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Literari - 0 views

www.sunnewsonline.com/...literari-01-06-2008-001.htm

african

shared by akoyako :-) on 01 Jun 08 - Cached
  • We will release more product lines in other African languages soon. We believe in what we do, and we think that African children should be able to learn their native languages, with as much fun as they will learn the English language. What we intend is to make learning native language as much fun as possible. Basically, all our materials are interactive, and we are confident that this approach will work to great effect.” The Executive Director of the African Languages Technology Initiative, Dr Tunde Adegbola also expresses the hope that the product line "is coming at a time when wide debate over the importance of our indigenous languages is being argued.” While this approach to learning African languages may seem relatively new, Otitoloju expresses that she is confident that these product lines will translate into increased applications from these groups.” CONCEPT Blazing Ideas Blazing Ideas Limited was established for the advancement and dissemination of African Indigenous Languages with particular emphasis on Nigerian Languages through several interactive media and materials.The company intends to design, develop, publish and distribute globally, innovative electronic language learning solutions on handheld devices, memory media cards, and via internet downloads. As an international quality African-language publishing house and a market and business research firm, Blazing Ideas has license to publish, in electronic format, reference titles, including monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and various other education and trade publications. Blazing Ideas is founded by Dr. Lolade Otitoloju. She is a graduate of College of Medicine, University of Ibadan (M.B.B.S) with a Diploma in Tropical Medicine & Infectious Diseases and Masters in Public Health from the University of London (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine).
akoyako :-)

SPEAKING IN TONGUES - 0 views

www.time.com/...language.speaking_in_t.html

time tongues

shared by akoyako :-) on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 23 May 08
     
    "> TIME Logo JULY 7, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 1 LANGUAGE SPEAKING IN TONGUES AS TELECOMMUNICATIONS, TOURISM AND TRADE MAKE THE WORLD A SMALLER PLACE, LANGUAGES ARE DYING AT AN ALARMING RATE BY JAMES GEARY Sitting in a circle with a dozen other members of the native American Tlingit (pronounced klink-it) tribe, Jon Rowan, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, mutters in frustration: "We're babies. All we speak is baby gibberish." The group is gathered at the community center in Klawock, a town of some 800 people on the eastern fringe of Prince of Wales Island. In the Gulf of Alaska, some 40 km off the Alaskan coast, Prince of Wales Island still survives in a state of pristine natural beauty. But this idyllic stretch of land is home to at least one endangered species: the Tlingit language. Rowan and his fellow tribesmen meet every other week in sessions like this to learn their native tongue before the last fluent tribal elder dies. But as Rowan's frustration indicates, the task is made more difficult because Tlingit is becoming extinct. Forty years ago, the entire tribe was fluent in the language, a guttural tongue that relies heavily on accompanying gesture for its meaning. Now it is spoken by only a handful of people throughout southern Alaska and portions of Canada, nearly all of whom are over the age of 60. Since Tlingit was not originally a written language, Rowan and company are trying to record as much of it as possible by translating just about anything they can get their hands on into Tlingit, from Christmas carols like Jingle Bells to nursery rhymes such as Hickory Dickory Dock. The plight of Tlingit is a small page in the modern version of the Tower of Babel story--with the plot reversed. The Old Testament describes the first, mythical humans as "of one language and of one speech." They built a city on a plain with a tower whose peak reached unto heaven. God, offended by their impudence in building something to rival His own creation, punished them by shatterin
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Internet breathes life into dying languages - 13 Jun 2007 - NZ Herald: Life & Style New... - 0 views

www.nzherald.co.nz/...story.cfm

internet

shared by akoyako :-) on 26 May 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 26 May 08
     
    Internet breathes life into dying languages 11:46AM Wednesday June 13, 2007 By Amie Ferris-Rotman HOLYHEAD, Wales - Endangered languages like Welsh, Navajo and Breton have regained speakers and popularity in their communities and are now even "cool" for kids - thanks to the Internet. Welsh language expert David Crystal said the Internet could forestall the dismal fate of about half of the world's 6,500 languages, which are doomed to extinction by the end of the 21st century at a rate of about two language deaths a month. "The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice in a way that would not have been possible before," said Crystal, who has written over 50 books on language including The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Languages at risk of extinction are appearing on blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, video site www.youtube.com and social networking site www.myspace.com, and their presence in the virtual world carries favor with youngsters who speak them. "It doesn't matter how much activism you engage in on behalf of a language if you don't attract the teenagers, the parents of the next generation of children," Crystal, who was raised speaking English and Welsh, told Reuters. Advertisement Advertisement "And what turns teenagers on more than the Internet these days? If you can get a language out there, the youngsters are much more likely to think it's cool." Online free Encyclopedia www.wikipedia.org, written and built by volunteers, has entries in dozens of endangered languages, from native American Cherokee to the Austronesian language Tetum, spoken by less than a million people in East Timor, to the Maori language of New Zealand. Tens of Welsh chat rooms exist for its 600,000 speakers - just over 20 percent of Wales - where young people look for the best pubs in town, or hunt for potential dates. Crystal said there are 50-60 languages in the world which have one last speaker, and around 2,000 have never been written. "
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