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Endangered Language Initiative - From Threatened Languages to Threatened Lives - 0 views

www.yourdictionary.com/...everett.html

amazon brazil endangered

shared by akoyako :-) on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 23 May 08
     
    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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Selected Resources on Indigenous Language Revitalization - 0 views

jan.ucc.nau.edu/...SIL_Appendix.html

resources websites

shared by akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08
     
    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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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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Stabilizing Indigenous Languages: Preface - 0 views

www.ncela.gwu.edu/...preface.htm

methods

shared by akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08
     
    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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Stabilizing Indigenous Languages: Seven Hypotheses on Language Loss - 0 views

www.ncela.gwu.edu/...hypotheses.htm

language loss

shared by akoyako :-) on 12 May 08 - Cached
  • Seven Hypotheses on Language Loss: Causes and Cures (2) James Crawford Copyright © 1996 by James Crawford. All rights reserved.
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On-Line Resources - 0 views

projects.ltc.arizona.edu/...online_resources.html

resources

shared by akoyako :-) on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • 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
  • akoyako :-) on 23 May 08
     
    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

www2.nau.edu/TIL_Index.html

websites

shared by akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08 - Cached
  • akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08
     
    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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ICIMOD - Home - 0 views

www.icimod.org/home

icimod

shared by akoyako :-) on 03 Jun 08 - Cached
  • Linguistic Diversity and the Preservation of Endangered Languages   While many of us worry about the increasing loss of biodiversity from our planet, another kind of diversity loss – less widely publicised but equally disturbing – is affecting the world’s languages and cultures. Over the course of this century, many spoken languages, especially minority languages... more
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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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Language Policy -- Endangered Languages - 0 views

ourworld.compuserve.com/...brj.htm

endangered

shared by akoyako :-) on 26 May 08 - Cached
  • 4. A final – and, in my view, the most effective – line of argument appeals to the nation's broader interest in social justice. We should care about preventing the extinction of languages because of the human costs to those most directly affected. "The destruction of a language is the destruction of a rooted identity" (Fishman, 1991, p. 4) for both groups and individuals. Along with the accompanying loss of culture, language loss can destroy a sense of self-worth, limiting human potential and complicating efforts to solve other problems, such as poverty, family breakdown, school failure, and substance abuse. After all, language death does not happen in privileged communities. It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive. In this context, indigenous language renewal takes on an added significance. It becomes something of value not merely to academic researchers, but to native speakers themselves. This is true even in extreme cases where a language seems beyond repair. As one linguist sums up a project to revive Adnyamathanha, an Australian Aboriginal tongue that had declined to about 20 native speakers: It was not the success in reviving the language – although in some small ways [the program] did that. It was success in reviving something far deeper than the language itself – that sense of worth in being Adnyamathanha, and in having something unique and infinitely worth hanging onto. [D. Tunbridge, quoted in Schmidt, 1990, p. 106.]
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Revitalizing Indigenous Languages: Introduction - 0 views

jan.ucc.nau.edu/...RIL_Intro.html

symposium

shared by akoyako :-) on 05 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Some Basics of Indigenous Language Revitalization Jon Reyhner Drawing from papers presented at the five Stabilizing Indigenous Languages symposiums held since 1994, activities are recommended for language revitalization at each of Joshua Fishman's eight stages of language loss. The role of writing in indigenous language revitalization is discussed, and two types of language use, primary and secondary discourse, are described. The conclusion stresses the importance of motivating language learners and using teaching methods and materials that have proven effective in indigenous communities. Symposiums on teaching indigenous languages have been held annually since 1994 under the cosponsorship of Northern Arizona University's Bilingual Multicultural Education Program in its Center for Excellence in Education. The symposiums have featured a wide range of presentations, ranging from marketing the value of native languages, to implementing immersion teaching programs, to using Total Physical Response teaching techniques, to developing indigenous language textbooks useful for children, and even to teaching languages over the telephone.
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Endangered Languages - 0 views

www.nvtc.gov/...endangered.html

endangered

shared by akoyako :-) on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • 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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THE COLLECTOR'S GUIDE: INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE INSTITUTE - 0 views

www.collectorsguide.com/...fa059.shtml

collector indigenous

shared by akoyako :-) on 23 May 08 - Cached
  • "Language is the SOUL of a nation." Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
  • Photo: © Dan Budnick The Indigenous Language Institute, founded in 1992, is dedicated to the preservation, revitalization and perpetuation of languages. Its mission “recognizes the imminent loss of indigenous peoples' languages and acknowledges the individuality of indigenous communities. ILI facilitates innovative, for successful community-based initiatives for language revitalization through collaboration with other appropriate groups and organizations, and promotes public awareness of this crisis.” "Language is the SOUL of a nation." Chief Oren Lyons, Onondaga Nation
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