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Selected Resources on Indigenous Language Revitalization - 0 views

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    Teaching Indigenous Languages Saturday, April 5, 2008 Teaching Indigenous Languages books | conference | articles | columns | contact | links | index | home Selected Resources on Native American Language Renewal Jon Reyhner The annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages conferences have sought since 1994 to bring together tribal educators and experts on linguistics, language renewal, and language teaching to lay out a blueprint of policy changes, educational reforms, and community initiatives to stabilize and revitalize American Indian and Alaska Native languages. Much of the relevant previous literature on the subject is cited in the various papers included in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages, especially in Dr. Burnaby's paper in Section I, which emphasizes the Canadian experience. Since the publication of Stabilizing Indigenous Languages in 1996, Northern Arizona University has published five related books: * Reyhner, J.; Trujillo, O.; Carrasco, R.L.; & Lockard, L. (Eds.). (2003). Nurturing Native Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/ * Burnaby, B., & Reyhner. J. (Eds.) (2002). Indigenous Languages Across the Community. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/ILAC/ * Reyhner, J.; Martin, J.; Lockard, L.; Gilbert, W.S. (Eds.). (2000). Learn in Beauty: Indigenous Education for a New Century. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/LIB/LIBconts.html * Reyhner, J.; Cantoni, G.; St. Clair, R.; & Parsons Yazzie, E. (Eds.). (1999). Revitalizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/RIL_Contents.html * Reyhner, J. (Ed.). (1997). Teaching Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_Contents.html The proceedings of the 1999 Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference
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On-Line Resources - 0 views

  • On-Line Research DIGITAL DREAMING: A National Review of Indigenous Media and Communications Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission http://www.atsic.gov.au/Programs/broadcasting/Digital_Dreaming/default.asp Guidelines for Strengthening Indigenous Languages Adopted by Assembly of Alaska Native Educators. Anchorage, Alaska, February 6, 2001 Alaska Native Knowledge Network http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/standards/Language.html The Role of the Computer in Learning Ndjébbana Glenn Auld. Language Learning & Technology. Special Issue, Technology and Indigenous Languages. Volume 6, Number 2, May 2002. http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num2/default.html Internet Strategies for Empowering Indigenous Communities in Teaching and Learning Ron Aust, Brian Newberry, and Paul Resta. INET, 1996. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/96/proceedings/h4/h4_4.htm Charter Schools Keep Native Language Alive by Rhoda Barton. Northwest Education Magazine, Vol. 9, No.3, Spring 2004. http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/09-03/charter.php Saving a Language with Computers, Tape Recorders, and Radio Ruth Bennet. 2003. In Nuturing Native Languages. Reyner, J., Octaviana V. Trujillo, Roberto Luis Carrasco, and Louise Lockard. Northern Arizona University. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/NNL_5.pdf Reversing Russia's Indigenous Languages Shift in View of International Experience: A Policy Brief for the FSA Contemporary Issues Fellowship Program. Tamamara Borgoiakova. http://www.irex.org/programs/ci/spotlight/03-feb-jun/Borgoiakova.pdf CAN THE WEB HELP SAVE MY LANGUAGE?Laura Buszard-Welcher. Published in Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale, eds. (2001) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Pp. 331-48. San Diego: Academic Press. http://www.potawatomilang.org/Reference/endlgsweb4.htm
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    resources Home On-line Research Dictionaries Bibliographies Indexes CD-ROMs On-Line Research DIGITAL DREAMING: A National Review of Indigenous Media and Communications Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission http://www.atsic.gov.au/Programs/broadcasting/Digital_Dreaming/default.asp Guidelines for Strengthening Indigenous Languages Adopted by Assembly of Alaska Native Educators. Anchorage, Alaska, February 6, 2001 Alaska Native Knowledge Network http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/standards/Language.html The Role of the Computer in Learning Ndjébbana Glenn Auld. Language Learning & Technology. Special Issue, Technology and Indigenous Languages. Volume 6, Number 2, May 2002. http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num2/default.html Internet Strategies for Empowering Indigenous Communities in Teaching and Learning Ron Aust, Brian Newberry, and Paul Resta. INET, 1996. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/96/proceedings/h4/h4_4.htm Charter Schools Keep Native Language Alive by Rhoda Barton. Northwest Education Magazine, Vol. 9, No.3, Spring 2004. http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/09-03/charter.php Saving a Language with Computers, Tape Recorders, and Radio Ruth Bennet. 2003. In Nuturing Native Languages. Reyner, J., Octaviana V. Trujillo, Roberto Luis Carrasco, and Louise Lockard. Northern Arizona University. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/NNL_5.pdf Reversing Russia's Indigenous Languages Shift in View of International Experience: A Policy Brief for the FSA Contemporary Issues Fellowship Program. Tamamara Borgoiakova. http://www.irex.org/programs/ci/spotlight/03-feb-jun/Borgoiakova.pdf CAN THE WEB HELP SAVE MY LANGUAGE? Laura Buszard-Welcher. Published in Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale, eds. (2001) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Pp. 331-48. San Diego: Academic Press. http://www.potawatomilang.org/Reference/endlgsweb4.htm In the Language of Our Ancestors Programs in Montana and Washington Give Voice to Disappearing Words by Mindy Cameron. Northwest Educat
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Teaching Indigenous Languages: Index - 0 views

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    Return to Teaching Indigenous Languages Home Page....Return to American Indian Education Home Page Index of Indigenous Education and Indigenous Language Web Sites You can use the "Find" option on your browser's pull down menu to search this index (Look under "Edit" for "Find") Go to Tribe/Language Index Activists Panel Summary from Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Adult Education Deborah House & Jon Reyhner Teaching & Learning with [Adult] Native Americans Handbook Affirmative Action NABE News Column The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project UC Santa Barbara Alaska Native Knowledge Network Alaska Native Language Center American Indian Education: American Indian Education Links American Indian Bilingual Education: Some History NABE News Column Changes in American Indian Education: A Historical Retrospective for Educators in the United States Selected Resources on American Indian Education American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) School-Community-University Collaborations Archiving Linguistic Resources Assessment Assessment Crisis: The Absence Of Assessment FOR Learning Phi Delta Kappan Article Assessment for American Indian and Alaska Native Learners ERIC Digest by Roger Bordeaux FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing Fighting the Tests: A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools 2001 Phi Delta Kappa article by Alfie Kohn The Human Face of the High-Stakes Testing Story Phi Delta Kappan article Making Assessment Work for Everyone: How to Build on Student Strengths SEDL Monograph The New Mandarin Society? Testing on the Fast Track Joel Spring's commentary on national testing News From the Test Resistance Trail PDK article by Susan Ohanian Why are Stanford 9 test scores on Navajo and Hopi so low Navajo Hopi Oberserver article 9/1/99 Australia: Aboriginal Languages Web Site Australian Indigenous Language Efforts NABE News Column Bilingual Education: Bilingual Education Links Ameri
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SPEAKING IN TONGUES - 0 views

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    "> 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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Stabilizing Indigenous Languages: Preface - 0 views

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    Preface Richard E. Littlebear Our Native American languages have been oral since time immemorial. Some of them have been written only in the last three centuries. We must remember this oral tradition when we teach our languages. We sometimes negate this oral tradition by blindly following the only model for language teaching we know: the way we were taught the English language with its heavy emphasis on grammar. Teaching our languages as if they had no oral tradition is one factor which contributes to the failures of our Native American language teaching programs so that we now have what amounts to a tradition of failure. Probably because of this tradition of failure, we latch onto anything that looks as though it will preserve our languages. As a result, we now have a litany of what we have viewed as the one item that will save our languages. This one item is usually quickly replaced by another. For instance, some of us said, "Let's get our languages into written form" and we did and still our Native American languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's make dictionaries for our languages" and we did and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's get linguists trained in our own languages" and we did, and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's train our own people who speak our languages to become linguists" and we did and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's apply for a federal bilingual education grant" and we did and got a grant and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's let the schools teach the languages" and we did, and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's develop culturally-relevant materials" and we did and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's use language masters to teach our languages" and we did, and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's tape-record the elders speaking our languages" and we did and still our languages ke
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Endangered Language Initiative - From Threatened Languages to Threatened Lives - 0 views

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    Field-worker and eminent linguistic theoretician speaks out on years of experience with dying languages in the jungles of Brazil. From Threatened Languages toThreatened Lives * Daniel L. Everett, Research Professor * Department of Linguistics * University of Manchester There are about 6,800 mutually unintelligible languages spoken in the world today. Many languages spoken in the past have ceased to exist and many languages not yet 'born' will come into being in the future. Since the beginning of Homo sapiens, new languages have been constantly emerging while others vanish forever. This is why many linguists say that the total number of actual languages spoken in the world at a given moment of human history is but an small fragment of the perhaps infinitely large total number of possible human languages. It might seem as though the death of one language is not a particularly serious event but, in fact, each loss is a terrible tragedy. A language is a repository of the riches of highly specialised cultural experiences. When a language is lost, all of us lose the knowledge contained in that language's words and grammar, knowledge that can never be recovered if the language has not been studied or recorded. Not all of this knowledge is of immediate practical benefit, of course, but all of it is vital in teaching us different ways of thinking about life, of approaching our day-to-day existence on planet earth. In my 25 years of field research on languages of the Brazilian Amazon, I have had the privilege of living for more than six years in villages of the Pirahã (pee-da-HAN) and other groups, such as the Banawá (ba-na-WA). . . . as the last seventy remaining Banawá speakers gradually switch to Portuguese. The Banawás, for example, are members of a select group of Amazonian Indians that make curare, a fast-acting and deadly strychnine-based poison used on blowgun darts and arrows. The ability to make this poison is the result of centuries of knowledge
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Formosan Language Archive - 0 views

  • Formosan Language Archive Formosan Corpus Language GIS Bibliography Help Links Home BACKGROUND The Formosan Language Digital Archive is part of the Language Digital Archive developed within the Academia Sinica under the auspices of the National Science Council. The conceptaul design of the Formosan Language Archive has been made under the direction of Elizabeth Zeitoun. The aims of this project are to collect, conserve, edit and disseminate via the world wide web a virtual library of language and linguistic resources permitting access to recorded and transcribed Formosan data collections. The Formosan languages belong to a widespread language family called "Austronesian", which include all the languages spoken throughout the islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Indonesian, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Guinea, New Zealand, Hawaii and the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia). A few languages are found in the Malay peninsula and in the Indo-Chinese peninsula (Vietnam and Cambodia). The Formosan languages exhibit very rich linguistic diversity and the variations that oppose different dialects/languages are enormous. These languages are extremely useful in comparative work but though they have been known to be on the verge of extinction for years, Formosan languages, Formosan linguistics as a specific field has bloomed only very recently, with the participation of more scholars adopting different contemporary linguistic approaches to investigate individual languages or establishing cross-linguistic comparisons.  Unlike Chinese, the Formosan languages do not have any writing system and the lack of written records dampen our knowledge of extinct languages. Today, while elders are still able to speak their mother tongues fluently, the young cannot, as a result of migration in the cities and the prevalence of Mandarin Chinese in every day life.
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    Formosan Language Archive Formosan Corpus Language GIS Bibliography Help Links Home BACKGROUND The Formosan Language Digital Archive is part of the Language Digital Archive developed within the Academia Sinica under the auspices of the National Science Council. The conceptaul design of the Formosan Language Archive has been made under the direction of Elizabeth Zeitoun. The aims of this project are to collect, conserve, edit and disseminate via the world wide web a virtual library of language and linguistic resources permitting access to recorded and transcribed Formosan data collections. The Formosan languages belong to a widespread language family called "Austronesian", which include all the languages spoken throughout the islands of the Pacific and Indian Ocean (Madagascar, Indonesian, the Philippines, Taiwan, New Guinea, New Zealand, Hawaii and the islands of Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia). A few languages are found in the Malay peninsula and in the Indo-Chinese peninsula (Vietnam and Cambodia). The Formosan languages exhibit very rich linguistic diversity and the variations that oppose different dialects/languages are enormous. These languages are extremely useful in comparative work but though they have been known to be on the verge of extinction for years, Formosan languages, Formosan linguistics as a specific field has bloomed only very recently, with the participation of more scholars adopting different contemporary linguistic approaches to investigate individual languages or establishing cross-linguistic comparisons. Unlike Chinese, the Formosan languages do not have any writing system and the lack of written records dampen our knowledge of extinct languages. Today, while elders are still able to speak their mother tongues fluently, the young cannot, as a result of migration in the cities and the prevalence of Mandarin Chinese in every day life. We are currently making attempts to record and maintain these languages but we believe that co
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Internet breathes life into dying languages - 13 Jun 2007 - NZ Herald: Life & Style New... - 0 views

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    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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CJOnline / The Topeka Capital-Journal - Technology helps tribe pass on native speech - 0 views

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    Technology helps tribe pass on native speech By Ann Marie Bush The Capital-Journal Published Wednesday, March 05, 2008 POTAWATOMI RESERVATION - Cecelia "Meeks" Jackson is helping revitalize an almost lost language. Jackson, 85, is one of six people nationwide who fluently speak the Potawatomi language, Sydney Van Zile, director of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Language Center, said Tuesday. Print E-mail Comment Anthony S. Bush / The Capital-Journal Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation elder Cecelia "Meeks" Jackson works with Laverne Haag on recording translations from English to Potawatomi for the Phraselator on Tuesday. The Phraselator is a one-way communication translator being used by the Prairie Band Pottawatomi Nation to record and teach its language, which is spoken fluently by only six people. PRAIRIE BAND POTAWATOMI NATION The Potawatomi are very protective of their language. However, they did share three greetings: Bosho: Hello Bosho Nikan: Hello, friend Nitte na kin: How are you? Source: Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Thanks to advanced technology, Jackson is sharing her knowledge with other members of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation through the Phraselator Language Companion, a one-way translator. "We are in a highly critical state now," Van Zile said of the language. "Life happens. There are things that replace it." The Phraselator Language Companion was invented by the U.S. military to communicate with Iraqis in the war on terror, said Don Thornton, president of Thornton Media Inc., based in Banning, Calif. After Thornton read about the technology, he contacted the defense contractor, Voxtec, for the right to use the technology for native language revitalization. He was denied, but continued on his quest. Three years ago, he received approval, and today the company works with more than 75 tribes and tribal organizations in the United States and Canada. The Phraselator is a handheld tool that allows a user to instantly translate spoken Englis
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Military device holds key to saving Oneida language - 0 views

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    Military device holds key to saving Oneida language Jennifer O'Brien Sun Media November 28, 2007 The problem is, Oneida children don't speak Oneida -- haven't for three generations -- say leaders from the area First Nation. TRANSLATES: The hand-held Phraselator seems like a gadget out of the original Star Trek. Load an SD card with the appropriate language software, speak an English phrase into the unit and it immediately translates. (KEN WIGHTMAN/Sun Media) EXCITING: Verland Cornelius, 78, right, spoke Oneida when she was a young girl and today she is part of an effort to save the language for future generations. With Cornelius at the training session in the use of the new language-protecting equipment are, from left, Olive Elm,, Darelyn Doxtator, Mary Elijah who is director of the Oneida Language Cultural Centre, and Bonita Abram, all members of the Oneida Nation. (KEN WIGHTMAN/Sun Media) But suddenly, thanks to a military tool, the Oneida of the Thames community has found a way to tap into a solution for its dying language. One that was there all along. Some of the 2,000-strong community's eldest -- only 90 still speak fluent Oneida -- spent yesterday recording phrases in their native language onto machines called Phraselators. "This is going to revitalize our language before it dies," said Mary Elijah, director of Oneida Language and Cultural Centre, gesturing to one of eight hand-held devices recently bought by the settlement. "This (Phraselator) is going to outlive everybody." And not a moment too soon, she said, adding the youngest Oneida speaker is 50 years old, and most are over 70. Created for the U.S. military, the Phraselator LC allows the user to translate English words into any native language. It's used by soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Don Thornton, who has distribution rights to deliver the device to native settlements across Canada and the U.S. Thornton, who is Cherokee and originally from Oklahoma, lobbied the U.S. Army for
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YouTube - Navajo Language Academy 2007 - 0 views

shared by akoyako :-) on 24 May 08 - Cached
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    (Less info) The Navajo Language Academy (NLA) is a non-profit educational organization comprised of linguists and language teachers who are devoted to the teaching, scientific study, and promotion of the Navajo language. Language is at the heart of the human experience and is one of our most valuable cultural resources. For indigenous peoples, language represents an immediate link to our ancestors and is a crucial element in maintaining a cultural identity after centuries of conquest and assimilation. Although Navajo is one of the only North American indigenous languages with enough remaining speakers to potentially survive, it is today an endangered language that could easily become another casualty without sufficient resources and support. While most Navajo elders still speak Navajo, recent reports indicate that fewer than 10% of Navajo four-year-olds do. Navajo is not being passed to our youngest generation. At the current rate of attrition, our language is expected to be extinct in a few more generations. If this happens, it would mean that no indigenous language in the United States or Canada will have survived the European conquest and avoided becoming a dead language. The Navajo Language Academy is working to preserve and promote the Navajo language. The NLA, comprised of Navajo linguists and language teachers with advanced training, vast experience and extreme dedication, offers intensive annual workshops on Navajo language pedagogy and linguistics. Growing enrollment in NLA workshops and the large number of articles and books authored or co-authored by NLA-affiliated Navajo linguists over the past decade give testament to the enthusiastic participation of the Navajo community. However, many interested Navajo educators -- including language, math, and science teachers -- are unable to attend the workshops because they cannot afford to. Tax-deductible contributions to the Navajo Language Academy will allow the NLA to provide its training and support of Nav
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"Voices of the World": Language is the House of Being - 0 views

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    "Voices of the World": Language is the House of Being Somewhere between six and seven thousand languages are spoken in the world. But half of the world's languages will disappear within the next 100 years. In average a language vanishes every two weeks, Janus Billeskov Jansen and Signe Byrge Sørensen stress. They co-directed "In Languages We Live"and "The Importance of Being - MLABRI"as part of the "Voices of the World"project. By Lars Movin Published in FILM #60, November 2007 "The Importance of Being Mlabri - Voices of the World". Photo: Jørgen Schytte Signe Byrge Sørensen, Janus Billeskov Jansen. Directors. Photo: P. Wessel A new language has emerged among young people in Nairobi's Kibera ghetto - Sheng, a portmanteau of Swahili, English and other local languages. Young people speak Sheng, they sing and rap in Sheng and they use it when they don't want their parents to know what they are saying. Sheng is a rapidly evolving language, with new words being added every day. A language is a living organism, it is consciousness and identity. Languages come and go, but Sheng is an exception. Most of the world's languages are vanishing. Very few new ones emerge. Take Australia. When Europeans arrived, Australia had 250 languages - 700 counting dialects. Today, just 70 remain. These examples are taken from the film "In Languages We Live" (2005), an homage to linguistic diversity and a warning of how much we stand to lose if the current trend continues. A linguistics researcher who appears in the film has studied 12 different indigenous Australian languages over the last 30 years. Today, they are all gone. A big chunk of the world's cultural heritage has been lost. Forever. Co-directed by Janus Billeskov Jansen and Signe Byrge Sørensen, "In Languages We Live" and its sequel, "The Importance of Being - MLABRI" (2007), make up the "Voices of the World" anthology. The two films were conceived together, the first presenting a global perspecti
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Language and Linguistics: Endangered Language - 0 views

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    Preserving While Documenting Documentation is the key to preserving endangered languages. Linguists are trying to document as many as they can by describing grammars and structural features, by recording spoken language and by using computers to store this information for study by scholars. Many endangered languages are only spoken; no written texts exist. So it is important to act quickly in order to capture them before they go extinct. To help preserve endangered languages, E-MELD (Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Language Data) aims to boost documentation by: * duplicating and digitizing high-quality recordings in an archival form; * emphasizing self-documenting and software-independent data; * giving linguists a toolkit to analyze and compare languages; * developing a General Ontology for Linguistic Description (GOLD) to allow interoperability of archives, and comparability of data and analysis. In another kind of archiving, Joel Sherzer, Anthony Woodbury and Mark McFarland (University of Texas at Austin) are ensuring that Latin America's endangered languages are documented through The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA). This Web-accessible database of audio and textual data features naturally-occurring discourse such as narratives, ceremonies, speeches, songs, poems and conversation. Using their Web browsers, scholars, students and indigenous people can access the database, search and browse the contents and download files using free software. Documentation is the right thing to do for both cultural and scientific reasons. According to NSF program director Joan Maling, we must explore as many different languages as we can to fully understand this uniquely human capacity-"Language" with a capital L. "Just as biologists can learn only from looking at many different organisms, so linguists and language scientists can learn only from studying many different human languages," she says. "Preserving lingu
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Endangered Languages - 0 views

  • Why try to preserve endangered languages? Wouldn't the world be simpler if there were fewer languages? Why care if languages die out? The truth is that a people's identity and culture are intimately tied to their language. Each language is unique. No one knows what riches may be hidden within an endangered language. We may never learn about the cultures whose languages have disappeared. And the wholesale loss of languages that we face today will greatly restrict how much we can learn about human culture, human cognition and the nature of language.   'ōlelo Hawai'i     Gaeilge Success Stories Language preservation is difficult, but there are some success stories. Some languages are literally coming back from the dead. Below are just a few of them. Hawaiian Hawaiian had become nearly extinct when the U.S. banned schools from teaching students in Hawaiian after annexing Hawai'i in 1898. Today, close to 10,000 Hawaiians speak their native tongue as compared to under 1,000 in 1983. This remarkable resurgence is supported in part by the use of technology. Hebrew Hebrew evolved in the past century from a written language with no native speakers into Israel's national tongue, spoken by 5 million people. Irish Gaelic The Irish have succeeded in preserving their native Gaelic to the point where it is now spoken by 13% of the population of the Republic of Ireland. Resources The International clearinghouse for endangered languages Foundation for endangered languages Bibliography on language endangerment and language revitalization UNESCO Red Book on endangered languages: Europe Wikipedia article on endangered language SIL endangered languages Bibliography of materials on endangered languages Language revival Technology for endangered languages in Australia OLAC: Open Language Archives Community Online resources for endangered languages (OREL)
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ScholarSpace at University of Hawaii at Manoa: Chapter 7. E-learning in Endangered Lang... - 0 views

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    ScholarSpace at University of Hawaii at Manoa > Language Documentation > Language Documentation & Conservation > Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publications > LD&C Special Publication No. 1: Documenting and Revitalizing Austronesian Languages > Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1355 Title: Chapter 7. E-learning in Endangered Language Documentation and Revitalization Author(s): Rau, D. Victoria Yang, Meng-Chien Keywords: e-learning Yami Orchid Island Taiwan Issue Date: 25-Apr-2008 Series/Report no.: LD&C Special Publication 1 Abstract: This chapter analyses the application of e-learning in the revitalization of endangered languages. It outlines the areas in which e-learning is efficacious, the attitudes of the indigenous language teachers to e-learning, the feelings of the Yami community toward this kind of pedagogy, and the reactions of the users, mostly young and adolescent learners of Yami. The findings are based on the results of surveys and in-depth studies in the Yami community and also on surveys made in a nation-wide seminar that enrolled teachers of the majority of the still-spoken aboriginal languages in Taiwan. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to gather empirical data to address questions in the following three areas: (1) the contexts of developing e- Learning materials for endangered indigenous languages in Taiwan, (2) the indigenous language teachers' perceptions of e-Learning in Taiwan, and (3) the attitudes of the Yami community on Orchid Island toward e-Learning. This chapter provides a model for the many language revitalization projects underway in Taiwan and worldwide to take advantage of e-Learning. It also provides guidelines that enable each project to better understand the kinds of e-Learning that workto make e-Learning acceptable and efficacious. URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1355 ISBN: 978-0-8248-3309-1 Appears in Collections: LD&C Special Public
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The World in Words Podcast | PRI's The World - 0 views

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    The World in Words with Patrick Cox focuses on language. We decode diplospeak and lay bare nationalist rants. And as English extends its global reach, we track the blowback from world's 6,000 other languages, in the form of hybrids like Chinglish, Hinglish, Singlish and Binglish. Binglish? URL: http://www.theworld.org Updated: 1 hour 29 min ago The World in Words 4: a teenager, two linguists and the US Congress revive dying languages Mon, 2008-05-19 14:00 Languages are dying out faster than ever, and no-one seems to know quite what to do about it. But that's not stopping a Chilean teen from teaching himself Selk'nam, previous considered a dead language. It's not stopping two American linguists whose attempts to document endangered languages is the subject of a new movie. And it's not stopping Gullah-Geechee speakers from the southeastern United States from enlisting federal support in their bid to ensure the suvival of their language. Categories: PRI's The World: Podcasts, PRI's The World: Weekly Podcasts The World in Words 3: creating linguistic history on a desert island, and Israel's Seinfeld connection Mon, 2008-05-12 13:00 In this edition of The World in Words, linguist Derek Bickerton talks about his lifelong love of creoles and his attempt to create a new language on a desert island. Also former speechwriter Gregory Levey on how he nearly got an Israeli prime minister to channel Seinfeld. Categories: PRI's The World: Podcasts, PRI's The World: Weekly Podcasts The World in Words 2: Russian names, Putinisms and a diplomatic mistranslation Mon, 2008-05-05 16:00 In this edition of The World in Words: Russian. What names like Putin, Stalin and Medvedev mean. Also, outgoing President Putin likes to quote Russian poetry - as much as seems to enjoy coarse street language. We end with the confessions of a hopelessly unqualified Israeli government speechwriter. Categories: PRI's The World: Podcasts, PRI's The World: Weekly Podcasts The World in Words 1: two national an
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BBC NEWS | Technology | Digital race to save languages - 0 views

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    Researchers are fighting against time to save decades of data on the world's endangered languages from ending on the digital scrap heap. Extract from a dictionary Preserving languages for future generations Computer scientist and linguist Professor Steven Bird of Melbourne University says most computer files, documents and original digital recordings created more than 10 years ago are now virtually irretrievable. Linguists are worried because they have been enthusiastic digital pioneers. Attracted by ever smaller, lighter equipment and vastly improved storage capacity, field researchers have graduated from handwritten notes and wire recordings to laptops, mini-discs, DAT tape and MP3. "We are sitting between the onset of the digital era and the mass extinction of the world's languages," said Prof Bird. "The window of opportunity is small and shutting fast." Languages disappearing "The problem is we are unable to ensure the digital storage lasts for more than five to 10 years because of problems with new media formats, new binary data formats used by software applications and the possibility that magnetic storage just simply degrades over time," said Professor Bird. When you record material in MP3 format now, what will happen in five years' time when a new format comes along? Prof Peter Austin, University of London There are a number of initiatives across the world to ensure that endangered languages are saved for future generations. "Linguists estimate that if we don't do anything, half of the world's languages will disappear in the next 100 years," said Professor Peter Austin of the School of Oriental and Africa Studies at the University of London. "There are currently about 6,500 languages in the world, so that's 3,000 languages completely going, lost forever," he told the BBC programme Go Digital. Professor Bird is involved in the Open Language Archive Community (OLAC), an attempt to create a international network of internet-based digital archives, u
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Technology and Indigenous Language Revitalization - 0 views

  • My research on the use of Internet for Hawaiian language revitalization is congruent with these perspectives. When Hawaiian language educators first began thinking about using the Internet, they confronted an unfriendly terrain. There was virtually no information in the Hawaiian language on the Internet, and web sites devoted to Hawaiian culture had mostly been developed by tourist agencies. Few Native Hawaiians had Internet access in the home nor in their schools. The Internet and the computers it was developed on did not readily support the use of Hawaiian language diacritical marks. In response to this situation, the Hawaiian educational community developed their own Bulletin Board System in Hawaiian, they worked to get their schools online, and they developed software solutions to modify computer operating systems to allow full Hawaiian-language operation, including Hawaiian language menus. Most importantly, they designed and implemented educational uses of the Internet which built off of the social and cultural strengths of the Hawaiian community, emphasizing Hawaiian cultural traditions such as 'talking story' and encouraging student development of multimedia online content which critically interpreted the Hawaiian experience. Though they have much more work to do, they have taken important steps towards creating a Hawaiian presence on the Internet which is congruent with their culture and which furthers their aims of language and culture revitalization.
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    Applying a similar outlook to electronic literacy practices, Kaplan (1995, p. 28) argues that The proclivities of electronic texts?at least to the extent that we can determine what they are?manifest themselves only as fully as human beings and their institutions allow, that they are in fact sites of struggle among competing interests and ideological forces. Or, to put the matter another way, social, political, and economic elites try to shape the technologies we have so as to preserve, insofar as possible, their own social, political, and economic status. They try to suppress or seek to control those elements of electronic technologies uncongenial to that purpose. The degree to which they are successful in controlling the development and use of electronic texts will define the nature and the problems of literacy in the future (p. 28). My research on the use of Internet for Hawaiian language revitalization is congruent with these perspectives. When Hawaiian language educators first began thinking about using the Internet, they confronted an unfriendly terrain. There was virtually no information in the Hawaiian language on the Internet, and web sites devoted to Hawaiian culture had mostly been developed by tourist agencies. Few Native Hawaiians had Internet access in the home nor in their schools. The Internet and the computers it was developed on did not readily support the use of Hawaiian language diacritical marks. In response to this situation, the Hawaiian educational community developed their own Bulletin Board System in Hawaiian, they worked to get their schools online, and they developed software solutions to modify computer operating systems to allow full Hawaiian-language operation, including Hawaiian language menus. Most importantly, they designed and implemented educational uses of the Internet which built off of the social and cultural strengths of the Hawaiian community, emphasizing Hawaiian cultural traditions such as 'talking story' and encourag
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One Native Life : ICT [2007/07/11] - 0 views

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    One Native Life Email this page Print this page Posted: July 11, 2007 by: Richard Wagamese Learning Ojibway I was 24 when the first Ojibway word rolled off my tongue. It felt all round and rolling, not like the spikey sound of English with all those hard-edged consonants. When I said it aloud, I felt like I'd really, truly spoken for the first time in my life. I was a toddler when I was removed from my family and if I spoke Ojibway at all then, it was baby talk and the language never had a chance to sit in me and grow. English became my prime language and even though I developed an ease and facility with it, there was always something lacking. It never really quite felt real, valid even. It was like a hazy memory that never quite reaches clarity and leaves you puzzled whenever it arises. When that first Ojibway word floated out from between my teeth, I understood. You see, that first word opened the door to my culture. When I spoke it, I stepped over the threshold into an entirely new way of understanding myself and my place in the world. Until then I had been almost like a guest in my own life, standing around waiting for someone or something to explain things for me. That one word made me an inhabitant. It was peendigaen. Come in. Peendigaen, spoken with an outstretched hand and a rolling of the wrist. Beckoning. Come in. Welcome. This is where you belong. I had never encountered an English word that had that resonance - one that could change things so completely. It was awkward at first. There's a softness to the language that's off-putting when you first begin to speak it. It's almost as if timelessness had a vocabulary. With each enunciation the word gained strength, clarity and I got the feeling that I was speaking a language that had existed for longer than any the world has known. This one had never been adapted to become other languages like English had evolved from Germanic tongues. Instead, the feeling of Ojibway in my throat was permanence. I
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E-MELD School of Best Practices - 0 views

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    Endangered Languages / Endangered Documentation * Of the approximately 7,000 languages alive today, 96% are spoken by only 4% of the world's population (Crystal, 2000) * 80% may be gone by the end of this century (Krauss, 1992) * Although some are documented, the documentation is at risk This site promotes best practices in digitizing language data. Computer programs commonly used in field research, such as word processors and spreadsheets, produce files that are often unreadable after only a few years. Physical media like cassette tapes deteriorate even when carefully stored. This site suggests how you might collect, convert and store your data in robust digital formats. The Entrance Hall introduces the importance of best practices in digital language documentation. The Case Studies provide examples of data digitization using the technologies presented in the Classroom. The Reading Room hosts a searchable database of references, and enables users to suggest additional resources. The Work Room enables users to use online tools such as Charwrite, the Terminology Mapper and FIELD to work with their data, and the Tool Room lists various downloadable tools of use to field linguists, and enables users to suggest additional tools. Ask an Expert is a forum through which users may ask our panel of experts about creating and preserving digital language documentation. The site can also be searched, and user comments can be made on Class Room pages. If you collect or use documentation of endangered languages, this website is for you. * What are 'best practices'? * Best practices in a nutshell * Why follow best practices? * Endangered languages * Endangered documentation Implementing digital best practices will make language documentation more useful to you, as well as to the scientific and speaker communities. It will also preserve irreplaceable linguistic information for the benefit of future generations. * Start page for Linguists
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