole language in the
central Sri Lankan town of Kegalle, and she is one of roughly 40,000 Sri
Lankan Malay speakers worldwide, and some 1,000 in the Greater Toronto
Area. In a lively and loose interview with linguist Mohammad Jaffar,
another native Sri Lankan Malay speaker, Ms. Jayman fielded questions on
the language’s uncertain future as a camera recorded the session.

“Zouriya felt that we were truly the last generation of full native
speakers,” Mr. Jaffar, 78, said, interpreting Ms. Jayman’s answers into
English. “Later generations, she felt, showed a regrettable lack of
interest and no enthusiasm for speaking in Sri Lankan Malay.”

With no codified spelling system and a general community apathy toward
preservation, the language’s prospects for survival are grim.

​Access full article below:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/linguists-struggling-to-preserve-endangered-immigrant-languages-in-toronto/article18062943/
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