=?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=98Our_language_is_our_soul=E2=80=99=3A_?=saving Aymara (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

*‘Our language is our soul’: saving Aymara*
By Alexia Kalaitzi
Published on June 17, 2014

‘Could you imagine yourself speaking a language, your mother tongue, at
home and then going to school and learning a foreign language? It is a big
shock,’ says Ruben Hilare, an activist from the Bolivian indigenous
community of Aymara, trying to describe the reality of many children in the
community.

Aymara is a language as well as a people: it is a native American language
spoken by over a million people in Bolivia and several large communities in
Peru, Chile and Argentina. Although it is an official language in Bolivia,
it is underrepresented in the public sphere, where Spanish dominates. The
only media sources exclusively in Aymara are a handful of television shows
and radio programmes, while the language is taught at school for only an
hour a week.

Until recently, Aymara did not have an online presence, either. But this is
changing. Ruben Hilare and other community members are making an effort to
save their language and promote it on the internet, establishing a virtual
community called Jaqi Aru.

​Access full article below:
http://newint.org/blog/2014/06/17/endangered-languages-aymara/
​
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