foundation for endangered languages ogmiosogmios.org/ogmios/ogmios_031.pdf · assistant editors:...

FOUNDATION FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES

OGMIOSogmios

Participants in the tenth annual conference of FELat the Central Institute of Indian Languages,

Mysore, India, 25-27 October 2006

OGMIOS Newsletter 3.07 (#31): Winter — 31 January 2007ISSN 1471-0382 Editor: Christopher Moseley

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 3.07 (#31) (Winter 2006/2007) page 2

OGMIOS Newsletter 3.07 (#31): Winter — 31 January 2007ISSN 1471-0382 Editor: Christopher Moseley

Assistant Editors: Roger Blench, Joseph Blythe, Serena D'Agostino, Christopher Hadfield, Francis M Hult, Nicholas D. M. Ostler , Andrea Ritter

Contact the Editor at:Christopher Moseley, 9 Westdene Crescent, Caversham Heights, Reading RG4 7HD, England chrismoseley50.at.yahoo.com

Published by:Foundation for Endangered Languages, Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath BA1 7AA, England nostler.at.chibcha.demon.co.uk

http://www.ogmios.org

CALL FOR PROPOSALS ......................... 2

Editorial ................................................. 3

2. Development of the Foundation .... 3

FEL versus matsya-nyāya, the ‘fish-logic’of language survival in the raw: FEL XConference Report..................................... 3

Meet the FEL Committee members ........ 6

FEL Grant Recipients report on their work7

Bidisha Som, Great Andamanese language(Andaman Islands, India) .............................. 7

3. Endangered Languages in theNews ..................................................... 8

Māori: The changing tide of Te Reo ........ 8

Uganda to teach in local languages ........ 9

UK set to continue excluding Cornishfrom FCNM.................................................. 9

Unity in Diversity? European Parliamentrejects Bernat Joan’s Report proposals10

Leanne Hinton wins Lannan award forCultural Freedom ..................................... 10

Researching American Indian rhetoric.. 11

President ponders alphabet change inKazakhstan ............................................... 11

Native language lives on in woman: ViHilbert of the Upper Skagit tribe

stubbornly aims to keep Lushootseedalive. ........................................................... 12

Saving Serrano ......................................... 12

Bolivian Government Support ofIndigenous Languages Meets Resistance13

4. Appeals, News and Views fromEndangered Communities................ 14

!Khwa ttu cultural centre launched inWestern Cape, South Africa ................... 14

First Jaqaru language course completedin Peru ........................................................ 14

5. Allied Societies and Activities ...... 14

Hans Rausing Endangered LanguagesProject launches OREL Online............... 15

6. Book Reviews ................................ 17

Daniel Abondolo (ed.), The UralicLanguages................................................. 17

E.M.Rickerson & Barry Hilton (ed.), The 5Minute Linguist: Bite-sized essays onlanguage and languages......................... 17

7. Letters to the Editor ...................... 17

From Juris Cibuls, Latvia, by e-mail: ..... 17

8. Overheard on the Web................. 18

Mapuche is ours, not yours ..................... 18

Sovereignty over languages and land ... 18

Who Owns Language? ............................19

9. Forthcoming Meetings .................. 20

Babel in reverse? Language ideology inthe 21st century, 20-22 Feb 2007,Catholic Academy Wolfsburg / Mülheim20

Conference on Endangered Languagesand Cultures of Native America, 13-15April 2007 Salt Lake City, Utah...............20

“Ethnicity in Europe: Sociopolitical andCultural Processes”24 –26 May 2007Rēzekne, Latgalia/Latvia .........................20

10. Recent Publications.................... 21

Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller(ed.), Discourses of Endangerment:Ideology and interest in the defence oflanguages ..................................................21

K. David Harrison, When Languages Die:The extinction of the world's languagesand the erosion of human knowledge....21

Osahito Miyaoka, Osamu Sakiyama,Michael E. Krauss: The VanishingLanguages of the Pacific Rim .................21

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

The Foundation for Endangered Languages is now accepting propos-als for projects of work that will support, enable or assist the protec-tion or promotion of one or more endangered languages. Theseendangered languages may be anywhere in the world.Deadline: February 28, 2007 By that date, full proposals (consistingof Case for Support and Application Form) must reach FEL at theaddress below. Proposals received will be acknowledged on receipt.The FEL Committee will announce its decision by 31st March2007.The Foundation for Endangered Languages is committed to raisingawareness of endangered languages and supporting revitalisation andpreservation of endangered languages through all channels and me-dia. The Foundation awards grants to projects that further its aims asand when the funds permit. The Foundation's funds remain ex-tremely limited this year and only an exceptional award will begreater than US $1,000. Smaller proposals stand a better chance offundingResearch projects that focus on the revitalisation of the endangeredlanguages and support of the use of endangered languages in com-munity life (home, school, education, cultural and economic life)

will be given priority. Projects restricted to language documentationwill not be eligible for funding this year.Please pass on this announcement to your friends and colleagues inendangered-language communities who may not have access to Og-mios, the Internet or e-mail.Format for Submissions:Applicants must submit a short “Case for Support”and a ApplicationForm. Guidance on how to write a Case, and fill out the form, isaccessible at the website: - http://www.ogmios.org/grant.htmThe Case for Support (CS) and Application Form (AF) are best sub-mitted as Word files attached to an e-mail message sent toFEL.at.chibcha.demon.co.uk and hakimelnazar.at.yahoo.comNon-ascii text should be in some form of Unicode. The two filesshould be named "languageCS.doc" and "languageAF.doc", substi-tuting the name of the language to be studied for 'language'.Copies printed on paper will also be accepted as an alternative. Ingeneral, it is not necessary to send a hard copy of an electronic pro-posal for confirmation, but FEL may request this if there are majordifficulties in reading the file.All proposals must be in this format, to ensure comparability. Unlessagreed in advance in writing, proposals must be in English.


Editorial

This Winter 2006/2007 edition of Ogmioscontains the usual mix of articles and itemsculled from the many available sources,mostly in cyberspace, dealing with threatenedlanguages and related topics. As I mentionedin the previous issue, it would be good to seethe balance of material appearing in thesepages shifted in favour of original articles byour members, and commissioned articles, sowe continue to look forward to submissionsfrom you, the readers. You can send articlesand illustrations directly to me atchrismoseley50.at.yahoo.com or by postto the address given on the membership form.Meanwhile, enjoy the miscellany you willfind in these pages.

Please note especially the announcement ofthe new way of paying your FEL subscriptionand ordering FEL publications directly on-line!

This is the time for all old members to re-new subscription for 2007, so please do thenecessary, and help fund this year’s grants.

You can either use the form at the end of thenewsletter, or our new online system atwww.ogmios.org.

2. Development of the Foundation

FEL versus matsya-nyāya, the ‘fish-logic’of language survival in the raw:FEL X Conference ReportNicholas Ostler, R. Elangaiyan

FEL X was jointly organized with the CentralInstitute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore,India. The theme of the Conference was VitalVoices: Endangered Language and Multilin-gualism and it was held on the CIIL campusfrom 25th to 27th October 2006.

As with all FEL conferences, the location setthe tone. Mysore, an old princely state insouthern India is approached by a two-hourroad journey from the main local airport atBangalore, and the trip itself served as a vividintroduction to modern, as eternal, India.

Once arrived we were accommodated inhighly atmospheric guest-houses, Royal andRoost, and proceeded to make ourselves athome with the other guests, including thebandar log.

The Conference, on Vital Voices: Endangeredlanguages and Multilingualism, started with aKeynote address by L. M. Khubchandani: thisattempted to capture the scene of oral com-munication in India before and after inde-pendence, suggesting that a new Communica-tion Order has to emerge ensuring the rightsof ‘lesser used’languages but leaving thedetails of the new order to everyone’s imagi-nation.

Haobam Basantarani’s Multilingualism En-dangered was not presented as the authorcouldn’t participate in the conference but it isincluded in the Proceedings under the Section

Outlining the Danger. This paper narrates thestruggles for a collective identity by the in-digenous communities of Tripura who havebecome minorities in their own land due tothe influx of non-native populatation and thepossible danger of one of the smaller minoritygroups (Reangs speaking the language KaiBru) losing its distinct identity as a compro-mise for securing the collective identity of thenative tribes. The suggestion to adopt theIntercultural Bilingual Education model of theLatin American Countries for Tripura, in fact,may be worth considering for other multilin-gual contexts in India too.

Two papers were presented under the SectionExtreme Endangerment.

Hugo C. Cardoso’s Challenges to Indo-Portuguese across India was an excellentnarration of how some Indo-Portuguese (IP)Creoles have survived the test of time whereassome have not. It depicts the diachronic andsynchronic perspectives of the creation (com-ing into being) and decline/maintenace ofvarious IP Creoles. A few significant pointsfrom his paper are:

Multilingualism is not necessarily athreat to any language for its survival;

When the domains of use for a languageare clearly assigned and practiced ac-cordingly, such a language has brightchances for its survival;

Official recognition and the resultantstatus and other benefits are very crucialfor the maintenance of a language.

Cardoso, in a model for all similar cases oflanguage endangerment, argues for promotingthe cause of IP instead of Standard Portu-guese.

Paul Monaghan’s brief essay on the prospectsof Wirangu and Gugada, the two neighbour-ing Australian languages reveals the threatfrom another indigenous language Pitjantjat-jara apart from English. This is comparablewith the situation in India’s Tripura whereKai Bru faces a threat from Kok Borok,thelanguage promoted as the collective identityfor the native indigenous communities. Theuse of electronic devices for revitalization ofthese Australian languages may also be fol-lowed in countries like India.

Only two presentations were made in theConference under the Section Effects of Con-tact. One was by Umberto Ansaldo and LisaLim on Globalization, Empowerment and thePeriphery: The Malays of Sri Lanka. Theytrace the history of Sri Lankan Malay (SLM)as a Creole and its present condition of beingendangered. The authors say, “That linguisticvarieties which are classified as ‘Creoles’aredoubly endangered is a point that is worthreiterating”. But there are cases like Sadri (aCreole used by tribes in Central India), which


is quite stable and is a threat to other indige-nous languages in the region. But of course,the role of Sadri is different from that of theSLM. Probably, in a multilingual setting, therole of a linguistic variety is more importantthan whether it is a Creole or not.

The other paper was delivered by Elena Bene-dicto on Language Loss to An Invisible En-emy: the Case of Tuahka. Here is the case of alanguage shift that has been found out to besudden and also owing to a single majorevent in the eco-region, and hence of consid-erable theoretical importance.The major eventthat is suspected (or probably concluded now)to be responsible for the language shift hadbeen the arrival and functioning of a British(mining) company in the beginning of 18th

century which caused the influx and frequent-ing of the Miskitu speakers in the Tuahkaarea. This event is comparable with the hap-penings promoted by today’s globalizationand hence should serve as an eye-opener tolinguists working on language endangerment.

Chaithra Puttaswamy was not present in theConference but yet her paper on Contact andConvergence: Observations based on Pho-nology and Morphology of Malto gives anaccount of changes, the Dravidian Malto hasundergone due to influence from Munda andIndo-Aryan languages. This is probably asubtle suggestion to revitalize Malto.

Three papers were presented in the Section onRoles of Religion and Documentation. Be-gona Echeverria’s paper on Speaking inTongues, Saving Souls: Religion in the “Res-urrection”and Death of Endangered Lan-guages throws light on the role of gender inthe domain of religion in the Basque lan-guage. The purpose of this paper was to sug-gest the inclusion of gender related questionswhile investigating how religion impacts en-dangered languages. In fact, this can be ex-tended to other domains also. In most of theSouth Asian languages, women play an infe-rior role (with rare exceptions) in domainslike religion, politics, social organization,trade and industry.

David A. Hough presented a historical ac-count of the sufferings by Kosraeans in hispaper on Beyond Linguistic Documentation:Giving New Breath to Indigenous Voices. Hisangry pronouncement equating globalizationwith colonization is justified by the pointsthat he puts forward explaining the ill effectsof globalization on communities big andsmall. But interestingly and fortunately,David Hough lists the positive components ofglobalization such as the Kosrae Languageand Culture Website, CDs and ComputerAssisted Software that are employed in boost-ing the revitalization of the language.

Language Documentation in Andamans:Highs and Lows by Abhishek Avtans andAnvita Abbi explained how languages docu-mentation helps in bringing about a positiveattitude in the minds of the indigenous peo-ple, here the Andamanese, towards mainte-nance.

The Section on Literacy and Revitalizationhas three papers, the first being Future ofTorwali speaking migrants in the urban areasof Pakistan by Inam Ullah who could notattend the Conference. To him, Torwali (hismother tongue) is vulnerable to endangermentas it happens to be an unwritten language anddue to large scale migration of Torwali speak-ers to the urban areas of Pakistan. He rightlysuggests that a healthy type of multilingual-ism should be encouraged among the Torwalispeakers in the urban areas using multimediaand newsletters. A website for the Torwaliculture and language may also be suggested.To reverse the trend of migration, all agenciesconcerned will have to work together.

Small languages in a polylingual situation –the case of Turung by Stephen Morey narratesthe multi-faceted threat facing the Turunglanguage. Preservation of the culture andlanguage of the Turungs now mostly depend

upon their awareness as a community.

Maria Sipos could not attend the Conferencebut her paper On the Possibilities of Revitaliz-ing Synya Khanty provides an interestingreading on the extremely threatened SynyaKhanty dialect spoken in the North-WesternSiberia. Most of the documented riches of thedialect are in Hungary. The elite among theSynya population has already shifted to Rus-sian. The news of Sofya Onina’s descriptivegrammar of Synya dialect is refreshing but itsuse in writing school textbooks is yet to beaccomplished. Introducing the Synya tradi-tional folklore material that has been pre-served in Hungary to its own people will be ofgreat motivating factor to a peolple who arefound to be not very enthusiastic of their owntraditional speech form. The suggestions thatthe Synya speakers shift to the Shuryshkarydialect of the Khanty language or to Russiando not seem to be convincing for two rea-sons:The work done hitherto in documentingthe Synya dialect material would becomemeaningless and such a shift would result inundermining the Synya culture and identity.

The Section on Majority –Minority Rela-tionship had two presentations. Elangaiyan’sStrategies Proposed for Arresting LanguageEndangerment in India emphasizes the rightof all languages to survive, irrespective of thesize of the population and the status they en-joy. It has been explained how some lan-guages become less fortunate and endangered.The setting in which different languages inIndia operate and the hierarchy they fall in areexplained briefly. Strategies listed for arrest-ing language endangerment in India couldhave been more elaborate and context spe-cific.


The paper On Profiles of Use for MajorityLanguages in Southern Nigeria was byRonald P. Schaefer and Francis O. Egbok-hare. This statistical study suggests thatspeakers of even major languages of Nigeriasuch as Yoruba and Igbo are contemplating ashift to English. Is this not a forerunner toforetell what is going to happen to major andminor languages of the world in the comingdecades if language policies are not formu-lated and implemented to check this trend?The upper class elite (from all mother tonguegroups) in India are already moving in thisdirection.

The Section on Development and Changesincludes three papers, the first being CarvingBoth Sides: Globalization in Education Re-form and Language Politics in the CoroicoMunicipality of the Nor Yungas of Bolivia byVictoria Stockton. She describes all the ne-glect and discouragement received by indige-nous languages in Bolivia in favour of thecolonial language, Spanish. But Victoria findsnow that globalization and Bolivia’s democ-ratic reforms go hand in hand in enhancingthe prestige and use of indigenous languageslike Aymara. The Aymara-Spanish bilingualeducation is found to be ideal and rewardingin the context of emerging reversal of lan-guage shift. A word of caution is added thatthe ultimate success would be possible only ifthe present liberal policy at the macro level istransformed into practice at the grassrootslevel.

Maya Khemlani David spoke on The Linguis-tic Scenario in the Temuan Community. How-ever, it is a great relief that the Temuans stillfairly maintain their own language in thehome domain.

Linguistic minorities and marginalization ofBotswana: Prospects for Survival by Kem-monye C. Monaka and Gregory H. Kam-wendo, who were not present in the Confer-ence, throws light on the lamentable margin-alization that the linguistic minorities in Bot-swana have been subjected to and the neglectshown to all indigenous languages with thelone exception of Setswana. NGOs and otherinstitutions like some Universities are of somehelp and solace to these indigenous languagesbut ultimately the State will have to accordreal recognition and extend support.

The Section on Cooperation with NeighbourLanguages had two papers. Khadim HussainBahria could not attend the Conference. Hispaper on Language Shift in a Minority Kohis-tani Community –The Case of Ushojo high-lights the absence of a pluralistic approach inPakistan’s language policy and educationalplanning.l This paper elaborately discussesthe threat faced by the Ushojo language spo-ken by ethnic Ushojis. In about a period oftwo and a half decades (from 1992 to 2006)the number of speakers for Ushojo languagehas declined from 2,000 to a mere 500,mainly because of tmigration. There are nmonolingual Ushojis. Khadim Hussain con-cludes that the language shift is mostly toPashto. A writing system for Ushojo may helpstem the tide of migration.

The other paper in this Section was presentedby Hakim Elnazarov on Multilingualism inPamir: Challenges of Preservation and Revi-talization.

The indigenous Pamiri languages face thethreat from the national language Tajik andthe languages of globalization, namely, Rus-sian and English. These indigenous languagesare expected to surrender their ethnic identi-ties in favour of the relatively new but strongnational identity. The density of these minor-ity groups and the lack of interaction withnon-native groups including Tajik speakersare considered advantageous for maintenanceright now.

There were four papers in the Section Emerg-ing Complexity & Community LanguageSupport. The paper The complexity andemergence of Hindi as Lingua Franca inArunachal Pradesh was presented by YankeeModi. After attaining Statehood, the Arun-achal tribes gradually replaced the NefamesePidgin by Hindi for intertribal communica-tion. The worry is about the restricted use ofArunachal languages, reserving domains ofvital importance to non-Arunachal languages.The paper concludes with an open-endedquestion as what could be the answer for in-tertribal communication for a linguisticallyheterogeneous State like Arunachal Pradesh.

Nina Dobrushina for her paper Multilingual-ism in Archi: Communication, Self-Identification and Social Prestige has elicitedresponses from Archi speakers on their bilin-gual and multilingual capabilities (involvingAvar and Russian). Though Archi is verystable and not declining, the Archi speakersuse Avar with almost complete proficiency init and have reverence for Avar as a symbol oftheir greater identity. In spite of their goodcommand over Avar and Russian, the Archisdo not have any problem for the maintenanceof their own language. This paper againproves that multilingualism does not necessar-ily endanger languages.

The third paper in this Section was by KavitaRastogi who was not present in the Confer-ence. Kavita in her paper Challenges andResponses to the Survival of a Tribal Lan-guage –Raji narrates how Raji (a spokenlanguage of the Tibeto-Burman family) hasbeen highly influenced by the surroundingIndo-Aryan languages, namely, Kumauni andHindi in India’s Uttaranchal State. Use reduc-tion and code reduction have been identifiedas the major challenges. Kavita has involvedthe community members in adopting DevNagari script for Raji. She, by her innovativemethods, has been trying to instill a sense ofpride, self-confidence and awareness in theminds of the Raji speakers so that the lan-guage can effectively be revitalized.

Last in this Section was Christine Schreyer onRe-Orientations in Language Planning: A“Language-as-Cultural-Resource” Modelfrom a Canadian First Nation.

Christine Schreyer presents the discussion onorientations in language planning as definedby Ruiz in his ‘language-as-resource’modeland the views of the critiques of this model.She offers a new position as “language-as-cultural-resource”model. She gives an ac-count of Taku River Tlingit First Nation and“Language-as-Cultural-Resource”. This is theonly paper in the Conference to highlight theimportance of the link between the people andtheir land. People’s awareness of their rightsto their land and what it offers as a wholeshould naturally ensure their rights to use andmaintain their own indigenous languages.


Lisa Lim, Anvita Abbi, Chandramani

The last Section Epilogue is by Udaya Nara-yana Singh. He has put forward his view-points under the title The Sense of Danger:Some Reflections on Language Endanger-ment. In his ‘Preliminary Remarks’, he haspresented the mindset of the planners thatmany often echoes the bias of the majoritycommunities towards the minority culturesand languages. In ‘Some Assumptions’, hequotes the views of Chomsky and the like tostress the point that even in the so-called civilsocieties, ‘free speech’is in fact not all thatfree. He lists the ‘Three Kinds of Tensions’and in ‘Choices as Political Moves’he de-scribes the brilliant dissent of Tulasidas,Kabir and others to be with the standard. Af-ter presenting the ‘Steps and Caution’forsurviving the endangerment he puts forwardwhat is planned to be done in the Indian con-text, namely, Language EndangermentStudies. This is a major programme CIIL isplanning to launch in association with Censusof India and Commission for Linguistic Mi-norities.

The conference was notable for much besidesthe proceedings, however. There were view-ings of ethnographic fims of CIIL about theToda and other peoples of India, a South In-dian banquet thrown by FEL for the scholarsof CIIL, and animated panel sessions on thefirst and last days. Moreover, the event madethe Indian newspapers on two successivedays. First, our press conference, raising thethe profile of language endangerment, wasreported by the Times of India, the Star ofMysore and other journals. But then came theevent that showed that FEL is really a part ofthis era. The next day, two Pakistani gunmenwere apprehended after a car chase in theMysore suburbs, providing headline news forthe day. They had been, according to PoliceCommissioner Praveen Sood., "on their wayto the Central Institute of Indian Languageson Hunsur Road, where a three-day interna-tional conference on endangered language isbeing held" (Star of Mysore 27x06). Bloodran cold among most of us, belying the dic-tum of Winston Churchill that "Nothing inlife is so exhilarating as to be shot at withoutresult."1

FEL X revealed a tension between the good-will of all to language communities and the

1 Story of the Malakand Field Force, 1897, Chap.X

concern of many for possible long-term em-bitterment due to colonialism. The passionateinterest of the attendees, however, can only beinspiring for the future.

Meet the FEL Committee members

Most of the readers of this journal rarely, ifever, get to meet the members of the commit-tee who serve them. So we've asked the mem-bers serving on the newly elected FEL Com-mittee to introduce themselves in a brief para-graph. Here are their self-portraits:

Blair A. Rudes currently serves as VicePresident and U.S. Registered Agent for FELInc., the U.S. 501(c)(3) charitable sister-organization of FEL. He is an Associate Pro-fessor in the Department of English at theUniversity of North Carolina at Charlotte,where he serves as the director of the graduateApplied Linguistics Program. His researchfocuses on the documentation, historical lin-guistics, and philology of the indigenous lan-guages of eastern North America, in particularthe Algonquian, Catawban, and Iroquoianlanguages. He has developed lexical andgrammatical reference works for the Tus-carora Indian Nation, the Mashantucket Pe-quot Tribal Nation, and the Golden Hill Tribeof the Paugussett Nation, and currently inunder contract to the University of SouthCarolina Press to publish a grammar, a textcollection, and a dictionary of the Catawbalanguage. He was employed by New LineCinema to revive the Virginia Algonquian(a.k.a. Powhatan) language for dialog in theTerrence Mallick film The New World (2005)and is currently assisting with the Algonquiantribes in Virginia to use the materials he de-veloped for the film in tribal efforts to revivetheir ancestral language.

R. Elangaiyan took his master's degree inLinguistics from the University of Kerala(India) in 1973. He took up a research projecton Dhangar Kurux/Kurukh language (spokenin Nepal Tarai) in Deccan College, Pune inIndia with an aim of submitting a Doctoralthesis but did not complete the work forpurely personal reasons. Later, in the year1981, he joined the Central Institute of IndianLanguages (CIIL), Mysore as a ResearchAssistant in the Tribal & Border LanguagesUnit which was renamed in the year 2001 asResearch Group for Tribal & EndangeredLanguages. He did a survey of Kurux dialectsspoken in Central India and its diaspora in thenon-contiguous areas. The findings of thissurvey were used in preparing Kurux primersto be used for school literacy. He guided theCar Nicobarese mother tongue teachers andcoauthored with them to produce schoolprimers in the Car Nicobarese language andthey are used in the schools. He had con-ducted several linguistics training pro-grammes for CIIL teaching linguistics to Lan-guage Officers and University teachers invarious states in India. Also he conductedseveral programmes for preparing literacy

material and biliteracy material for the benefitof several indigenous communities in differ-ent parts of India . He has been working onthe grammars of Car Nicobarese language (tobe completed in the year 2007) and IduMishmi, an endangered language spoken nearthe Indo-Chinese border (to be completed inthe year 2008). He studied the phonology ofIdu Mishmi and adopted the Roman script forthat language with a difference that the scriptcan be typed using any English key board of acomputer. He is interested in studies on lan-guage endangerment, ethnolinguistics, trans-lations (though he knows only six Indianlanguages - Tamil, Malayalam, Kurux, CarNicobarese, Kannada & Hindi - he cannotinclude Idu Mishmi very confidently rightnow - and a bit of English) and languageplanning with special accent on term (termi-nology) planning. In the beginning of 2006 heconducted a workshop in Ranchi (centralIndia ) on Term Planning in Kurux for facili-tating writing Kurux grammar in Kurux bythe Kurux native scholars. He coordinatedand conducted a Post Conference Seminar inthe ICOSAL -3 Conference on 'LanguageEndangerment and South Asia' at Hyderabadin January 2001 and later in January 2005 heconducted a Symposium on 'Globalizationand Language Endangerment' in the XXXIIIIndian Social Science Conference in Gandhi-gram. He is an ardent supporter of pluralismof all sorts - religion, language, culture, poli-tics etc. As an activist for pluralism he hasbeen working for building awareness amongdifferent communities (within his reach) forthis purpose.

Hakim Elnazarov got a university degree inIslamic studies in Tajikistan (1994) and Mas-ter in Educational Development from theInstitute for Educational Development of theAga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan(1999); worked with the Aga Khan Develop-ment Network in East Africa (2000 - 2002).In 2003 joined the Institute of Ismaili Studies(www.iis.ac.uk) in London where he is cur-rently based. First, he was a Research Fellowand currently is a Coordinator of the CentralAsian Studies Unit at the IIS. His main re-search interests are religious education inCentral Asia, philosophy of religion and mi-nority languages of Central Asia. He pub-lished several articles and book reviews onthe subjects in various journals and confer-ence proceedings. Hakim is in the FEL com-mittee since 2004 and major responsibilityincludes communication/liaison officer tofollow on grants, distributing FEL pamphlets,etc.

Maya Khemlani David is a Professor (Socio-linguistics) in the Faculty of Languages andLingusitics, University of Malaya. She is anHonorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute ofLinguists, United Kingdom, an adjunct pro-fesor in Universiti Putra, Serdang, Malaysiaand a Research Fellow with UPSI, Malaysia.She has presented over 60 papers in 19 coun-tries and has written The Sindhis Of Malay-


sia: a Sociolinguistic Account (2001, London,ASEAN) and co-written Writing a ResearchPaper (2006, Serdang: UPM). Her co-editedand edited publications are Language and thePower of the Media (2006, Frankfurt, PeterLang), Language Choices and Discourse ofMalaysian Families: Case Studies of Familiesin Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2006, PetalingJaya, Strategic International and ResearchDevelopment Centre), Teaching of English inSecond and Foreign Language Settings: Fo-cus on Malaysia (2004, Frankfurt, Peter Lang)and Methodological and Analytical Issues inLanguage Maintenance and Shift Studies(2002, Frankfurt, Peter Lang).

Steven Krauwer, membership secretary, isbased in Utrecht (NL). He has a degree inmathematics and has worked as a senior lec-turer and researcher in computational linguis-tics and language technology at the Utrechtinstitute of Linguistics (UiL OTS) of UtrechtUniversity. He has been the coordinator of anumber of EU-funded projects in the field oflanguage and speech technology. He has re-cently retired but is still working for UiL OTSas an affiliate researcher and project manager.

Tjeerd de Graaf, until 2003 associate profes-sor of phonetics at Groningen University (theNetherlands) , has specialized in the phoneticaspects of Ethnolinguistics for the last 15years. In 1990, he joined a Japanese expedi-tion and conducted his first fieldwork with theminority peoples of Sakhalin. Since then hehas contributed to various research projectson the endangered languages and endangeredarchives of Russia. In co-operation with col-leagues in the Russian Federation and Japan,he focused on the use of sound archives forresearch on minority languages and cultures.Most of these research projects were fundedby special

grants from the European Union and theNetherlands Organization of Scientific Re-search NWO. Tjeerd de Graaf received a Doc-torate Honoris Causa for his work from theUniversity of St.Petersburg in 1998. Since2002, he has been a board member of theFoundation for Endangered Languages (GreatBritain). He is a research fellow at the FrisianAcademy, which co-ordinates research onEuropean minorities, in particular the lan-guage, history and culture of Frisian, one ofthe lesser used languages of Europe. In 2003,he spent a semester as visiting professor at theUniversity of St.Petersburg and in 2004 and2005, he was guest researcher at the SlavicResearch Center of Hokkaido University,Japan.

Chris Moseley, Treasurer and Editor of Og-mios, has been with the Foundation since thebeginning and Treasurer since 1998. Until2005 he was a translator from Finnish andSwedish firstly, Latvian latterly, at the BBCMonitoring Service in Caversham, England.Since then he has worked as a freelance trans-lator and is currently working on a Ph.D.

thesis in linguistics at the University of Lon-don. He is also the co-editor of the RoutledgeAtlas of the World's Languages (1994, 2nd ed.2007) and editor of the forthcoming Encyclo-pedia of the World's Endangered Languages(2007).

Nicholas Ostler is based in Bath, UK. He hasheld the Chair for ten years, since the originof FEL. He gained a Ph.D. in TheoreticalLinguistics from MIT. In the 27 years sincethen, he was first for 30 months a lecturer atJapanese Universities, then for 18 years aconsultant in information technology in theUK (especially on research in speech andnatural language processing and corpus lin-guistics), active in European projects. Mostrecently he has written 'Empires of the Word'-a language history of the world' (Harper-Collins 2005) and 'Ad Infinitum - a biographyof Latin' (forthcoming 2007). He also workson the grammar of the Chibcha family ofSouth America.

Louanna Furbee is Professor Emerita ofAnthropology and Linguistics at the Univer-sity of Missouri, Columbia. Although retired,she still trains graduate students and teachesthe occasional class; this semester she isteaching Endangered \Languages. She is pri-marily a Mayanist, having spent a careerworking on Tojolabal Maya, a language inearly endangerment spoken in southern Mex-ico near the Guatemalan border. She has pub-lished a grammar, dictionary and text concor-dance of Tojolabal. At present she is engagedin training five Tojolabal speakers as a lan-guage documentation team for the language.In the last decade she documented ChiwereSiouan, the language of the Otoe-Missouriaand Iowa Tribes of Oklahoma, USA, in its lastyears. She is the Archivist of the LinguisticSociety of America and in that capacity shehas organised a number of efforts in the pastfew years to help the LSA assume appropriateroles in endangered language documentation,especially in the electronic archiving of theselanguages. Among those was a conference onlanguage documentation in 2005, a book fromwhich she is co-editing with LenoreA.Grenoble. She is responsible for the FELGiving web-site (www. felgivingcatalog. org)and is engaged in preparing radio commer-cials in support of the FEL mission for herlocal National Public Radio station.

Christopher Hadfield has a degree in lin-guistics and a Master's in Social Anthropol-ogy from Manchester. He has worked at theUniversity of West Bohemia in the CzechRepublic and the University of Bordeaux inFrance. He currently lives and works in theBasque Country, Spain.

FEL Grant Recipients report on theirwork

The Foundation has just announced its callfor grant applications for 2007. Details areavailable on the Foundation's web-site,

www.ogmios.org. Meanwhile, recipients ofour awards in previous years have been re-porting back to us on their research. TheFoundation aims to encourage research workthat will benefit endangered speech communi-ties around the world. Here is one example.Bidisha Som, who was awarded an FEL grantin 2005, has written a report on the documen-tation of the severely endangered Great An-damanese language (Andaman Islands, In-dia). Here are the conclusions of that report:

Bidisha Som, Great Andamanese lan-guage (Andaman Islands, India)

5.1. Summary:

Research in endangered languagesall over the world takes documentation astheir primary focus. When the number offluent speakers of a language stands at eightto ten at the very best, documenting the lan-guage not only as a structure but also as amirror image of the society becomes impera-tive.

The present work set out to write a trilingualdictionary of the Great Andamanese languagein the three chosen semantic fields of hunting,gathering, flora-fauna and possession. Withthat a detailed analysis of this specializedlexicon was also proposed. This analysissought to elaborate the ethnographic dataencoded in the language through the vocabu-lary. Since the Great Andamanese is a se-verely endangered language, it is only normalthat a large repertoire of this cultural informa-tion would also be lost. Once the language islost people will no longer have the tools withwhich to express ideas and cultural symbol-ism specific only to them. This work is anattempt to document the fast disappearingunderlying semantic, pragmatic and ontologi-cal constructs, i.e., cultural primitives of thelanguage.

The main chapters present the lexicon of thethree above-mentioned semantic fields. Theyare documented in computerized dictionaryformat of presenting headword followed byboth English and Hindi gloss and part ofspeech as well as semantic fields/MOCF/taxonomic strata etc. Where neces-sary, cultural information is also added.

These chapters also cover the lexico-semanticinterpretations of the words in Great Anda-manese representing the three different se-mantic fields of hunting gathering, flora-faunaand possession. The analysis brings out theethnographic information encoded in the lexi-con of these areas. The Great Andamanese areno longer a hunting gathering community;hence there is a considerable loss of informa-tion in the areas of their cultural heritage thatwas an integral part of their life style not verylong ago. Nothing is more crucial to such acommunity than the knowledge related tohunting, gathering, and the local flora fauna.And these are the worst affected areas of tra-ditional knowledge system in a changed lin-guistic and cultural scenario, and hence inneed of preservation. The semantics of pos-


session, specially that of inalienable posses-sion, which includes the body parts and kin-ship terms in any language, is crucial not onlyas a reflection of the categorization of thehuman body and human relations in terms ofconcept formation but also as a tool to under-stand the world as a whole.

.

5.2. Major findings:

5.2. 1. Ethnography of the Great Anda-manese:

Culture can be regarded as an understandingand cognizance of the entire extra linguisticuniverse of a people and the expression of itthrough language. Diversity shown by lan-guages in such expressions, thus, reflects therichness of human thought.

The traditional knowledge-system regardinghunting and gathering has lost much of itsontological primitives in the process of lan-guage erosion in case of Great Andamanese.By way of cultural information there was notmuch to elicit from the Great Andamanese atthis point of time. The significance of somespecific items is not remembered. The lexicondoes not throw any light on the hunting lifestyle except that it was a community withsimple material and technological cultures.The names of the hunting implements arecollected and presented. Lack of special in-formation structure in this lexicon, perhaps,follows from the fact that there was never acomplicated system with too much of ‘tradi-tional knowledge’involved. This said, how-ever, one cannot account for the absence of atriggering of ‘associated’knowledge in thisfield.

The flora and the fauna in Great Andamanesehave an extended system of classification andcategorization. The chapter on the Great An-damanese flora-fauna shows, through theethno biological classificatory systems, thatthe Great Andamanese had developed anelaborate and interesting system of classifyingtheir biological universe. The local flora isdivided along the lines of morphological fea-tures and classified into the trees and non-trees. Among the plants in the latter category,any further classification is not very clear,though there are chances of further divisionson the basis of size and shape of the plantsunder consideration, which is implied in theuse of certain classifiers. In the category offauna, the classificatory system is more easilydiscernible from the data at this point of time.The major classification of the fauna, it ap-pears from an in-depth analysis of the lexicon,depended on the use and functions of thefauna and not so much on their physical prop-erties. Hence, it is seen that birds and fishform a single super-ordinate category amongthe fauna, and this category can be roughlytranslated as the food-animals. Other animalsare outside this category. The animals outsidethis class of food-animals form separateclasses depending, mainly, on their physiol-ogy. Thus, snakes form one class whereasworms and other small creatures fall roughly

into another category. Reptiles also form aseparate class.

The traditional knowledge about the variousplants and animals that form the biologicalsurrounding for the Great Andamanese isvast. Knowledge about the usage of thesethings in the day-to-day life as well as forspecial purposes very often is fundamental totheir classification. Though the medicinalplants are hardly used any more, the lexiconstill preserves those pieces of information.There are approximately 10 to 12 varieties ofants and equal number of varieties of crabsthat are found in Great Andamanese, eachspecified by a distinct name. This categoriza-tion is determined by a detailed knowledge ofthe structure, habitat, practice and their func-tions. Intermixing of lexical entries fromvarious sub-groups of the Great Andamanesenotwithstanding, the fine distinctions in anycategory of animals resulting in a rich vo-cabulary of the local fauna suggests a rich andsubtle knowledge system underlying it.

Possession in Great Andamanese follows thebroad divisions of alienable and non-alienableentities. Genitive marker that is added to thepronominal clitic marks the Great Anda-manese nominal possession. The use of thegenitive marker depends on the nature of thepossessed noun. In case of the alienablenouns, there is only one genitive marker useduniformly for all. But in case of non-alienablepossessions, there is a fine distinction of thegenitive markers used, determined by thehead noun. This category of nouns presents anintriguing picture about their conceptualiza-tion. The nouns falling in this category are thebody parts and the kinship terms. There is aninventory of four genitive markers for thisclass of nouns. This same inventory is usedfor both the various body parts and the differ-ent primary kin terms. Whereas, four differentgenitive markers are used for four categoriesof body parts, the kinship terms make use ofonly three of these different genitives, de-pending on the nature of the relation underconsideration. The analysis of the choice ofgenitives proves that there is a parallel be-tween various body parts and kinship rela-tionships. For example, the major body partsand spouse are considered equivalent andwarrants the use of the same genitive markerfor both these classes of nouns. Similarly, thebody parts pertaining to the mouth and theparental relations are equivalent in theirchoice of genitives.

5.2.2. Loss of Conceptual Primitives:

Language change and language death areassociated with loss of primary conceptualstructures that is proven by the chapter onHunting and gathering. The data collectedcould hardly suggest any ethnographic infor-mation apart from listing the names of variousweapons etc.

5.3. Limitations of the Study:

No research is without its shortcomings.These need to be honestly shared by the re-searcher so that future research can save valu-

able time avoiding them as well as strengthen-ing them. It is perhaps, not justified to pro-nounce a verdict on the language on the basisof a study spanning a short period of time.Linguistic structures may be elicitable withina time frame but it is another matter to mapthe cultural and ethnographic conceptualstructures with linguistic features. Also thethesis chose to analyze three different seman-tic fields, each of which is sufficient challengeto any researcher and hence needs a very de-tailed study in order to be conclusive. As aresult, some questions remain. But keeping inmind the serious biological threat to the lan-guage [one of the oldest and most fluentspeakers of the language, King Jirake’s recentdemise is a constant reminder], along withother factors, one could not help but gather asmuch information as possible before it is toolate.

5.4. A Final Word:

Linguistic research has had a very old tradi-tion in India. However, endangered languageresearch is a relatively new field of studyhere. Work on the Great Andamanese, again,is rather different from working on any otherminority language in this country, and that notonly because of the sheer notoriety of thelinguistic situation as mentioned already, butalso because of the time constraint. This workis but a basic step on which future researcherscan definitely build up.

3. Endangered Languages in the News

Māori: The changing tide of Te Reo

Census figures show the number of Māorispeakers has fallen in the past five years,despite multimillion-dollar efforts to revital-ise the language. Nikki Macdonald looks atthe health of te reo ('the language' in Māori).

CHANGES IN ATTITUDES TOWARD THEMĀORI LANGUAGE

Between softball practice and careeringaround with toy trucks, preschoolers at thecountry's first kohanga reo in Wainuiomatamove easily between languages switchingfrom Māori to English to accommodate thewhite-faced visitor. Among the youngsters issix-month-old Ranai-Numia Rimoni son of TeAwa Puketapu, 25, who was one of New Zea-land's first kohanga kids. She and her peersare the new generation of Māori- languagespeakers, taking their own children to Māorilanguage nests and schools, and using Māoriat home. But despite enormous governmentinvestment in the language about $200 mil-lion a year the number of New Zealandersspeaking Māori has fallen from 160,527 in2001 to 157,110.


The number of Māori speaking their languagehas risen slightly, from 130,485 to 131,613.But, as a percentage, that figure has fallenfrom 25.2 per cent to 23.7 per cent. Despitethe statistics, Ms Puketapu is not concernedabout the future of the language, especiallywith initiatives such as Māori TV maintaininginterest. "I think it is pretty safe. I think wehave done the hard yards, we've got it out of apoint where it is in danger of going." Sheacknowledges, however, that kohangaare indecline, with about 10,000 children attendingabout 500 kohanga last year, down from14,000 a decade ago. In 2005, 16 per cent ofall Māori school pupils (more than 25,000pupils) studied either in Māori or in a combi-nation of Māori and English.

It is not enough just to go to a Māori languageschool, Ms Puketapu says. "It also falls backto the parents to get themselves educated. It'sup to the communities rather than the Gov-ernment to be setting up programmes wherethe generation that missed out can go tolearn." A Research NZ-Te Puni Kokiri surveylast year of attitudes to the Māori languagefound that both Māori and non-Māori weregenerally positive about the language andgovernment support for it. Two-thirds ofMāori said they often watched Māori TV. ButTe Puni Kokiri senior analyst Tom White saidsome older Māori speakers said they hadtrouble understanding their children andgrandchildren, or the Māori news, as the lan-guage had changed and developed so much. Afive-yearly, 74-question Māori competencysurvey run by Reid Research has just beencompleted.

Results are not yet available, but Reid fieldmanager Charlie Strivens studied its findings.Only 1 per cent to 2 per cent of Māori werefluent enough to do the survey in Māori, MsStrivens said. Those aged in their 20s and30s, and older people who grew up speakingMāori at home, had the best language skills.Many had a reasonable level of understand-ing, but lacked the confidence to speak it,feeling there was not enough situations tosafely practise without fear of ridicule, shesaid. Some respondents were also concernedabout a drop-off in proficiency after the ko-hanga reo level. Interviewer and VictoriaUniversity student Monique Franks who istaking Māori alongside her law degree saysthere is an enormous range of skills, fromthose who speak fluently to those who canmanage only a kia ora. "My overall impres-sion is that it is used more than we think."

Fluency is higher in Otaki where theWananga o Raukawa is based and in thehomes of those closely involved with theMāori community, and where the children goto kohanga or kura kaupapa, she said. MsFranks' university Māori class is about 50-50Māori and non-Māori. Many overseas stu-dents choose to study both language and cul-

ture simply out of interest, she said. Despitethe overall reduction in Māori speakers, TePuni Kokiri policy director Tipene Chrisphailed the increase in Māori speaking Māorias a victory, after 50 years of steep decline ofthe language. "That number had been drop-ping dramatically, till about 1996. Now weare seeing a stabilisation."

Analysts would need to look at the age break-down of the statistics, which is not yet avail-able, to get a better picture of why the overallnumber of Māori speakers had fallen, he said.In 2001, the highest concentration of Māorispeakers was in the over-60 age group butsome of those people had probably sincedied. "My suspicion is that the age profile ischanging, with more young people speakingMāori." Language revitalisation was a long-term process and major gains were expectedto take about 25 years, Mr Chrisp said. Al-ready learning English, Māori and Samoan(from his father), who knows what languageshis children will learn in an increasingly mul-ticultural, multilingual New Zealand.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3919171a7694,00.html

Uganda to teach in local languages

Uganda's National Curriculum DevelopmentCentre (NCDC) is set to train up to 30,000primary school teachers to teach in their locallanguages, according to The Monitor newspa-per in Kampala. Instructors will offer trainingfor teachers using nine local languages andEnglish. NCDC head Connie Kateeba told thepaper: "It has been observed that a child whois taught in her mother tongue grasps betterthan one taught in a foreign language."

The Guardian Weekly, UK 19.1.2007

CHILE ATTEMPTS TO SAVE DYINGLANGUAGES

http://www.tcgnews.com/santiagotimes/index.php?nav=story&story_id=12002&topic_id=15

(October 29, 2006) Chile's Ministry for Edu-cation is developing a program to save thecountry's indigenous languages from extinc-tion byteaching them to children in indige-nous communities. The program, led by Edu-cation Minister Yasna Provoste Campilla, willaim to provideteaching materials forMapudungun, Aymara, Quechua, and RapaNui.

"The idea is to have a sub sector in the area oflanguage and communication that will allowthe introduction of indigenous languages intothe classroom, in this way ensuring their pres-ervation," said Provoste.

In addition to the teaching program, Chile'sCenter of Public Surveyswill publish a study

in November about Mapudungun, the lan-guage of theMapuche in Chile, estimated tohave about 150,000 speakers. While-Mapudungun is more widely spoken thanmany native American languages, it is notori-ously difficult to teach, as it uses at least fourdifferent alphabets.

Chile has nine officially recognized livinglanguages. At present, there is no official dataabout how many people speak Chile's indige-nous languages, but a census in 2002 revealedthat 35 percent of Chile's indigenous peopleunderstand their original language, while 17percent are able to speak it.

While Chile already has two extinct lan-guages, Kakauhua and Kunza, there couldsoon be an addition to these. The Yámanalanguage from Patagonia is already extinct inArgentina, and since the death of her sister onSaturday, Cristina Calderón is its only re-maining native speaker.

While there is little hope that Yámana will besaved from extinction, efforts are being madeto save the southern language of Qawasqar.Linguist Oscar Aguilera has been studyingQawasquar since 1975. "About seven peopleuse it on a day-to-day basis," said Aguilera,"and less than a dozen speak it with any flu-ency." Aguilera has managed to create a con-cise Spanish-Qawasquar dictionary and sayshe is developing materials for teaching thelanguage to the youngest members of the

community with the hope of ensuring its sur-vival.

Language extinction is a problem causingincreasing concern worldwide, both from asocial and political point of view. A languagebecomes extinct every 15 days, taking with itits unique cultural and historical background.

"In general, you could say that the great ma-jority of the world's six million languages arebeing threatened with extinction," said ArturoHernández, socio-linguist at the UniversidadCatólica of Temuco.

SOURCES: EL MERCURIO, UNESCO

By Cate Setterfield (editor.at.santiagotimes.cl)

UK set to continue excluding Cornishfrom FCNM

Truru, Kernow - Cornwall, Thursday, 28 De-cember 2006 by Davyth Hicks

The UK government appears set to continueto exclude the Cornish from the protectiongiven to other nationalities in the UK andEurope under the Council of Europe’sFramework Convention for National Minori-ties.

According to their draft Compliance Reportthe UK says that it will continue to follow itsown criteria for FCNM implementationwhich follows that set out in the Race Rela-


tions Act (RRA). The Act defines what is anethnic group in the UK, a classification re-quired to be included under the FrameworkConvention. However, such a definition runscontrary to the spirit of the Convention whichwas established to bring basic protection forhistoric national minorities.

In a press release the Celtic League state that :"It implies that a Cornish individual mustbring and win a civil court case in order to beincluded under the Convention, as the Welshand the Scottish have done in the past. How-ever, in the Compliance Report itself, mentionis made of minority ethnic groups (e.g. Chi-nese), who the government indicates receiveofficial support as per the Convention(FCNM), but do not have RRA case law ref-erences either. It suggests that the BritishGovernment is unclear about its own criteria."

Exclusion from the FCNM also leaves theCornish open to further abuses, such as therecent cases of schoolchildren being punishedfor saying that they were Cornish and notEnglish, as well as potentially underminingEU sponsored language projects.

However, the British government havepointed out that it is a draft report and thatNGOs and individuals may recommendchanges, which "will be considered", up untilJanuary 20th.

Complaints from NGOs over the proposedCornish exclusion will also to be sent to theCouncil of Europe who will then decide whatmeasures to take. (Eurolang 2006)

Copies of the UK’s draft report can be ob-tained from :Neil.Harris.at.communities.gsi.gov.uk

Unity in Diversity? European Parlia-ment rejects Bernat Joan’s Reportproposals

Strasbourg, Alsace, Wednesday, 15 November2006 by Davyth Hicks

In what is a setback for all European endan-gered and lesser used languages, the Euro-pean Parliament voted with a large majorityagainst nearly all the substantive measures onBernat Joan’s Report today (15th

November).

The proposals for a EU language plan andlegislation for collective language rights, theEU Ombudsman to resolve language disputes,to modify the EU Treaty to allow for a legalbase for linguistic diversity, for thefundamental rights agency to take care oflanguage rights, and continuing support forEBLUL and the Mercator Centres, were allrejected outright. The only proposals tosurvive were the recommendations that the2003 Ebner Report be implemented and thatEU citizens be able to communicate with theEU in their own national language, regardlessof whether it has official status.

Catalan MEP Bernat Joan abstained in thefinal vote because the Parliament had, bythen, rendered the Report toothless. He said:"We cannot support a report where, after thevote in committee and in the plenary, almostall the relevant points have been removed.This includes the recognition of equalityamongst all European languages, regardless oftheir official status, the extension of the man-date of the Agency of Fundamental Rightsand of the European Ombudsman to deal withmatters of linguistic discrimination, or theguarantee of a fair funding allocation forthose agencies responsible for lesser usedlanguages."

Bernat Joan pointed out that "today we havebeen able to see that the true supporters ofEurope's linguistic diversity still remain aminority in this parliament, albeit a significantone". The MEP regretted that, "for the major-ity of members, the slogan "unity in diversity"is nothing more than a mere formality takenabsolutely out of context". He added, "for thisparliament, multilingualism only refers to theofficial languages of the member states, ne-glecting a much richer and complex reality.Europe is not just a mere conglomeration ofstates and linguistic diversity is not only re-lated to those languages with strong legalstatus."

In the previous night’s debate, Bernat Joanspoke up for the Report’s original proposals,and called on the EU to go beyond slogansand words and take clear steps with concretepolicies to support existing diversity. TheMEP, speaking in English because his Cata-lan mother tongue cannot yet be used, empha-sized that "one of the fundamental values ofthe EU is the defence of our linguistic diver-sity, and if this is true, we need to see anoverhaul of the linguistic policies at EU and

state level. Referring to the monolingualmindset of many states he said "The Jacobin-ist model is obsolete, it is far too out-dated for21st century Europe. We must launch realisticpolicies to promote genuine European diver-sity".

Referring to one of the primary aims of thereport to protect Europe’s endangered lan-guages he said, “Each language is good forhumanity and if lost it is lost to all human-ity…it is necessary to devote special care toall the endangered languages with the neces-sary budget to achieve this". He concluded bypointing out that the 2003 Ebner Report isstill to be implemented.

The outgoing Commissioner for Multilingual-ism, Jan Figel, welcomed the “inspiring Re-port”which had been written “in the spirit ofUnity in Diversity” and highlighted theCommission’s recent initiatives to set up net-works to promote multilingualism and lin-guistic diversity and that EU projects werenow open to all languages.

Maria Badia i Cutchet (PSOE) said that weneed to ensure that “all EU citizens can com-municate with the EU in their mothertongue”, referring to the 10% of EU citizenswho cannot at present because they speak a

regional, stateless or minority language(RML). A Liberal MEP added that “we needlegal protection for all of the EU’s languages,and, if we support Unity in Diversity, we needto support the Report”.

Bairbre de Brun (Sinn Fein- GUE), speakingin Irish then English, strongly supported all ofthe EFA- Green amendments, and referred to

the important work of EBLUL and its projectsover the years and their conference in Dublinnext week.

In contrast, Mr. Vidal Quadras (Spanish PP -EPP) reacted with scorn, calling the Report“an opportunistic attempt by the rapporteur to

come up with nationalist, separatist rhetoric,”and that Mr Joan was “using languages topromote the disintegration of member states”.

An Irish MEP said that “lesser used languagesare as important, if not more, than the biggerlanguages, its important that we carry on sup-porting lesser used languages to show unity indiversity.”

Concluding the debate, Jan Figel describedlanguage as “our cultural legacy”and that theCommission, as part of its action for lesserused languages, has been supporting EBLULand the Mercator Centres.

However, EU support for EBLUL and theMercator Centres ceases at the end of 2006,while spending overall on RMLs by the EUhas seen huge cutbacks with an overall retreatfrom the previous position of ring-fencedfunding for lesser used language projects.Moreover, with all EU project funding onlybig language projects are able to apply as thethresholds for application are often far toohigh for small, often impoverished, languagecommunities.

In addition, the clause in Bernat Joan’s Re-port calling for the continued support forEBLUL and the Mercators - NGOs dedicatedto promoting inclusive linguistic diversity -was rejected. The current situation indicatesthat EU support for its own European lesserused languages, both financially and politi-cally, it at its lowest.

It comes at a time when several Europeanlanguages are facing endangerment and inneed of help more than ever. Sadly, today’sevents in the European Parliament suggestthat language activists need not look to theEU anymore for help. Unity in Diversity is anempty slogan - the EU is failing to communi-cate to the 10% of its population who speak alesser used language despite calls to bring theEU “closer to its citizens”. The mood fromthe grass roots indicates that a new wave ofdirect action may be needed to achieve thekind of linguistic equality that continues to bereserved for member state languages. (Euro-lang 2006)

Leanne Hinton wins Lannan award forCultural Freedom

On 6 November the New York Times carrieda full-page ad announcing the 2006 winners


of Lannan Awards for Cultural Freedom. Onerecipient is Leanne Hinton of the Universityof California at Berkeley, arguably the world'smost effective and influential advocate forlanguage preservation and revitalization.Leanne has long worked with California In-dian tribes who are on the point of losing, orhave lost, their heritage languages. Her fa-mous Master-Apprentice program has beenadopted by communities in which a few eld-ers still speak the tribal language fluently; herregular Breath of Life workshops at Berkeleyare an important resource for communitieswhose languages are no longer spoken but aresufficiently well documented that they can(with hard work and some luck) be revived.Shortly before Ken Hale died, he and Leanneco-edited the influential sourcebook TheGreen Book of Language Revitalization inPractice. Everyone who works with NativeAmerican tribes, and with other communitiesaround the world whose heritage languagesare endangered or moribund, is greatly in-debted to Leanne for her work and her inspi-ration. And with the most optimistic estimatespredicting the death of 50% of the world's6,000 or so languages by the end of this cen-tury (the most pessimistic estimates range upto a 90% extinction tally by 2100), all lin-guists ought to respect Leanne's work and tocongratulate her on her Lannan Award.

Posted by Sally Thomason on Language Log

Researching American Indian rhetoric

John A. Berteaux Connections

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/local/16159673.htm

Prof. Ernest Stromberg stopped by my homelast week to share a pot of coffee and discusshis new book American Indian Rhetorics ofSurvivance. [sic]

An associate professor in the Department ofEnglish, Communication and Journalism,Ernie travels to California State University-Monterey Bay from a trim home in Seasidewhere he lives with his wife, Sherry. He grewup in Arcata.

In Arcata, he advises, "Diversity meant NativeAmerican people."

But in other parts of the United States, fromHumboldt State University, where he receivedhis bachelor's degree to Eugene, Ore., wherehe wrote his dissertation about AmericanIndian Literatures, to Harrisburg, Va., wherehe taught at James Madison University beforemoving to the Peninsula, Ernie found, "it easyto forget that American Indians continue toexist."

Growing up with American Indian kids inschool and sleeping over he noted early onthat the idea of Indians in the popular mediaand the life he saw his friends living werequite different. Seamlessly, he ties his child-hood experiences into a central idea in thebook.

"From first contact," Ernie warns, "for Ameri-can Indians the problem was mental as well asphysical... When they got here Europeans hadalready conceived the individual."

I took him to mean that nonwhite and whitewere not simply descriptive terms of skincolor; rather, from first contact they were usedfor ocial categorization, social control andsocial relationships.

America's indigenous population acknowl-edged and used to their advantage the fact thatthe way they spoke (and looked) stood in forintellect, moral sense and character. Theyacknowledged that there is a connection be-tween the language we use and stories we tell.

I recalled something attributed to French lin-guist Saussure, who asks us to think aboutwhat had to be overcome to say "Black isbeautiful." This is something that came out ofthe Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Upuntil the time that someone said "black isbeautiful," black was considered ugly, dirty,and stupid. And then someone said "black isbeautiful."

According to Saussure this wasn't just sayingsomething new; rather, it was conceiving theworld in a way it had not been imagined be-fore.

"So American Indians recognized in theirinitial encounter with Europeans that we don'tspeak language so much as language speaksus?" I chimed in. Ernie nodded in agreement.

I asked about the word "survivance" that ap-pears in the title. "It ties in," he says. "Thebook is about 'rhetorics of survivance.'"

Survival suggests images of someone justhanging on -- on the edge of existence. "Sur-vivance," he quotes the text, "goes beyondmere survival to acknowledge the dynamicand creative nature of indigenous rhetorics."

He writes, from the early debates about treatyrights and native lands to present day contro-versies about casinos and team mascotsAmerica's indigenous populations continue todraw on the art of persuasion.

Nevertheless, Ernie adds, "While rhetoricalstudies have been enriched by important re-search done in women studies and AfricanAmerican rhetoric the rhetorical practices ofAmerica's indigenous people remain signifi-cantly incomplete."

To begin filling that gap in our knowledge,Ernie has produced an edited >collection thatis worthy of note, unique, readable, and ac-cessible for >a non-academic audience.

John Berteaux, an assistant professor of phi-losophy at CSU-Monterey, writes a monthlycolumn. He can be reached atjohn_berteaux.at.csumb.edu.

© 2006 Monterey County Herald and wireservice sources. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.montereyherald.com/

President ponders alphabet change inKazakhstanKazakhstan is contemplating a switch to theLatin alphabet. With the President NursultanNazarbayev himself raising it, observers thinkit may well become reality.

Addressing the Assembly of Peoples of Ka-zakhstan in late October, Nazarbayev said itwas time to think of switching. "I think weshould return to the question of moving theKazakh alphabet to Latin," he told delegatesrepresenting Kazakhstan’s various ethnicgroups. Following Nazarbayev’s comments, acommission was set up to look into alphabetchange. It is to investigate the problems Tur-key, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbeki-stan encountered when they switched to Latinand come up with proposals by March of nextyear.

Professor Kobey Khusayn, director of theAcademy of Sciences’Institute of Linguistics,is a member of the commission. "Research isneeded –we need to know what is best for us–how to do this, when to do this," he toldEurasiaNet, adding that the institute has beengiven 7.5 million tenge ($60,000 USD) forthis.

The idea of changing from Cyrillic is not new;Kazakhstan agreed to make the switch back inthe early 1990s, along with the four otherformer Soviet Turkic republics, following aseries of meetings with Turkey. While Azer-baijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan werequick to adopt Latin script, Kazakhstan andKyrgyzstan delayed the switchover, and bothstill use Cyrillic.

If Kazakhstan changes, it would mark thefourth alphabet used in the country during thepast century. In the early 20th century, Arabicwas used. In 1929, officials introduced amodified Latin script, as Soviet officialssought to make a break with the country’sMuslim past. After just over a decade in use,however, Latin was supplanted in 1940 byCyrillic, as the need to have a common alpha-bet for all republics became Soviet policy.Following independence in 1991, alphabetchange remained on the backburner for politi-cal and economic reasons.

The re-emergence of the alphabet issue islinked to Kazakhstan’s modernization drive,some observers believe. Reasons for adoptingLatin are both practical and ideological, assertsupporters of the idea. On the practical side,computer compatibility is often cited, andNazarbayev invoked this. "Latin script domi-nates in communications," he told the Assem-bly of Peoples.

Layla Yermenbayeva, a Kazakh-languageinstructor at the Kazakhstan Institute of Man-agement, Economics and Strategic Research,is among those advocating the switch for thisreason. She says Cyrillic complicates the useof the Internet for educational purposes.

The Nachnem s Ponedelnika newspaper sug-gests that using Latin would facilitate foreignlanguage learning for Kazakhs. However,


there could be a reverse effect: Kazakhstan’sRussian speakers might perceive a switch asan obstacle to learning Kazakh. These are thepeople that the government most needs tolearn Kazakh.

Meanwhile, many linguists support a switchto Latin, Professor Khusayn told EurasiaNet.The problem is not linguistic, he says, but "acultural problem, a political problem, an eco-nomic problem, a problem of education, sopoliticians, economists, financiers and soci-ologists should be asked the question whenand how."

Ideologically, the switch could be interpretedas a move away from the Russian sphere ofinfluence; it is a move likely to appeal to eth-nic Kazakhs as the country seeks to repositionitself in the post-Soviet space. Some commen-tators suggest that it could lead to a rap-prochement of Turkic peoples. It is not clearwhether the timing of Nazarbayev’s an-nouncement is linked to the Turkic state sum-mit in Antalya November 17.

The switch would affect the young and old indifferent ways. The older generation would beat a disadvantage; they are the least likely toknow English, or other Western languages,and would likely find it harder to adapt to thenew alphabet. The younger generation wouldpresumably have less difficulty in learning thenew script. At the same time, they might findthemselves cut off, at least temporarily, fromtheir literary and cultural heritage, as the vastmajority of literature in Kazakh printed inCyrillic.

"I don’t think it will be hard for the youngergeneration, nor for the middle-aged. Theyhave all learned languages and know the Latinalphabet. It will probably be hard for pen-sioners and the inhabitants of rural areas,"says Yermenbayeva. Inhabitants of rural areashave limited access to computers and theInternet and therefore have less exposure tothe Latin alphabet.

The introduction of the Latin script followedsimilar patterns in Azerbaijan, Turkmenistanand Uzbekistan, with the script first intro-duced into schools and then newspapersprinted with parallel texts in Cyrillic andLatin. In all three countries, the pace of theintroduction proved to be slower than ex-pected.

The huge costs involved in reprinting every-thing from textbooks and official forms tostreet and shop signs also proved to be a fac-tor hampering the adoption of the new script.However, with Kazakhstan awash with petro-dollars, the cost may not be the most impor-tant factor. Nazarbayev cautioned againsthaste in deciding the alphabet issue. Indeed,care must be taken if the switch is to be suc-cessful.

The Latinization of the alphabet is one ofseveral reforms currently being contemplatedby Nazarbayev. In mid-November, he an-nounced plans to clean up Kazakhstan’s gam-bling industry. Starting January 1, 2007, allcasinos in the country will have to move to

Lake Kapshagai near Almaty, or to Lake Bu-rabay near Astana, the president said.

As with alphabet change, the establishment of‘"Las Vegas"-style pockets of vice on thesteppe can be seen as connected with mod-ernization attempts. Earlier in 2006, Nazar-bayev introduced what has become his petproject: transforming Kazakhstan into one ofthe world’s 50 most competitive economies.

Editor’s Note: Paul Bartlett is an Almaty-based freelance writer specialising in educa-tion issues. Eurasianet web-site

Native language lives on in woman: ViHilbert of the Upper Skagit tribe stub-bornly aims to keep Lushootseed alive.

Krista J. Kapralos, Herald Writer

EVERETT - By her own admission, Vi Hil-bert, 88, is stubborn.

She was an only child raised in the UpperSkagit tribe. Her mother loved to perform andher father was a medicine man. When theypassed the stories on to Hilbert, he spoke inLushootseed, the language of Western Wash-ington's Coast Salish tribes.

Hilbert was a child in a desperate era forAmerican Indian tribes. Tribal children wentto boarding schools where they weren't al-lowed to speak their native languages. Manychildren forgot Lushootseed, but not Hilbert.

She stubbornly tucked it away in her mindand in her heart.

Years later, the language emerged from an ageof darkness and was brought into the lightonce again. Hilbert was one of the few peoplewho remembered enough of it to speak itagain.

At an event sponsored by Everett CommunityCollege's Diversity and Equity Center Thurs-day, Hilbert shared her language with about70 students. The students leaned forward intheir seats in an effort to catch every word,and afterward they knelt on the floor in frontof Hilbert to thank her.

"She's living history," said Earl Martin, direc-tor of the college's counseling center and amember of the Cree tribe. "The knowledgeshe passes down orally is just as valuable asanything that's in our library."

Hilbert has dedicated her life to the rebirth ofLushootseed. She worked in the linguisticsdepartment at the University of Washingtonfor 15 years. In 1989, she received an honor-ary doctorate from Seattle University and wasnamed a Washington State Living Treasure.

Hilbert has worked closely with linguists todevelop a written form of Lushootseed andpublish dictionaries for the language.

"Given her age, I've wanted to get her herewhile she's still able to speak," said ChristinaCastorena, associate dean for diversity for

EvCC. "She's a local jewel, and it's an honorto have her here."

Hilbert clutched a dark blanket around herthin shoulders as she sat in a chair on thestage in Baker Hall on the EvCC campus. Shedemanded that the students speak up if theywanted to ask her a question.

"I'm bossy," she said, smiling slyly.

Hilbert said she's been criticized by sometribal members for sharing Upper Skagit cul-ture. She argues that every culture is impor-tant and should be shared with as many peo-ple as possible. Sharing Lushootseed andancient Coast Salish stories won't dilute thevalue of the culture.

"The language will live because it's impor-tant," she said. "The culture will live becauseit's important."

Saving Serrano

SAN MANUEL INDIAN RESERVATION -A quiet battle is being waged to save the an-cestral language of the Serrano Indians. TheSerrano language was once spoken by indige-nous people throughout the San BernardinoValley and High Desert. Today, there is onlyone man whose ability to speak that tongueapproaches fluency, said Kaylene Day, a stafflinguist for the Serrano Language Revitaliza-tion Project. The ultimate goal of the project -an effort of the San Manuel Band of MissionIndians' Education Department still in itsinfancy - is to give tribe members the abilityto use the Serrano language in daily conver-sation. "They want their children and futureleaders to be versed in the culture so thatidentity is strong," education director ErinKahunawaika`ala Wright said. The last personto be fluent in the Serrano language, DorothyRamon, died in 2002. With linguist Eric Elli-ott, Ramon compiled Serrano lore into thebook "Wayta' Yawa',"the title of which trans-lates to "Always Believe." Ramon's nephew,Ernest Siva, remembers the sounds of Serranofrom his childhood. "My mother, she and myolder aunt, everyone in the family spoke it,"Siva said. Day said Siva is the only personwho is almost fluent in Serrano. There aretimes, Siva said, when he'll use Serranophrases, though he acknowledged that hisaunt's ability to converse in that old languageexceeded his own. Siva said Day and othersvisit him every Thursday to work on the lan-guage project. He also teaches Serrano classesat the Morongo Indian Reservation near Ca-bazon. He is president of the Dorothy RamonLearning Center - a nonprofit created to pre-serve and share knowledge of Southern Cali-fornia's indigenous cultures.

Preserving the Serrano language, Siva said,"has to do with our identity and our culture.The traditions that we had. It's like living onour land. A lot of us move away, but as younotice, we return to our roots."

Historically, the Serrano language was spokenbut not written, Day said. Written Serrano


was not used until the 1990s, and part of thelanguage project has been to craft a newSerrano alphabet that is different than the oneused in Ramon and Elliott's book. Work tocreate a new alphabet began around Septem-ber 2005, Day said. That effort has produceda 47-letter alphabet that uses many commonletters as well as symbols not used in English.For example, the ' symbol is used as a letterthat symbolizes the sound of a "glottal

stop" - much like the sound between "uh" and"oh" in the English phrase "uh-oh," Day said.A curriculum is being developed to teach thetongue to other members of the tribe. At thispoint, the San Manuels are not telling thepublic how actual words would be written inthe new alphabet. Wright said tribal membersare concerned that to do so could lead to themisappropriation of their culture. Wright, anative Hawaiian, said the tiki kitsch" that isoften used as party decorations is an exampleof how the San Manuels would not want theirculture to be represented. Wright considersthe kind of island-themed ornamentations thatcan be purchased at party supply stores to bea bastardization of Polynesian ways. In Day'sview, the most successful effort to revive alanguage was the reintroduction of Hebrew in

modern Israel. The Torah and other Hebrewwritings provided a wealth of knowledge for20th-century speakers. The San Manuels donot have that much material to work with, butDay said there are 15 to 20 hours of recordedSerrano to guide the study of an almost-forgotten language. Siva can also draw onnotebooks that he compiled while a USCstudent in the 1960s. As a student, Siva stud-ied music and traveled to Washington, D.C.,to research Luiseno Indian music. While atthe National Archives, he got sidetracked andfound research on Serrano that he transcribedinto his own notes. "I realized I could read it,"he said. Day was drawn to indigenous lan-guages when she studied linguistic anthropol-ogy while a student at the University of Ari-zona and Northern Arizona University. "Idiscovered American languages when I was incollege. They were so different from anythingI'd ever seen," she said. "Language loss .mademe sad, how much language diversity we'relosing. It's sort of like losing a species."

What's in a name? The word "Serrano" isactually not part of the Serrano language - it'sderived from Spanish. The ancestors of to-day's San Manuel Band of Mission Indianslived in the San Bernardino Mountains beforeEuropeans came to California. Spanish set-tlers called tribe members Serranos. The wordis similar to "sierra," the Spanish word formountains. In their own language, theSerranos called themselves Yuhaviatam,which translates to "people of the pines."Source: San Manuel Band of Mission Indians

<http://www.sbsun.com/ci_4780412>

Bolivian Government Support of In-digenous Languages Meets Resistance

Monte Reel, Washington Post ForeignService,Tuesday, January 30, 2007; A10LA PAZ, Bolivia -- Andrea Mamani stood infront of her students the other day and startedthe afternoon lesson by pointing to her head.

The 22 students, aspiring public heath-careprofessionals in white lab coats, responded inragged unison: "P'iqi."

She pointed to her arm. "Ampara," they an-swered.

Mamani was teaching them Aymara, an in-digenous language spoken mainly in the ruralhighlands of Bolivia and Peru. The studentsin her class, most of them urbanites, had scantprevious knowledge of the language. But theyare pioneers in a training program that Presi-dent Evo Morales -- the country's first indige-nous president -- hopes will become standardfor all government employees.

The Bolivian government estimates that 37percent of the population speaks a nativelanguage that predates the arrival of Spanishcolonists in the 16th century. Officials hopethat language-training programs in publicschools and government offices will raise thatpercentage -- but not just for the sake ofscholarship. In the words of an EducationMinistry informational pamphlet distributedin La Paz this month, promoting those lan-guages is part of a broad effort "to decolonizethe mindset and the Bolivian state."

For Morales, the attempt to elevate languagessuch as Aymara and Quechua is emblematicof his government's indigenous-based socialagenda: It is enormously ambitious, plaguedby conflict and difficult to implement.

After announcing last year that all govern-ment employees would have to undergo in-digenous language training, Morales's ad-ministration sought to require it of publicschool children as well, no matter where theylived. The proposal riled many in the parts ofBolivia that have little connection to indige-nous communities, areas such as the easternlowlands, where words spoken in Quechuaand Aymara are often heard as threats to away of life.

"Evo wants to make Quechua and Aymara theofficial languages of Bolivia, instead of Span-ish," said Fernando Suarez, 43, a taxi driverin Santa Cruz, echoing a common fear in aregion that seeks greater independence fromMorales's government. "That might be fine forthe highlands where they actually speak thoselanguages, but not here."

Government officials say they are not tryingto replace Spanish. But they argue that pro-moting Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní and othernative languages should be a priority for acountry where more than half of the peopleidentified themselves as indigenous in themost recent census.

"These languages used to be studied only inrural contexts, but now they are being intro-duced to urban contexts as well, throughoutthe entire educational system, from primaryschools to the universities," said Juan José

Quiroz, an Education Ministry official whooversees indigenous language programs.

The government's promotion of that agendahas been, at times, abrasive. Félix Patzi, aformer minister of education and culture, lastyear labeled Bolivians who did not speak anindigenous language "an embarrassment." Hesent letters telling school administrators thatthe government would not recognize theirinstitutions unless they guaranteed indigenouslanguage instruction this academic year. Healso proposed replacing Roman Catholic in-struction in public schools with a controver-sial "history of religions" class that wouldplace more focus on traditional indigenousbeliefs.

After initially supporting Patzi, Moralesbacked down on the new religion course. Healso has appeared to relax his insistence onthe indigenous language requirement; offi-cials said last week that the training would notbe obligatory for students this year.

Also last week, Morales fired several mem-bers of his cabinet, including Patzi, associatedwith the controversy over the government'sagenda.

Meanwhile, the president's approval ratinghas slid from nearly 80 percent shortly afterhe was inaugurated a year ago to about 59percent, according to a poll in La Razon, a LaPaz newspaper. In the past month, street pro-tests have raged and demands for autonomy invarious districts have grown louder as a con-stituent assembly, elected to rewrite the con-stitution, remains deadlocked.

"The initial crack in his popularity" was "allabout the education proposals," said JimShultz, a political analyst in Cochabamba,referring to Morales. "They resonated withthis symbolic fear that non-indigenous peoplehave in this country, which questions whetherEvo really understands their needs andperspectives."

Though Morales's tone might be softening forthe moment, he has not abandoned indige-nous-friendly reforms. Universities report thatenrollment in indigenous language programsis up since he took power, and the EducationMinistry continues to open new centers wherethe languages are taught.

Last year, a student at San Pablo CatholicUniversity in Bolivia wrote his graduate the-sis in Aymara -- a first for the country. Hisprofessors conducted their oral questioning ofthe thesis in Aymara during a public cere-mony on the shores of Lake Titicaca.

Education officials say the reemergence ofBolivia's indigenous languages is part of aregional trend. Interest in indigenous commu-nities and traditions has grown in the past 20years throughout South America.

"In the 1980s, people here didn't want tospeak Quechua or Aymara," said AdriánMontalvo, who helps set education policy fornative language programs. "Those languageswere limited only to the community and fam-ily spheres, and it was considered shameful to


speak them elsewhere. But now people speakthem much more freely."

Donato Gómez Bacarreza, an expert in An-dean languages and head of the languageprogram at La Paz's San Andrés University,said his instructors have recently begun giv-ing classes, at the government's request, tomembers of the national Congress. He alsosaid people in the business community, in-cluding local bankers and Japanese auto ex-ecutives, have signed up for Aymara andQuechua classes to better connect to Bolivia'snative people. He and other linguists havebeen struggling for decades to resuscitate thelanguages, and he said he now sees a clearpayoff.

"What we are fighting for is our cultural iden-tity," he said.

4. Appeals, News and Views from Endan-

gered Communities

!Khwa ttu cultural centre launched inWestern Cape, South Africa

Those of you who attended the FEL confer-ence in Stellenbosch, Soputh Africa, in 2005,will have fond memories of our excursion tothe yet-to-be-opened cultural centre for theSan people, !Khwa ttu, in the Western Cape.The centre was officially opened in March2006, and issued its first newsletter in Octo-ber. Below is the Foreword of the first issue;you can follow the link to the centre's web-site to find out more.

Foreword

Is there a better way of embarking on anotherexciting activity such as the !Khwa ttu News-letter than by writing about the official open-ing of the centre on 8 March 2006? Wethought to report on this would be an appro-priate entry point for the first edition of thenewsletter, which we plan to publish at aquarterly interval.

This newsletter is meant to inform the Sancommunities of southern Africa, the local andinternational public, donors and governmentdepartments about the current affairs of the!Khwa ttu San Culture and Education Centre.

The Newsletter will refer to what !Khwa ttustands for: promoting the San heritage, train-ing and educating the San, interacting withtourists and exchanging experiences withother indigenous people. All articles in theNewsletter are completely authentic as theyare based on either interviews with the peopledirectly involved in the activities or on writ-ten contributions and testimonies that arecentral to the described events.

Any feedback, constructive criticism andsuggestions are most welcome.

We hope that you will enjoy reading theNewsletter and feel encouraged to visit usvery soon.

The !Khwa ttu team

www.khwattu.org

First Jaqaru language course com-pleted in Peru

December 18, 2006 is now an historical datefor Tupe. On that day the graduation for thefirst Jaqaru Language Course was held. Thiscourse is the beginning of sustainable workthat opens the door of hope for the survival ofJaqaru.

Eleven people from Tupe, mostly teachers,and twelve others, also mostly teachers, re-ceived their certificates. Yolanda NievesPayano Iturrizaga, linguist and native speakerof Jaqaru, taught the class, as a teacher

in the ISP Pedagógica de Catahuasi (NormalSchool). The Director of the Normal SchoolMag. Manuel Gil Hernández was present forthe ceremony; Prof. Abelardo Ventocillacalled by telephone in representation of thesupport of the Gobierno Regional de LimaProvincias. And Dr. MJ Hardman and Dr.Dimas Bautista Iturrizaga called at the end ofthe ceremony and congratulated all of theparticipants by telephone through a loud-speaker connected to the telephone and in-stalled in a tree, so that all could hear.

It's hard to overestimate the importance of thisevent. Jaqaru is in very serious danger ofextinction. For the first time in a very longtime there is some hope of its continued exis-tence. For decades Dr. Hardman and Dr.

Bautista have sought the necessary means forthe recognition of the language; just now, onDecember 18, their hopes became reality.With this act Dr. Hardman passes the torch toa linguist from Tupe as a realization of one ofher dreams; in this way the work already donecan serve the future together with works yet tobe done by the young people now preparingthemselves.

A little history: Beginning in the forties Dr.Bautista began searching for help to read andwrite his language, but without success. Inthe fifties he met Dr. Hardman and achievedhis goal: once the phonological analysis wascomplete with the phonemes clearly identi-fied, Dr. Bautista himself formulated the al-phabetic representation of his language, andfrom that date it has been written and read.The basic description of the grammar wascompleted and in the sixties published inHolland. Fifteen years later it was finallypublished in Peru by IEP (Instituto de Estu-dios Peruanos). In the sixties we began theodyssey seeking bilingual education for Tupe.There were promises and pronouncements,but no official backing was ever forthcoming.Dr. Hardman taught informal courses formany years for the people in Tupe. And oneTupe professor, Lisandro Sanabria Casas, didsuccessfully obtain backing one year for Dr.Hardman to teach the students of the 3rd and4th grades to read and write Jaqaru. Mean-while, We sponsored a scholarship for Prof.

Nieves Payano Iturrizaga to study linguisticsin Bolivia to become a linguist with speciali-zation in Jaqaru. At that time linguistics waswell developed because of the INEL (Na-tional Institute of Linguistic Studies), foundedby Dr. Hardman and Dr. Elena Fortún. Onfinishing her studies, for more than a decadeProf. Nieves sought a position in Peru whereshe could work for the benefit of Jaqaru, butwithout success, even though we triedthrough every possible governmental officeand level.

Now, because Prof. Elena Huaytalla Rosales,teacher at the Instituto Pedagógica de Cata-huasi, took an interest in the formation of

teachers for Tupe, and understood the neces-sary role of Jaqaru for that purpose, thingshave changed. She took the initiative to takethe problem to the Gobierno Regional, andthus, with the sponsorship of the then Direc-tor Regional of Education Wilfredo CornejoYbargüen, brought about the course I

taught in July of 2006. The current coursehas come about with the continuing supportof the Regional Government under the leader-ship of the current Regional Director de Edu-cation, Yulimo Fulgencio Milla Salas. Theposition for Prof. Nieves became a reality inOctober of 2006.

It did actually happen! We are old and attimes it has seemed impossible that we wouldlive to see it, and meanwhile, with the terror-ism that devastated Tupe and the influences ofthe recently completed road, we

saw each year fewer of the young with flu-ency in their native Jaqaru.

And often they knew little or nothing of thelanguage and at times refused to use even thelittle they knew.

And now is a time of celebration. The teach-ers have again taken hold of their language.There was a message from Prof. Nieves justbefore the graduation saying that the teacherswanted to use Marka, the name they use forwhere they live when they talk in Jaqaru,instead of Tupe a name obviouslySpanishized from Txupi, and considered to bethe Spanish translation of Marka.

It is hard to exaggerate the happiness we feel.The class is already a step toward sustainabil-ity. We couldn't be there in person, but theteachers managed to connect a loud speaker tothe telephone and they hung it on a

tree so that we could congratulate everyone atthe end of the ceremony. And it was appro-priate that we be there thus, as support, be-cause the work now passes from us to theyoung people, who now have what is neededto continue with the work, building on ourwork of the last half century, so that Jaqarumay live. ¡Jaqars jakp"a!

Dr. MJ Hardman

http://grove.ufl.edu/~hardman/

5. Allied Societies and Activities


Hans Rausing Endangered LanguagesProject launches OREL OnlineResources for Endangered Languages. ORELis a new and unique resource - a library ofover 200 annotated and categorised links towebsites for people interested in endangeredlanguage documentation and revitalisation.To access OREL go tohttp://www.hrelp.org/languages/resources/

There is a version of OREL also available inArabic athttp://www.hrelp.org/languages/resources/orel-ar/index.html

Peter Austin

Marit Rausing Chair in Field Linguistics

Director, Endangered Languages AcademicProgramme

School of Oriental and African Studies, Uni-versity of :London

National Minorities in Lithuania;A study visit to Vilnius and Klaipėdafor Mercator Education7-14 November 2006

Tjeerd de Graaf and Cor van der Meer

IntroductionThe Mercator-Education project hosted at theFrisian Academy has been established with theprincipal goal of acquiring, storing and dis-seminating information on minority and re-gional language education in the Europeanregion2. Recently a computerised databasecontaining bibliographic data, informationabout people and organisations involved in thissubject has been established. The series ofRegional Dossiers published by Mercator-Education provides descriptive informationabout minority languages in a specific regionof the European Union, such as characteristicsof the educational system and recent educa-tional policies. At present, an inventory of thelanguages in the new states of the EuropeanUnion is being made showing explicitly theposition of ethnic minorities. In order to inves-tigate the local situation in one of these newstates in more detail and to inform representa-tives of the communities about the work ofMercator Education and the policies of theEuropean Union in this field, a delegation fromthe Frisian Academy visited Lithuania in theweek 7-14 November 2006.

National Minorities in LithuaniaOur stay in Vilnius started on the first day witha general orientation at the Department of Na-tional Minorities and Lithuanians livingabroad, which is supported by and giving ad-vice to the government of the Republic ofLithuania. The director provided us with mate-rial on the projects initiated for the variousminorities in the country. The most important

2 The work of Mercator has been described on theweb site www.mercator-education.org.

national minorities are presented in the tablebelow3:

Nationality Number percentage ofthe total popu-lation

Lithuanians 2907.200 83,4 %Polish 234.900 6,7 %Russian 219.700 6,3 %Byelorussian 42.800 1,2 %Ukrainian 22.400 0,65%Jewish 4.900 0,12%German 3.200 0,09%Tatar 3.200 0,09%Latvian 2.900 0,08%Roma 2.500 0,07%Armenian 1.400 0,04%Other nation-alities

6.100 0,18%

Not specified 32.900 0,94%Total 3483.900 100 %

This shows that in a total population of thecountry about 16,6 % of the people do nothave a Lithuanian background. Nationalitiessuch as the Polish and Byelorussian areautochthonous and have been living within theborders of present-day Lithuania since timesimmemorial. This holds for instance for theKaraims who came to Lithuania 600 years ago.There they found a new motherland and wereable to preserve their national identity, faithand customs. In later times representatives ofmany other nationalities came and in this wayLithuania always was a multinational state. Inthe publication of the Department on NationalMinorities in Lithuania 17 of these nationalgroups are mentioned, which are organised intomore than 200 public organisations. The De-partment supports per year more than 300 pro-jects, such as 40 weekend schools for childrenbelonging to a certain minority group.

In addition the Department organises activitiesfor Lithuanians living abroad, where in 46countries there are 150 Lithuanian schools fortheir children (about one million Lithuaniansare living abroad). Lecturers of Lithuanian aresent to these schools and information on Balticculture and history is provided to schools, uni-versities and other institutions.

In article 37 of the Lithuanian constitution it iswritten that citizens who belong to ethnic com-munities shall have the right to foster theirlanguage, culture and customs. This right isalso protected by the Law on Ethnic Minori-ties, the Law on the State Language, the Lawon Citizenship, the Law on Education, the Lawon Equal Opportunities and other ones.Lithuania is the party in most internationalagreements related to the protection of humanrights and rights of national minorities. In 2000the government ratified the Framework Con-

3 Data in this section are quoted from the brochureNational Minorities in Lithuania, which is proba-bly a later publication than the booklet with a simi-lar title (Vilnius 2000), where the minorities (inparticular the Russian one) are larger. More detailscan be found on the web site www.tmid.lt.

vention for the Protection of National Minori-ties of the Council of Europe. However, forsome reason the Charter for Minority and Re-gional Languages has not yet been ratified.

The Institute of the Lithuanian Languageand Vilnius UniversityOn the following days of our visit we metcolleagues and students at the Institute of theLithuanian Language and the University. Inthe morning we first presented our work at theFrisian Academy and Mercator Education inlectures titled The Mercator network and thelanguage situation in Friesland (Cor van derMeer) and Endangered Languages and En-dangered Archives (Tjeerd de Graaf).

The Institute of the Lithuanian Language is acentre for research into the Lithuanian lan-guage. It is a research institution, the mainactivities of which are related to lexicology,lexicography, and research into the grammati-cal structure of the Lithuanian language, re-search into the history and dialects of theLithuanian language, and sociolinguistic re-search.The main work of the Institute of the Lithua-nian Language consists of:1. The preparation of the Dictionary of theLithuanian Language (in 20 volumes) and itscomputerised version, the accumulation of acomputerised database of the Lithuanian lexi-con.2. The preparation of the Dictionary of theStandard Lithuanian Language.3. The compilation of an academic grammarof the Lithuanian language, research into theevolution of Lithuanian syntax.4. The gathering of data on and research intoLithuanian dialects, the preparation of an atlasof European languages and more similar pro-jects.

During our visit we saw the very modernfacilities of the archives for language material,in particular sound recordings and we learnedabout the digital techniques which are usedfor the preparation of the 11-million wordcontents of the Lithuanian language on theinternet. In the archives of the Institute ofLithuanian Literature and Folklore we wereinformed about the local safeguarding of en-dangered sound material.

In the University of Vilnius (which is one ofthe oldest in the Baltic countries) we met withthe staff of the Department of Polish philol-ogy and had the opportunity to tell a group ofstudents about our work. We also had a nicediscussion with these students, who informedus about their language background, theirmotivation to study and their plans for thefuture.

Schools with curricula in the languages ofnational minorities (Polish and German)A very important way to preserve the nationalconsciousness is education in the mothertongue. In 1999-2000 there were 223 secon-


dary schools with non-Lithuanian teaching4;among them were 69 schools with Russianlanguage education, 73 with Polish, and 1with Belorussian. There were also mixedschools: 29 of Lithuanian-Russian, 11 –Lithuanian-Polish, 28 Russian-Polish, 1 Rus-sian-Byelorussian and 10 – Lithuanian-Russian-Polish. Several national minorities,such as Poles, Byelorussians, Ukrainians,Germans, Jews, Armenians, Karaims, Tatarsand Greeks have their own Sunday schoolsand special summer courses, like the one forthe Karaim language.

During a visit to the Jono Pauliaus 11-ojogimnazija, a Polish school in Vilnius, we metthe director Adam Blaskiewicz and attended afew lessons. This school is situated in a build-ing in the outskirts of the town, where beforeRussian was used as language of education.Most of the lessons are given in Polish, butthe students have to pass their final examina-tion in Lithuania according to the require-ments of the Lithuanian Ministry of Educa-tion. In addition to the mother language (Pol-ish) and the national language (Lithuanian)foreign languages can be chosen (at presentmostly English)

In Klaipėda we met with the director and staffmembers of the Hermann Sudermann secon-dary school, the only German school in theBaltic countries5. This school has been initi-ated in 1992 mainly for children who are ofGerman descent, such as from families whostayed after the war when the former GermanMemel Land became (again) Lithuanian andpart of the Soviet Union. The number of pu-pils increased from 90 to 550, because alsonon-German parents send their children tothis school. In the school we attended a fewlesions, where in the higher classes part of thecurriculum is provided in German. There arelinks with the Simon Dach Haus, a commu-nity centre for the German minority, whichorganises all kinds of cultural activities.

Both schools expressed their interest in afurther exchange of information on bilingualand trilingual schools in the Netherlands andshould like to participate in the MercatorNetwork of Schools.

In the Faculty of Slavonic Philology of VilniusPedagogical University we met with the dean,Gintautas Kundrotas and professors of Rus-sian, Polish and Byelorussian, who told us thatin recent years also the interest in teachingByelorussian in secondary school education isincreasing.

Projects for stateless cultures and lan-guages (Karaim and Yiddish)During our visit to Trakai, a small town westof Vilnius, we learned about the Karaim mi-nority which settled in Lithuania at the end of

4 This information can be found in the bookletNational Minorities in Lituania (Vilnius 2000)5 The school is presented on the web sitewww.zudermanas.ku.lt/de (German version)

the 14th century on the invitation of the grandduke Vytautas. Trakai became the administra-tive and spiritual centre of this community,which was able to keep its traditions untilpresent time. Their language belongs to theTurkic language family and it is still spokenby very few community members. Recently aspecial teaching method with multimediaequipment has been developed by Eva Csato,a Hungarian linguist, who learned the Karaimlanguage and provides special summercourses for the Karaim people in Trakai6. Wemet with representatives in the new commu-nity centre, enjoyed the products of theKaraim kitchen and visited the religious tem-ple (kenesa) and a special ethnological mu-seum. With one of the community memberswe considered possibilities to continue theteaching and other cultural activities forKaraim with the support of Mercator or simi-lar international organisations. This should bedone in the framework of projects for thesafeguarding and revitalisation of endangeredlanguages.

In the past the Jews had very important com-munities in Lithuania, where before the Sec-ond World War Vilnius was called the Jerusa-lem of Eastern Europe. In 1924-25 Jews hadabout 300 secondary schools and 20 gymna-siums, one teachers’seminar in Kaunas, andtwo rabbinical academies. In that time 93% ofthe Jewish children attended schools withsubjects taught in Yiddish, which was themost important common language spoken bythe Jews in Eastern Europe. During the tragicevents of the Second World War more than200.000 people of Jewish origin were massa-cred and whole communities ceased to exist.Also in the Soviet time, Jews did not havetheir own schools, press or publishing facili-ties. However, in recent years a certain revivaltakes place and schools have been createdwhere Jewish subjects are taught, such asHebrew.

During a visit to the Vilnius Yiddish Institutewe learned about these matters. In 2001 thisinstitute was founded at Vilnius Universitywith the mission to organise academic andcultural programs for the preservation, en-richment and continuity of Yiddish and EastEuropean Jewish culture. It provides coursesin the Yiddish language and Jewish culture,together with special summer courses in thesesubjects7.

Regional activities in North-West Lithuania(Klaipėda and Samogitia)The Klaipėda area has a special history whichis related to the German empire, to which inthe past (from 1252 until 1920) it belonged asthe so-called Memel Land. During and afterthe Second World War most of the German

6 This multimedia CD project for the endangeredTurkic language Karaim in Lithuania can be foundatwww3.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~djn/karaim/karaimCD.htm.7 For more information seewww.judaicvilnius.com.

and also many Lithuanian inhabitants left thisarea and new people came to the town ofKlaipėda and surroundings, often from vari-ous other parts of the former Soviet Union.This explains why many people in this areaare speaking Russian and belong to severalethnic groups.We visited the beautiful, about 100 km. longpeninsula Neringa (Kurische Nehrung), wherethe nature reminded us to the Frisian Islands.A German living in the main village of Nida,has set up a tourist bureau (Balt Tours), whichis organising attractive vacation trips for peo-ple from Western Europe8. He showed usaround and informed us about the local situa-tion and the symbols of German culture (suchas the house of Thomas Mann). Due to thesimilarity with the nature and other aspects ofFryslân, we discussed possibilities for anexchange program with tourist organisationsthere.

Samogitia is the region in North-West Lithua-nia, which can be considered as one of themost ethnically pure regions in the country,

try, with an ethnic Lithuanian population ofmore than 95% in some districts. It is charac-terized by an own cultural identity because ofits own history and a rather different dialect.Many local people consider this as theSamogitian language which is different fromstandard Lithuanian. They also have an ownflag and other symbols of their special iden-tity.We met with representatives of theSamogitian community in the central town ofthe area, Telšiai, where they showed us thelocal ethnographic museum. In the universitytown of Šiauliai we met the vice rector, whois also the author of a book on the Samogitianlanguage and developed a special writingsystem for the language. He and his col-leagues should like to learn about the bilin-gual situation in Fryslân in order to use thisfor a further emancipation of Samogitian,which at the moment it not taught at school.

Some topics for future joint activitiesHere we should like to give some suggestionsfor a future follow-up of our visit and possiblenew activities with colleagues in Lithuania:

- New regional dossiers for Mercator Educa-tion can be produced by representatives of thebilingual schools in Lithuania, such as thePolish school in Vilnius and the Germanschool in Klaipėda. The possibility of a re-gional dossier on Yiddish in Lithuania willalso be studied;

- These schools can become partners in theNetwork of Schools and exchange informa-tion with more than 60 similar schools inother countries of the European Union;

8 The further details can be found atwww.balttours.lt.


- On the level of a research institute (likeVilnius Pedagogical University) problems ofbi- and trilingual education could be studiedtogether and information can be exchangedwith similar institutions in Fryslân (like theAFǙK);

- In Samogitia, more information can be pro-vided about the bilingual situation in Fryslânand the work of the Frisian Academy. Like inthe case of Kashubian in Poland this will helpto obtain the recognition an emancipation ofthe local language and culture in this part ofLithuania;

- Together we should like to support researchand teaching activities for the documentationand revitalisation of endangered languages,such as Karaim;

- In Lithuania there will be interest to partici-pate in a new Centre for the study of multilin-gualism as has been proposed for Fryslân andthe Frisian Academy. Together with new part-ners in Lithuania the Frisian Academy and theMercator Project will contribute to a networkof institutes which can apply for newEuropean grants;

- Specialists from the Frisian Academy andthe Mercator Project will be invited to takepart in special seminars and conferences inLithuania, in particular related to bilingualeducation;

- In academic fields there will be co-operationin the field of lexicography (the preparation ofdictionaries) and dialectology (such as thestudy of Low German loanwords in Lithua-nian dialects);

- The sound archives of language materialwill get further information about the existingproject on Endangered Archives which Tjeerdde Graaf has initiated with the archives inSt.Petersburg and Vienna (financially sup-ported by the British Library);

- Lithuanian scholars will be invited to con-ferences in Fryslân, such as in 2008 the oneon Endangered Languages at the FrisianAcademy;

- The Vilnius Yiddish Institute will send in-formation about new courses and literature onYiddish, which may be useful for the Fuchscollection of Yiddish books at Tresoar, theprovincial library of Fryslân;

- The Frisian Academy will be informed aboutand receive literature on languages, historyand culture in the Baltic area;

- Tourist organisations in Fryslân might beinterested in possibilities in Lithuania (tour-ism to the Kurische Nehrung) and vice versa.

Conclusion and acknowledgementsOur short stay in Lithuania has been veryinteresting and useful and we really hope thatit will trigger new activities in the futurewhere both parts of the European Union in

West and East can further exchange ideas andprofit from each others’experience and fromthis co-operation. Finally we should like tothank all colleagues in Lithuania for theirassistance and hospitality. In particular wehighly appreciate the help by Markus Ro-duner during the preparation of all our visitsand the successful completion of our plans.

Paterswolde, November 2006

6. Book Reviews

Daniel Abondolo (ed.), The Uralic Lan-guages.Routledge Language Family series, paperbackreissue 2006 (originally issued in hardback1998).ISBN 10 0 415 41264 1

The Language Family series of volumes fromRoutledge is making a welcome return to themarket in paperback form. Along with theUralic volume, we can also see the reappear-ance of the Dravidian, Turkic, Indo-European,Bantu and Semitic language series. Each vol-ume is edited by an acknowledged expert inthe field, and consists of chapters on the indi-vidual languages or groups of languageswithin the series. They are therefore invalu-able to the comparative linguist and languagetypologist, but this particular volume is ofadditional interest to the endangered languagespecialist, because most of the languages itcovers are to a greater or lesser extent endan-gered. This book contains extensive materialon the history, phonology, morphology,grammar, syntax and lexicon of a range oflanguages whose long-term future is far fromassured in all but three cases (Finnish, Hun-garian and Estonian), and includes Saami,Mordva, Mari, Udmurt, Komi, Khanty,Mansi, Samoyedic, Nganasan, Nenets andSelkup. An invaluable guide to a widespreadfamily of languages, with information notavailable elsewhere in English, collected un-der one cover. The volume is comprehen-sively supplied with maps and tables.

Chris Moseley

E.M.Rickerson & Barry Hilton (ed.),The 5 Minute Linguist: Bite-sized es-says on language and languages.London & Oakville, CT: Equinox Publishing,2006.ISBN 10 1 84553 199 X

The U.S.Senate and House of Representativesdesignated 2005 as ‘The Year of Languages’in the United States, and the American Coun-cil on the Teaching of Foreign Languages(ACTFL) did its best to ensure that this cele-bration did not go unnoticed. Among themany prongs of its activities was a radio se-ries broadcast on American public, commer-cial and college stations called Talkin’about

Talk. The project was co-ordinated by the twoeditors of this volume, centred at the Collegeof Charleston in South Carolina. It consistedof a whole year’s worth of weekly five-minutebroadcasts, 52 in all, authored by variousexperts on different aspects of language, andset out to explain the answers, in simple lay-man’s terms, to some commonly asked ques-tions about language: “How many languagesare there in the world?”, “Why do languageschange?”, “Do all languages have the samegrammar?”, “What does it mean to be bilin-gual?”, and, if interest to readers of this or-gan, “Can a threatened language be saved?”–among many others. The title and starting-point of each five-minute talk is a question.Like so many great ideas, it’s a simple andeffective one, and it cannot have failed toprovoke a lot of revision of assumptionsabout language among its listeners.

Equinox Publishing, based in London, is tobe congratulated on putting these talks intoprinted form, slightly revised, and augmentingit with a further eight papers, bringing thetotal to 60. To a professional linguist, perhapsthe questions posed in some of the titles mayseem a little naïve, but on both sides of theAtlantic the monolith of English tends toimpose a curtain of ignorance about otherlanguages and language in general, so thislittle initiative is to be heartily welcomed.

Chris Moseley

7. Letters to the Editor

From Juris Cibuls, Latvia, by e-mail:In May there will be an international confer-ence on ethnic aspects…[see section 9 below-ed.] Then this year we will celebrate the 90thanniversary since Latgale decided to becomepart of Latvia….

I don't remember if I have told you about myexhibition in Thessaloniki. The official au-thorities of the Council of Thessalonikiprohibited displaying of a Macedonian primerfrom Skopje. I had to take it back to Riga! Iwas glad they did not confiscate it. I still re-member the times when I was not allowed toexhibit the Polish primer (during the times of‘Solidarity’), when the Soviet customs confis-cated the Latvian primers from America, etc.

In October I went to Lithuania to visit myfriends there. We went also to a small townTrakai near Vilnius where Karaims still live(some 200 persons). I have written an articleabout them and it will be published soon.

Now I have my exhibition in Latgale. It isdedicated to the 85th anniversary since a Lat-galian primer by F. Trasuns was published.The exhibition takes place in his museum. Iam happy and proud of having the original ofhis primer, so I was able to make a xerox copyand present it to the museum.

Best regards


Juris

8. Overheard on the Web

Mapuche is ours, not yours(Geoff Pullum in Language Log, 24 Novem-ber 2006)

Back in 2004, prompted by Bill Poser's reportof a lawsuit in which a relative of the personwho coined the term googol was suingGoogle over a property claim on the wordGoogle, I satirically claimed personal owner-ship of the nouns crump, ether, parsley, heli-copter, oligarchy, and rhodium, the preposi-tion of, and all derivatives of the verb snug-gle. I took it to be self-evidently hilarious thatanyone could claim ownership of some ordi-nary non-trademarked dictionary word, espe-cially on grounds of a family connection (andnever mind the fact that Google and googolare not the same word). Now the Mapuchesseek to claim ownership of their entire lan-guage, on the basis of a tribal connection, andthey regard Microsoft's localization of itssoftware by translating messages intoMapuche as theft of the Mapuche people'sstuff. It really is very hard for a satirist to keepout ahead of real life, isn't it?

A couple of correspondents have suggested tome and Mark that the press reports are crazierthan reality; they claim Spanish-languageaccounts of what is going on reveal that theMapuche people are objecting to pre-emptionof decisions about which alphabetic writingsystem to adopt for their language. Quite afew have been on offer, and the Microsoftdecision to go for one of them, known asAzmfuche, was taken without general agree-ment by the Mapuche but will now be defini-tive.But my general impression is that eventhe Spanish sources reveal plenty of funda-mentally misguided political ranting on thepart of the Mapuches. A language is notsomething that could be or should be con-trolled by a people or its political leadership,and making software available in a certainwriting system or language is not a threat to,or a theft of, cultural patrimony. Not even if itdoes encourage a tendency toward standardi-zation in some particular direction. So far Istill see this story as having a tinge of theridiculous about it. For some serious andinformed discussion of the issue that takes amore sympathetic view, see the posting byJane Simpson "Sovereignty over Languagesand Land", Paradisec web-site for transientlanguaes and cultures, 25 November 2006. aswell as discussion on the Spanish-languagesites El Morro Cotudo and Zona Impacto -Mapuches en el cyberespacio.

Sovereignty over languages and land(Jane Simpson et al. in Univ. Sydney Tran-

sient Languages and Cultures, 25 November2006)

Assertion of intellectual property rights overlanguages is happening. Here's an FAQ in apublic archive for Australian Aboriginal ma-terial (ASEDA, AIATSIS).

http://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/ASEDA/faq.html#manage

Q: Why do speakers restrict access to materialin their languages?

A: Many speakers of endangered languagesconsider that their language is their intellec-tual property, passed down to them from theirancestors. If it is made freely available toothers, then their rights in that language canbe diminished. Usually they do not wantstrangers to use words and sentences of theirlanguages in an inappropriate way, and wantto be consulted prior to public use.

At Language Log, Mark Liberman has acouple of comments on Tom's recent postabout this with respect to the Mapuche peo-ple's complaint against Microsoft, and fol-lowing Geoffrey Pullum's post on the sametopic.

If this idea were really to be accepted into thesystem governing the usual laws of property, Isuspect that the consequences would surpriseand displease many of those who start outsupporting it . For some discussion, see "TheAlgonquian morpheme auction"(3/3/2004).

To the bad consequences... The "usual laws ofproperty" is the soft spot. What are they?We're dealing here with people who by andlarge have customary ways of behaving,sometimes called customary law, rather thanwritten statutes. Bringing customary law intoa legal system is tricky (cf. the AustralianGovernment report The Recognition ofAboriginal Customary Laws)—but possi-ble.

Take the example of land held in common byIndigenous people. In Australia, recognisingAboriginal title to land required passing anAct (Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Terri-tory) Act 1976) which allowed AboriginalLand Trusts to "hold title to land in theNorthern Territory for the benefit of Aborigi-nals entitled by Aboriginal tradition to the useor occupation of the land concerned". This ineffect created a special land title, Aboriginalfreehold title, one which is owned in commonby the members of the Aboriginal Land Trust.The land held by the trust cannot legally bebought or sold.

A similar process could be developed to lookafter property rights held in common for lan-guages. So the bad consequence mentioned in"The Algonquian morpheme auction" —Disney owns my language! — could beblocked. But the costs would be huge, both indeveloping the process, and then later, sincebringing customary law into the seductiveembrace of the state will probably just fattenthe litigious and their helpers (as noted in anearlier Language Log post).

Mark Liberman then asks:

Here's a question: if the use of a language hasto be licensed by the tribal elders, can theywithhold this permission from someone whowants to criticize them, or to say somethingelse that they don't approve of?

I'm guessing he's thinking of a group with-holding permission from an outsider to usetheir language to criticise them. In the Austra-lian Indigenous societies I know, people havethe unquestioned right to speak the languagesaccepted as their parents' languages. So "tribalelders" aren't on about licensing kids to speaktheir own language. But outsiders? Well, Ican't see why Indigenous communities could-n't have that right. Just as copyright laws al-low a map-maker or a publisher to refuse acritic permission to republish a map. Or tres-pass laws allow me to prevent a critic fromcoming onto my land, let alone erecting abillboard on it criticising me (however justi-fiably).

Three differences are important here - a dif-ference between rights held by an individualand rights held by a group, a difference overwhich rights can be traded and which areinalienable, and a difference as to whether aright-holder has the right to license otherpeople to enjoy some part of that right. Indi-viduals—so Australians, North Americansand some other groups believe—have rightsto control access to land and re-publication,and to buy and sell those rights, or licences tothem. We allow people to assert rights tosome words as trademarks, and to licenseothers to use the trademarked words. As forgroups, leaving aside companies and trustswhich act as pseudo-individuals, we (well,most of us) think it reasonable for groups—our governments—to assert a basic right tocontrol access to our countries (sovereignty),and we're pretty wary about selling off thisright.

Some Indigenous groups don't recognise indi-vidual rights to trade in land, or to trademarkwords, or to sing another person's song. Theydo assert rights as a group to control accessto their land and to their languages, butprobably not to trade those rights. Sover-eignty over languages as well as land. But inactual practice, probably the best way of get-ting rights over language recognised (unlessmoney is involved, as it can be) is to rely onwhat customary law relies on - politeness, andeducating outsiders as to what is polite.Which is the flipside of Mark Liberman'scomment "Whatever the outcome, linguists'best protection against such problems is to besolidly based in the speech communities inquestion".

Comments

Very interesting defense of the possibility ofhaving property rights over languages. I won-der, however, if the subject of that right canbe the group, to the exclusion of the individ-ual. It is obvious that an “outsider”cannotspeak a language if he or she does not learn itfrom at least one individual that speaks it.And once s/he learns it, why would s/he beconsidered an outsider anymore (providedthat things like racial exclusion are not in


your bag of reasons)? Furthermore, thingscould get even more complicated. I bet, forinstance, that Microsoft did not ask its em-ployees to learn Mapudungu but it hired atleast one native speaker of Mapudungu (notan outsider) in order to translate Windows tothat language. I think we all can agree thatthat translation must count as that speaker’sutterances. How come does anybody couldhave rights over the possibility that a personspeaks his/her own language? Language can-not be equated to land. It is easy to see whycould be dangerous to grant individual rightsto sell pieces of a collective land (at the end,it could destroy a community). But it is hardfor me to see what the risks are with language.At the end, those claims are just a manifesta-tion of prescriptive discourse, which havealways had a magical flavor (in both Westernand Non-Western societies), and whose finalgoal is to install a tool for the negotiation ofpower, that is, a political tool. And with re-spect to indigenous people, that could even bea good thing, but we need to address the ac-tual political and social motivations (their callfor recognition and empowerment) rather thanfalsify the nature of language.

Posted by: Miguel Rodríguez-Mondoñedo |November 27, 2006 09:29 AM

Language as property: In some societies theright to speak for a language is deemed aproperty that is inherited from your parents -along with rights to use particular tracts ofcountry and associated creation stories andsongs. So even if I learned to speak Waru-mungu really well, I'd still be an outsider,because I have not inherited the right to thelanguage. It would be another matter if I wereproperly 'adopted' and lived in a Warumungufamily and took on the rights and responsibili-ties that come with adoption.

Bound up with language as property are theideas of respect for ownership, and denial ofaccess to the language. Respect seems tomatter to speakers of many small languages,regardless of how strong the language is. It'stheir language; they have the right to say howit's spelled, what the words of the languageare, when and where it's used in public. De-nial of access is far less common—probablybecause mostly people want to use languagesthey know well to talk to other people in.Perhaps the most famous group who havedenied a type of access to their language arethe Pueblo Indian group who speak Towa(Jemez) and who do not want their languagewritten down. In Australia my impression isthat when languages are strong and childrenspeak them, the speakers usually welcomeoutsiders learning their languages, and en-courage them to do so (as Raymattja Marikahas done by producing Yolngu language ma-terials). When a language is moribund and isnot needed for communication, then descen-dants of speakers may be upset about whatthey have lost, and resent outsiders learningit. And in such situations passions rise if theybelieve outsiders are making money fromtheir language—e.g. non-Indigenous tourguides showing tourists Indigenous places,

and providing Indigenous names for plantsand animals, and sharing Indigenous tradi-tional ecological knowledge with the tourists.

Groups always have trouble with balancingthe rights of individuals and the rights ofgroups. In any society some individual couldgo against the wishes of the group and dosomething that the group doesn't approve of -e.g building an unapproved extension to ahouse, or teaching outsiders a language. Andthere's always a problem determining who thegroup is.

Posted by: Jane Simpson | November 27,2006 12:55 PM

I recall a situation, years ago, when a friend ofmine, a professor of Urdu and Hindi in theUnited States, received death threats forteaching a class in Arabic language. That's it,no assertion of insults to the Prophet or any-thing, just that it was a sacred language andno non-Muslim should be allowed to teach it.

More to the point, the only people who woulduse Microsoft's translation would be speakersof the language, so clearly speakers of thelanguage have complete control over whetherit is used or not. It cannot destroy the lan-guage, it can't even reduce the use of anothervariety of the language, any more than theavailability of a Spanish version of the soft-ware does. If the community is worried thatindividuals would adopt this unapprovedversion of the language, aren't they just asworried that individuals would adopt Spanishor English? I fail to see how any harm is doneto the language or the culture or to any prop-erty rights, individual or collective, in either.

Posted by: Jay Cummings | November 28,2006 04:57 AM

Who Owns Language?(Stentor Danielson, on Debitage, 13 Decem-ber 2006)

There's some interesting discussion goingon over the Mapuche tribe's suit against Mi-crosoft, which asserts the tribe's sovereigntyover its language (Mapudungan) and there-fore denies Microsoft the right to produceversions of its software in Mapudungan.

This may be partly a case where a proceduralviolation -- the Mapuche were not consulteddirectly by Microsoft in the process of pro-ducing the Mapudungan versions of the soft-ware -- is being fought on the territory of thesubstantive outcome. But I think there's alsosomething to the substantive case. (Indeed,here it's difficult to disentangle the two, sincethe Mapuche's objection seems to be not somuch to the very idea of a Mapudungan ver-sion of Word as it is to Microsoft making aMapudungan version of Word.

Defenders of Microsoft make both deonto-logical and consequentialist claims. Deon-tologically, they point out that the idea ofgroup ownership of language is absurd withinour Western system. The usual rebuttal is toargue that rights (or at least some rights, ofwhich property rights would be the clearest

case) are culturally relative. I'm more inter-ested here in the consequentialist case* -- howdoes Microsoft making a Mapudungan ver-sion of Word hurt the Mapuche? Or moregenerally, how does an outsider's use of anelement of a culture harm insiders?

My answer depends on three main concepts:structuration, diversity of values, and power.Structuration refers to the fact that social in-stitutions evolve through use. A language isthus not a fixed object that can be picked up,used, and put back the way it was. The popu-lar descriptivist position in linguistics --words and grammatical structures mean what-ever people use them to mean -- is a correctstructurationist position**. By diversity ofvalues, I mean that different people have dif-ferent ideas about what society should be like.Ceteris paribus, it's better for a given person'svalues to be realized than not. One's pursuit ofthose values will be constrained by the avail-able institutions, but they will also shape howone uses those institutions, and hence whatthose institutions look like when one is donewith them.

Finally, power refers to the fact that differentpeople and groups have different abilities toreshape institutions in accordance with theiruse of them. Problems arise when inequalitiesof power align with (real or potential) differ-ences in values. The minority (in power, andoften numerically as well) then finds theirability to achieve their values limited, becausethey have limited influence over the socialinstutions available to them. This is a problemeven when the difference is merely numerical-- while it may be fair in each instance takenin isolation for the larger group to get its way,when taken as a whole a persistent minoritywill end up getting outvoted every time. Thesolution here is autonomy -- to separate theinstitutions used by the majority and the mi-nority, so that the majority's use of their ver-sion does not affect the version used by theminority. This goes some way toward explain-ing the emergence of subcultures and thefierce defense of existing cultural diversity.

Thus, when Microsoft makes a Spanish ver-sion of Word, it's little threat to most of theSpanish-speaking community for two reasons.On the one hand, Microsoft's values withrespect to the Spanish language are not likelyto be that divergent from those of most Span-ish-speakers. Second, Microsoft's power vis-a-vis the 400 million Spanish speakers iscomparatively limited -- indeed, Microsoft islargely at the mercy of the general public'susage and the prounouncements of Spanishgrammarians. But both of those factors tiltagainst the Mapuche. It's far more likely thatMicrosoft will have different values from theMapuche, and it's reasonable for an oppressedgroup to be especially suspicious of one of theworld's biggest corporations on this count.And Microsoft's power to define Mapudunganis greatly exaggerated vis-a-vis a small anddisempowered group like the Mapuche. Thusgroup rights to language sovereignty (and bysimilar arguments, rights to sovereignty overother cultural products) are absurd in the case


of "big" languages like English and Spanish,but may be a legitimate defense mechanism inthe case of "small" languages like Mapudun-gan.

Bringing the question of power into the dis-cussion, however, raises yet another difficultproblem -- establishing the legitimacy of theMapuche's desire to limit outsiders' use oftheir language. We want to let the Mapuchedecide when and how their language may beused, rather than presume to decide on theirbehalf what would be good for them. But thispresents us with a Scylla and Charybdis situa-tion. On the one hand, in recognition of ourown limited understanding of the situationand our disproportionate power, we want toavoid an imperialistic use of our own ideals oflegitimacy to judge claims made by Mapucheindividuals or groups. But on the other hand,we also want to avoid a naive assumption thatMapuche views on this issue are internallyuncontested or that we can treat the traditionalleadership of the tribe as legitimately speak-ing for everyone (assuming we can even relyon our own understanding of what that tradi-tional distribution of authority is).

*Since I think any assertion of a right musthave an underlying consequentialist justifica-tion, though of course the relativistic argu-ment could be used to deny the relevance ofthe sort of utilitarianism I'll apply.

**Though this should not be taken to theextreme of denying the validity of debate overthe proper use of language. While Platonicsorts of arguments about the transcendentalcorrectness of certain meanings are invalid,pragmatic arguments -- "we should use thesewords in this way because it allows us tomake certain useful distinctions" -- are stillfine. Indeed, such pragmatic argumentsmerely articulate what structuration tells uswill be happening inevitably.

9. Forthcoming Meetings

Babel in reverse? Language ideologyin the 21st century, 20-22 Feb 2007,Catholic Academy Wolfsburg / Mül-heimSponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation

Language shift and attempts of language revi-talization are manifestations of language ideo-logical views. Language ideologies constitutethereby the basis from which support for aswell as criticism against language revitaliza-tion is generated. Language death is not a newphenomenon. Novel is the speed with whichlanguages are presently lost. To what extentlanguage endangerment is an effect of chang-ing communicative requirements and to whichextent it is an effect of language ideologyremains an unresolved question so far. Therecan be no doubt, however, that dominantlanguage ideologies, shaped in the course ofnation building processes, are detrimental tothe preservation of local languages. Suchlanguage ideologies address elite interests and

overlook the interests of everybody else. In-digenous language minorities are cruciallyaffected. As self-fulfilling prophecies, lan-guage ideologies play a crucial role in render-ing multilingual polities into the monolingualnations they imagine to exist. Modernist lan-guage ideologies threaten linguistic diversityand they do so irrespective of the communica-tive requirements of their speakers. The pre-sent conference addresses these issues bydiscussing language endangerment with afocus on language ideology.

The questions to be addressed at the confer-ence are:

To what extent are attempts for or scepticismagainst language revitalisations manifesta-tions of modernist language ideology?

What language ideological views are in theway of developing new functions of locallanguages?

What is preventing speakers of endangeredlanguages to use them more frequently?

What is undermining the utility of local lan-guages?

To what extent can lack of utility of locallanguages be counter-balanced by cultural orsocio-psychological factors?

How can dominated languages be marketed?

To whom does language revitalization appearto be irrelevant, inappropriate or a threat andwhy is that so?

How do local identities and cultures differwith or without local languages?

Do we perceive languages as systems or asperformances and what are the effects thereofwith regard to language revitalisation andlanguage rights?

What are the limits of language policies withregard to language revitalisation?

www.uni-due.de/japan/conferences_en.shtml

Conference on Endangered Languagesand Cultures of Native America, 13-15April 2007 Salt Lake City, Utah.(CELCNA III) (3rd annual CELCNA), , Uni-versity of Utah

Sponsors: Smithsonian Institution and CAIL(Center for American Indian Languages,University of Utah)

Keynote speakers: Marianne Mithun (UCSB)and Christine Sims (Acoma Pueblo; Univer-sity of New Mexico)

Deadline for ABSTRACTS is past.

Registration: $25 (students $15) [to covercost of conference rooms, refreshments]

Abstract guidelines: Abstracts, no longer than500 words (a paragraph or two will do),should include paper title, name of au-thor/authors, affiliation. Abstracts should besubmitted by e-mail, in Microsoft Worddocument, RTF, or PDF. Include contact

details for the period of time from January toApril 2006. Only one abstract per person(except where a paper has multiple authors).

Accommodations: University Guest House -two minute walk from the meeting venue(Heritage Center) and CAIL. To book ac-commodations, contact the Guest House di-rectly (mention CELCNA):University GuestHouse University of Utah 110 South FortDouglas Blvd., Salt Lake City, Utah 84113-5036 Toll free: 1-888-416-4075 (or 801-587-1000), Fax 801-587-1001

Website www.guesthouse.utah.edu

(Please make reservations early; rooms willbe held for the conference only until earlyMarch.)

Additional information: Contact Nancy Gar-cía or for particular questions, write LyleCampbell. If you need information not easilyarranged via e-mail, please call: Tel. 801-587-0720 or 801-581-3441 during business hours,or Fax 801-585-7351.

Dr. Lyle Campbell, Professor of Linguistics,Director of the Center for American IndianLanguages, Dept. of Linguistics, University ofUtah, 255 S. Central Campus Drive, Salt LakeCity, Utah 84112-0492 USA

Tel. 801-581-3441 (office), 801-585-9785(Dept.), 801-587-0720 (CAIL); Fax 801-585-7351

“Ethnicity in Europe: Sociopoliticaland Cultural Processes”24 –26 May2007 Rēzekne, Latgalia/Latvia

Since January 2006, Rezekne Higher Educa-tional Institution (RHEI) Department of Phi-lology in cooperation with Centre d`etudeslinguistiques pour l`Europe (Italy) has beencarrying out the common project ,, A Surveyof the Ethnolinguistic Situation in Latgale”.The project investigates ethnical and linguis-tic processes in Latgale, drawing attention tothe influence of religion and language on boththe (concrete) micro-environment (individual,family) and the macro-environment (commu-nity, society). Data collected during the pro-ject will be summarized by January 2007.

The conference will be organized in order topresent and evaluate the results of the projectand to work out practical recommendationsfor developing fields such as language policy,culture and education. We would like to shareexperiences with experts from other countriesand reģions. Hence we invite scientists andpractical persons (representatives of culture,education, mass media, etc.) of the fieldsmentioned above to participate in our confer-ence.

The conference intends to provide the framefor interdisciplinary discourse in the follow-ing fields:

Sociolinguistics and Ethnolinguistics

Language Policy and Language Planning

Language Education

History of Culture, Art


Philosophy, History of Religions

Folklore, Literary Science

Social Sciences.

The languages of the conference will be Lat-galian, Latvian, English and Russian. Transla-tion will be provided if necessary.

Presentation time: 15 minutes + 5 minutes fordiscussion.

The conference will take place in Rezekne –in the heart of the historical and ethno-cultural region of Latgalia, in Eastern Latvia(for further details about Rezekne seehttp://rezekne.risc.lv ).

Participation fee: 30 EUR or 20 LVL, includ-ing coffee breaks and preliminary conferencematerials.

Payment should be made to RHEI bank ac-count (in Lats) until April 30, 2007 (or duringconference time):

RĒZEKNES AUGSTSKOLAReģ.Nr.90000011588PVN Reģ.Nr. 90000011588Atbrīvošanas aleja 90, RēzeknēBanka: VALSTS KASEBankas kods TREL LV22Konts LV97TREL2150160030100

Conference secretaries/Registration Office:

Sanita Lazdiņa

Rēzeknes Augstskola

Atbrīvošanas aleja 115, Rēzekne, LV –4600

Tel. +371 4625841, fax: +371 4622681

e-mail: lasa1.at.inbox.lvSocial arrangements of the conference:

Acquaintance event

Conference Dinner –15 EUR or 10 LVL

Post - Conference Latgale excursion (May26th) –about 10 EUR or 7 LVL

The second circular will be sent to all pro-spective participants who register at the Se-cretariat of the conference (lasa1.at.inbox.lv) by 22 January 2007.

10. Recent Publications

Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller(ed.), Discourses of Endangerment:Ideology and interest in the defence oflanguages

Continuum International Publishing GroupLtd, January 2007

Hardback: ISBN 0 8264 8745 9 U.K. £75.00

www.continuumbooks.com

Current academic discussions and publicdebates frequently focus on the importance ofdefending languages against various kinds ofdangers. Many focus on defending institu-tionalized languages against multilingualism,or conversely defending minority languagesagainst the incursion of larger ones. This bookchallenges such a view, to argue that the dis-cussions in question are not about languageitself, but rather that we are witnessing, on theterrain of language, ideological struggleswhich are centrally about the position of na-tion states and of minorities in the new glob-alized world order. Covering a wide-range oflanguages from different sociolinguistic per-spectives, this book is essential reading foracademics interested in language endanger-ment and sociolinguistics.

K. David Harrison, When LanguagesDie: The extinction of the world's lan-guages and the erosion of humanknowledge

Oxford University Press, NY, 2007

Hardback: ISBN: 9780195181920 Pages: 304U.S. $ 29.95

http://www.oup.com/us

Speakers of thousands of the world's lan-guages are now switching to speaking globaltongues, abandoning their ancestral tongues atan unprecedented rate. As these languagesvanish, what exactly is being lost? This bookhighlights the complex systems of knowledgeembedded in language, and shows their loss,on the individual and global scales. Languageabandonment is a loss not only to the com-munities, but to the scholars of every field,and to humanity as a whole.

Osahito Miyaoka, Osamu Sakiyama,Michael E. Krauss: The VanishingLanguages of the Pacific Rim

Oxford University Press, NY, 2007

Hardback: ISBN: 9780199266623 Pages: 552Price: U.K. £ 65.00

http://www.oup.com/us

This book presents the first comprehensivesurvey of the languages of the Pacific rim, avast region containing the greatest typologicaland genetic diversity in the world. As its lan-guages decline and disappear, sometimeswithout trace, this rich linguistic heritage israpidly eroding. Distinguished scholars reporton the current state of the region's languages.Their analyses range from the regional to thelocal and focus on languages in a wide varietyof social and ecological settings. Togetherthey make a compelling case for researchthroughout the region, and show how andwhere this needs to be done.

Sarasvati, Hindu goddess of culture, Cen-tral Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore

Foundation for Endangered Languages

Manifesto

1. Preamble

1.1. The Present Situation

At this point in human history, most human lan-guages are spoken by exceedingly few people. Andthat majority, the majority of languages, is about tovanish.

The most authoritative source on the languages ofthe world (Ethnologue, Gordon 2005) lists just over6,900 living languages. Population figures areavailable for just over 6,600 of them (or 94.5%). Ofthese 6,600, it may be noted that:

56% are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people;

28% by fewer than 1,000; and

83% are restricted to single countries, and so areparticularly exposed to the policies of a single gov-ernment.

At the other end of the scale, 10 major languages,each spoken by over 100 million people, are themother tongues of almost half (49%) of the world'spopulation.

More important than this snapshot of proportionsand populations is the outlook for survival of thelanguages we have. Hard comparable data here arescarce or absent, often because of the sheer varietyof the human condition: a small community, iso-lated or bilingual, may continue for centuries tospeak a unique language, while in another place apopulous language may for social or political rea-sons die out in little more than a generation. An-other reason is that the period in which recordshave been kept is too short to document a trend:e.g. the Ethnologue has been issued only since1951. However, it is difficult to imagine manycommunities sustaining serious daily use of a lan-guage for even a generation with fewer than 100speakers: yet at least 10% of the world's livinglanguages are now in this position.

Some of the forces which make for language lossare clear: the impacts of urbanization, Westerniza-tion and global communications grow daily, allserving to diminish the self-sufficiency and self-confidence of small and traditional communities.Discriminatory policies, and population movmentsalso take their toll of languages.

In our era, the preponderance of tiny languagecommunities means that the majority of the world'slanguages are vulnerable not just to decline but toextinction.

1.2. The Likely Prospect

There is agreement among linguists who have con-sidered the situation that over half of the world's

languages are moribund, i.e. not effectively beingpassed on to the next generation. We and our children,then, are living at the point in human history where,within perhaps two generations, most languages in theworld will die out.

This mass extinction of languages may not appearimmediately life-threatening. Some will feel that areduction in numbers of languages will ease communi-cation, and perhaps help build nations, even globalsolidarity. But it has been well pointed out that thesuccess of humanity in colonizing the planet has beendue to our ability to develop cultures suited for survivalin a variety of environments. These cultures have eve-rywhere been transmitted by languages, in oral tradi-tions and latterly in written literatures. So when lan-guage transmission itself breaks down, especially be-fore the advent of literacy in a culture, there is always alarge loss of inherited knowledge.

Valued or not, that knowledge is lost, and humanity isthe poorer. Along with it may go a large part of thepride and self-identity of the community of formerspeakers.

And there is another kind of loss, of a different type ofknowledge. As each language dies, science, in linguis-tics, anthropology, prehistory and psychology, losesone more precious source of data, one more of thediverse and unique ways that the human mind canexpress itself through a language’s structure and vo-cabulary.

We cannot now assess the full effect of the massivesimplification of the world's linguistic diversity nowoccurring. But language loss, when it occurs, is sheerloss, irreversible and not in itself creative. Speakers ofan endangered language may well resist the extinctionof their traditions, and of their linguistic identity. Theyhave every right to do so. And we, as scientists, orconcerned human beings, will applaud them in tryingto preserve part of the diversity which is one of ourgreatest strengths and treasures.

1.3. The Need for an Organization

We cannot stem the global forces which are at the rootof language decline and loss.

But we can work to lessen the ignorance which seeslanguage loss as inevitable when it is not, and does notproperly value all that will go when a language itselfvanishes.

We can work to see technological developments, suchas computing and telecommunications, used to supportsmall communities and their traditions rather than tosupplant them.

And we can work to lessen the damage:

by recording as much as possible of the languages ofcommunities which seem to be in terminal decline;

by emphasizing particular benefits of thediversity still remaining; and

by promoting literacy and language mainte-nance programmes, to increase the strengthand morale of the users of languages in dan-ger.

In order to further these aims, there is a needfor an autonomous international organizationwhich is not constrained or influenced bymatters of race, politics, gender or religion.This organization will recognise in languageissues the principles of self-determination,and group and individual rights. It will paydue regard to economic, social, cultural,community and humanitarian considerations.Although it may work with any international,regional or local Authority, it will retain itsindependence throughout. Membership willbe open to those in all walks of life.

2. Aims and Objectives

The Foundation for Endangered Lan-guages exists to support, enable andassist the documentation, protection andpromotion of endangered languages. Inorder to do this, it aims:-

To raise awareness of endangeredlanguages, both inside and outsidethe communities where they are spo-ken, through all channels and media;

To support the use of endangeredlanguages in all contexts: at home, ineducation, in the media, and in so-cial, cultural and economic life;

To monitor linguistic policies andpractices, and to seek to influencethe appropriate authorities wherenecessary;

To support the documentation ofendangered languages, by offeringfinancial assistance, training, or fa-cilities for the publication of results;

To collect together and make avail-able information of use in the pres-ervation of endangered languages;

To disseminate information on all ofthe above activities as widely as pos-sible.

Membership in the Foundation is opento all. If you need an application form,please contact the Editor at the addresson page 2 above.

Foundation for Endangered LanguagesPlease send this form, or a copy of it, to the Foundation’s UK Treasurer:

Chris Moseley, 9 Westdene Crescent, Caversham Heights, Reading RG4 7HD, England

e-mail: chrismoseley50.at.yahoo.com

“Please enrol me as a member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages. I enclose my subscription for the full year 2007. I expect all the year’s Ogmios news-letters, details of meetings etc.”

RENEWAL

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Individual memberships

Full £35 (US$60; €50) Yes by post

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GIFT AID DECLARATION: I am a UK tax-payer. I wish all membership subscriptions and donations I make to the Foundation for Endangered Languages (regdcharity 1070616) henceforth to be treated as Gift Aid donations until further notice. I pay an amount of income tax or capital gains tax at least equal to the tax FELreclaims on my subscriptions and donations in the tax yeat, including tax paid under PAYE and tax deducted from bank interest.

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Each volume costs £17 ($30;€25). (Add £3/$5/€5) per vol. if not a member.) These prices include delivery by surfacemail.)

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FEL II (1998 Edinburgh): EL: What Role for the Specialist?

FEL III (1999 Maynooth): EL and Education

FEL IV (2000 Charlotte): EL and Literacy

FEL V (2001 Agadir): EL and the Media

FEL VI (2002 Antigua): EL and their Literatures

FEL VII (2003 Broome): Maintaining the Links: … the Land

FEL VIII (2004 Barcelona): On the Margins of Nations. Lg. Rights

FEL IX (2005 Stellenbosch): Creating Outsiders.Migr’n,Margnls’n

FEL X (2006 Mysore): Vital Voices: EL and Multilingualism

I wish to make an additional donation to the Foundation

Total sum: (incl. subs./Procs/donation. Please specify currency.)

___ I enclose a cheque in £ sterling payable to "Foundation for Endangered Languages"___ I enclose a check in US $ payable to "Nicholas Ostler". (Use other means of payment if possible.)___ I enclose proof of having sent an equivalent sum to the society's account, "Foundation for Endangered Languages", account number 50073456, The Co-operative Bank (sort code 08-90-02), 16 St.Stephen's Street, Bristol BS1 1JR, England, or standing order to my bank, to pay the sum annually.___ I wish to pay FEL by credit card (Visa, MasterCard, EuroCard). My card details are as given:Card number ________ _______ ______ ______ Expiry date (month/year) _________ _______Name (as on card)______________________ Address (as on card) ___________________________________ Signed, date:

9 Concessionary memberships are available for full-time students or unwaged persons. Please provide evidence.10 “Solidarity”and “Subsidized”memberships are available only to :a. current (and future) exchange organisations (i.e. charities that send their publication to the Foundation).b. those resident OUTSIDE USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, S. Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Israel, Saudi Arabia or Arab

Emirates, Iceland, Norway, Switz. or European Union.c. members of indigenous language communities in the countries excepted by b.11 “Voluntary body”includes university depts. and charity organisations, “Official body”includes government departments.

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