Internet-Linguistics

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

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

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

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

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

(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

"> 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

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

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