Internet-Linguistics

The Future of Leokï Hale Kuamoÿo staff have ambitious plans for expanding Leokï in several directions. They would like to add additional features to the system, such as audio-visual conferences. They want to provide more regular and systematic teacher training so that educators throughout the immersion program develop both the technical and pedagogical expertise to full use of the system. After most of the immersion schools are brought on to the network this year, they hope to gradually expand the Leokï network into other schools and colleges where Hawaiian language is taught, and eventually into private homes. One important area for expansion would be the native speaking community on the small island of Niÿihau, possibly through creative uses of solar power and satellite telecoommunictions. Eventually, it should be possible to establish more cross-Pacific ties, with Hawaiians communicating in Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages with the Mäori, Tongan, Tahitian, Samoan, and other Pacific peoples. These steps will be taken gradually though, to make sure that Leokï first builds a strong foundation as Hawaiian-medium gathering place for the teachers and students who are striving for native-like fluency in the kula kaiapuni (immersion schools). "I ka �ölelo nö ke ola, i ka �ölelo nö ka make." In the language there is life, and in the language there is death. Hawaiians have a proud history of taking advantage of a wide range of media, from song to dance to print, to preserve and the life of their language and culture. Now they are using the computer to provide one more powerful voice for language use and revitalization, and their example can be of potential benefit to other indigenous communities throughout the world.

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.

PUNE: In order to cater to the complexities of Indian languages as far as search engines are concerned, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has come up with new software, designed in such a way that users can search and ask queries in Indian languages. Gist-Cross Language Search Plug-ins Suite (G-Class) enhances search capabilities by providing a suite of linguistic tools. Speaking to TOI, Mahesh Kulkarni, programme co-ordinator, graphics and intelligence-based script technology (GIST), said, "Indian languages are complex and searching in them poses specific problems which the best of the existing search engines cannot resolve." With over two decades of cutting-edge research and development in multilingual technology, the GIST research labs have provided a peace of mind solution to the problem. Currently it is available in eight languages — Marathi, Bangla, Gujarathi, Hindi, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Urdu. Software for Punjabi, Kokani, Kannada and Telugu will be developed soon.

http://www.ted.com Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase's investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he's made some unexpected discoveries: about the novel ways illiterate people interface with their cellphones, or the role the cellphone can sometimes play in commerce, or the deep emotional bonds we all seem to share with our phones. And watch for his surefire trick to keep you from misplacing your keys.

http://www.ted.com Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase's investigation into the ways we interact with technology has led him from the villages of Uganda to the insides of our pockets. Along the way, he's made some unexpected discoveries: about the novel ways illiterate people interface with their cellphones, or the role the cellphone can sometimes play in commerce, or the deep emotional bonds we all seem to share with our phones. And watch for his surefire trick to keep you from misplacing your keys.

June 13, 2008 (Less info) http://www.ted.com Anthropologist Wade Davis muses on the worldwide web of belief and ritual that makes us human. He shares breathtaking photos and stories of the Elder Brothers, a group of Sierra Nevada indians whose spiritual practice holds the world in balance.

In order for this apology to be considered genuine, more efforts must be undertaken to correct current oppressive measures under the Indian Act that prevent Indigenous peoples from prospering socially, culturally, politically and economically. The actions of the Canadian Government in opposing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples makes the apology feel hollow. Their opposition to the UNDRIP perpetuates the insidious, archaic Indian Act that continues to discriminate and deny Aboriginal nations their rights. The facts and arguments reflecting the manner in which the Canadian Government continues to undermine the rights of Indigenous peoples, can be found in Amnesty International?s 2008 Annual Report. We therefore urge the Government of Canada to adequately fund Indigenous languages in a manner that is equivalent to the support given to the French and English languages; to adequately consult Aboriginal peoples in good faith on legislation that addresses issues such as matrimonial real property, Bill C-21, Bill C-47; Bill C-30 and to eliminate the sexual discrimination that exists under Section 6 of the Indian Act. In order for Aboriginal communities to emerge from the negative impacts of colonization they must have access to their lands and resources; they must have the opportunities to build strong and healthy nations by taking to task the social and economic problems whose roots are firmly based in colonization.

In 2001 the federal government created a department called Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada and several compensation packages have made token reparations to the people who attended these schools.Money will never compensate for the damage done to these children, their families and the rich culture that sustained these people for generations. On June 21, 2008 the Indian Residential School Museum of Canada will open near Portage La Prairie, Man.It's too soon to tell what, if anything, we can learn from this dark chapter in Canadian history.But a core issue is our society's belief that progress is linear, that we have arrived at the apex of civilization as a result of a string of good decisions, and that our leaders are wise and thoughtful. And that everything works out for the best.But our past is far more complicated. Though we have had good intentions, and have made many good decisions, we have also been incredibly ethno-centric and arrogant. We failed to learn from the aboriginals and integrate their wisdom into the society that developed in western Canada.

July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly What the Internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr Is Google Making Us Stupid?

Local site uses unique tool to bring Arabic script into internet era By Alexander Besant Special to The Daily Star Saturday, June 14, 2008 BEIRUT: During the past few years email, chat rooms, and text messaging have forced Arabic speakers to rely on transliterations due to these technologies' use of Roman script.As Arabic keyboards remain bewildering and unpopular among average users, transliteration has become a common method of written communication, particularly on the net.This reliance on transliteration has spawned various Web sites which convert Latin-script Arabic transliterations into Arabic script. Now Arab-speaking internet users have a new tool at their disposal to do just that - but better.Nagi Salloum, co-founder of the popular Cineklik Web site which aggregates movie listings all over Lebanon onto one site, has teamed up with a new partner to make the internet more accessible for arabophones.Their creation - Yoolki - is a Web site which is proving to be the fastest tool on the net for converting transliterations into Arabic script.Though there are many Roman to Arabic transliteration sites on the net, Yoolki is the only one which transliterates in real-time without the often irritating pause after typing. It is also the only site which allows users to work offline in case the internet connection is lost.Yoolki uses a dual screen which allows users to constantly see their Roman script typing side-by-side with the Arabic script. The user is able to go back and make corrections to the original words without having to delete the Arabic script.Yoolki is also the first transliteration tool which allows users to incorpo

California Indians gather in Berkeley to learn how to save dying languagesBy Matt O'Brien Contra Costa TimesArticle Launched: 06/13/2008 06:19:38 PM PDT var requestedWidth = 0; Click photo to enlarge Leanne Hinton, professor emeritus of linguistics at U.C. Berkeley, discuss the Native American...«12345» viewer_currentlySelected = 1; viewer_lastIndex = 5; viewer_images = ['http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0613/20080613__ecct0614indian~1_Viewer.JPG','http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0613/20080613__ecct0614indian~2_Viewer.JPG','http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0613/20080613__ecct0614indian~3_Viewer.JPG','http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0613/20080613__ecct0614indian~4_Viewer.JPG','http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site571/2008/0613/20080613__ecct0614indian~5_Viewer.JPG']; viewer_widths = ['88','89','200','192','103']; viewer_heights = ['140','140','114','139','140']; viewer_captions = [" Leanne Hinton, professor emeritus of linguistics at U.C. Berkeley, discuss the Native American..."," Ernestine Ygnacio-DeSoto , a member of the Barbarine tribe from the Santa Barbara area,..."," Julia Bogany, Virginia Carmelo and Jacob Gutierrez, react to a language lesson in the Konkow..."," Lori Laiwa, giving a language lesson in the Central Pomo dialect at the Breath of Life..."," A language lesson in the dialect of the Monterey Ohlone native americans, presented as a one act..."]; viewer_galleryUrl = '/portlet/article/html/render_gallery.jsp'; viewer_articleId = '9580467'; viewer_siteId = '571'; viewer_isPreviewing = 'false'; viewer_isEmbedded = ''; viewer_activeButtonLead = 2; viewer_visibleButtonCount = 5; viewer_allowEnlargement = !isEmpty(viewer_galleryUrl); selectImage(1); displayOn('control_box'); function addToDimension(dim, val){ index = dim.indexOf('px'); if(index != -1){ dim = dim.substring(0, index); } dim = parseInt(dim) + val; return dim; } if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE") != -1){ $('photoviewer').style.width = addToDimension($('photoviewer').style.width, 2); $('caption').style.height = addToDimension($('caption').style.height, 2); } requestedWidth = 202; if(requestedWidth > 0){ document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.width = requestedWidth + "px"; document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.margin = "0px 0px 10px 10px"; } BERKELEY — The first time Barbara Pineda came into contact with a linguist, she was wary about what he wanted.An academic researcher from UC Berkeley was visiting her grandmother's home in Mendocino County in the early 1960s, taking notes as her family shared words from their Northern Pomo language."I thought he came to steal it," said Pineda, who was about 8 years old at the time. "My grandmother called me over and said, 'It's OK. He's a friend.'"Pineda, 53, is now trying to salvage the endangered language that her grandmother helped document decades ago. She is one of dozens of California Indians who gathered in Berkeley from across the state this week in hopes they can learn from the university, and from each other, how to preserve languages threatened with extinction."I'm trying to find the notes on her," Pineda said. "That's what inspired me to come here. It's coming back. What they took is coming back, in a good way."

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.

The Tujia Language and Culture Website Welcome to the Tujia Language and Culture website! The Tujia people, with a total population of over 8 million, is the 6th largest ethnic minority in the People's Republic of China. They live in the provinces of Hunan, Hubei and Guizhou, as well as in Chongqing Municipality (formerly part of Sichuan Province). These areas lie in a region generally known as Central South China. This website contains pages introducing the Tujia culture and language, together with a photo archive. In addition the website gives access to a large archive of Tujia language material. Imperial Tiger Hunters, our popular-level introduction to the Tujia people has just been published (click on the image on the right for more details); our technical grammar The Tujia Language has also recently been published. Introduction to the Tujia People The Tujia Language Photo Archive This website is based on research carried out under the auspices of the College of Literature and Journalism, Jishou University, Xiangxi Tujia Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Hunan Province, China. The authors worked on this project while they were based at the university from January 2002 to July 2003.

Imperial Tiger Hunters:An Introduction to the Tujia People of ChinaPhilip & Cecilia Brassett  Paperback, 154 pages (October 2005) Publisher: Antony Rowe Publishing Services ISBN: 1-905200-37-4     •Buy Imperial Tiger Hunters through Amazon UK     •View sample pages (JPEG, 200kb)  Hidden among the precipitous Wuling Mountains, just south of the Yangtze Three Gorges, live the Tujia, an ethnic group numbering eight million, with a long and fascinating history.  Descendants of the ancient Ba people, they lived an essentially independent existence for nearly two millenia. Under clans of feudal chieftains, one of which held sway for a staggering 800 years, they developed a highly distinctive culture - including crying before weddings, dancing at funerals and venerating the white tiger.  Then in the 1730s the Imperial Court in Peking finally gained the upper hand over them. The subsequent 300 years of assimilation by mainstream Chinese culture has taken its toll. The Tujia, pragmatic by nature, have always been able to adapt to new situations. Today, their desire to benefit from the educational and economic benefits of integration into modern China threatens the very survival of their traditional culture.

Digital race to save languages By Andy Webster in Melbourne Researchers are fighting against time to save decades of data on the world's endangered languages from ending on the digital scrap heap. 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."