An interesting document showcasing what spelling reform might look like for English...and its result looks very similar to another language!

A viewpoint on Aboriginal languages...

A very interesting article recently published on that munanga linguist about some of the author's work being done on dying Aboriginal languages and how they got that way...

64 Indian dialects endangered in Mexico

Sixty-four of Mexico’s 364 Indian dialects are at “high risk” of dying out, with less than 100 speakers of each remaining, the head of the country’s National Institute of Indian Languages said Tuesday. Institute head Javier Lopez Sanchez said that in many cases, speakers of dying dialects are dispersed and no longer live in a single community. Lopez Sanchez said many parents aren’t passing their languages on to their children, and in communities in Mexico’s north, Indian children may have a passive understanding of their parent’s language but are unwilling or unable to speak it. “There are entire communities where the children don’t speak their Indian language,” he said. As an example, he noted that among the Yoremes in Sonora state, the remaining speakers are all older than 40. Many of the endangered dialects are in Baja California, and some are in southern Mexico. Click here to read the whole article

Archaeologists discover lost language

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by archaeologists working in Turkey. Researchers working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tušhan, believe that the language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq. The evidence for the language they spoke comes from a single clay tablet, which was preserved after it was baked in a fire that destroyed the palace in Tušhan at some point around the end of the 8th century BCE. Inscribed with cuneiform characters, the tablet is essentially a list of the names of women who were attached to the palace and the local Assyrian administration. To continue reading this article, click here

Keeping Indigenous Languages Alive

The Fort Mojave Language Recovery Program is documenting and rebuilding the Mojave bird song cycle in a partnership between the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe along the Colorado River and Arizona State University’s Center for Indian Education.
Part of the program is dedicated to retaining the Mojave bird songs, which are traditionally songs of celebration. The songs are also part of a larger oral tradition that communicates values and carry lessons of cultural importance to Mojave people, says Teresa McCarty, co-director of the CIE and professor in the School of Social Transformation. One aim of the grant is to document and rebuild the song cycle, which has become less defined with the erosion of the Mojave language. Along with the cultural significance the songs hold, they also contain unique aspects of the Mojave language.


You can read the full article here

Using social media to capture an endangered language

Professor Margaret Noori of Michigan University has created an online community that is capturing, what would otherwise be, a dying language. It’s an innovative way of preserving a language so that ancient sounds are not lost and can be instantly connected with others willing to hear and learn.

The language is that of Ojibwe, Michigan’s indigenous population. As the population who knows this language is continually ageing, it is essential to ‘produce proficiency in the next generation and archive the contributions of fluent elders’. As a result it is the responsibility of the younger generations to learn from older generations. This is why social media is being implemented.

Social media is being used as a linguistic preservation tool, a platform that is very familiar to the young age group. The community is currently using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube that will encourage sharing and interaction. So far there are around 450 audio files, songs, lessons and stories to facilitate learning.

This is an example of a new revelation for social media, being used to preserve an endangered language.

This article downloaded from here

Dual Language Booklet for Native Alaskans Published for First Time

Partnering with a local Alaskan native community, the U.S. Forest Service has for the first time published a dual language booklet in English and a native Alaskan language, Yup’ik, to help educate the greater community in Southwestern Alaska on invasive species.

Titled “Protecting Southwestern Alaska from Invasive Species – A Guide in the English and Yup’ik languages,” the Forest Service’s Alaska Region and the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies aim to explain invasive species concerns unique to Southwestern Alaska, which is home to a large community of the indigenous Yup’ik people. The title of the booklet translated into Yup’ik is, “Kellutellra Alaskam Ungalaqlirnera Eniaritulinun Itrallerkaaneng – Maaryartekaq Kassat Yup’iit-llu Qaneryaraigtun.”

Protecting Southwestern Alaska from invasive species has proven challenging, not only due to its vast and varied range of landscapes, but also due to difficulties in communication with native Alaskans. About 120 communities, including over 25,000 Yup’ik people, are scattered across this region, and its residents largely use their native languages as their primary means of communication and also continue to follow traditional cultures that are married to the natural environment.

As native Alaskan community members follow subsistence lifestyles and thus depend on natural resources, they are more susceptible to the impacts of the introduction of invasive species. The partnership between the Forest Service and the Center for Alaska Coastal Studies to publish the booklet seeks to increase education and awareness among local residents to ultimately prevent invasive species from being introduced to local Southwestern Alaskan ecosystems.

Report accessed from here

Multiple meanings and why we have them

Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious -- as a way for individuals to exchange information -- linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years. Many prominent linguists, including MIT’s Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is, in fact, poorly designed for communication. Such a use, they say, is merely a byproduct of a system that probably evolved for other reasons -- perhaps for structuring our own private thoughts. As evidence, these linguists point to the existence of ambiguity: In a system optimized for conveying information between a speaker and a listener, they argue, each word would have just one meaning, eliminating any chance of confusion or misunderstanding. Now, a group of MIT cognitive scientists has turned this idea on its head. In a new theory, they claim that ambiguity actually makes language more efficient, by allowing for the reuse of short, efficient sounds that listeners can easily disambiguate with the help of context.

To read the rest of this interesting take on why our words may have multiple meanings, click here

Census finds fewer than a half-million Native American language speakers; majority Navajo

More people speak Navajo at home than any other Native American language, a seemingly promising 169,000 people at a time when some tribes have lost their native tongue or are struggling to retain the words of their ancestors. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, a Navajo professor at Northern Arizona University, said the figure recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau is no surprise, but can be misleading. The country’s population of Navajos is well over 300,000. For every one who speaks the language, one doesn’t — and those are likely younger Navajos, Yazzie said.The loss of Native languages is rooted in a history that includes the federal government’s attempt to eradicate Native American culture by sending children to boarding schools and punishing them for speaking their language. “That’s one thing all Indian nations suffer from,” Yazzie said. “Youth are ashamed of that because it caused a lot of harm. They internalized it. ... Now we’re trying to turn that around and say, ‘The languages are beautiful.’”

Click here to read the full article

Aboriginal elders reject ‘another decade of discrimination’

The Ramingining elders have called for an end to the intervention, the reinstatement of bilingual education, the involvement of elders in curriculum development, and Yolngu teachers. Elders from the remote Northern Territory Aboriginal community of Ramingining, East Arnhem, released, on November 28, a statement, saying that they “...don’t want another decade of discrimination here in Ramingining,” said Mathew Dhulumburrk, a 67-year-old Gupapuyngu man. “The government is extending and strengthening laws designed to assimilate Aboriginal people. We will not sit back and watch these attacks on our lives, our future, our culture, and our law.

Click here to read the full article

New home movies resurrect endangered Native American language

University of Minnesota Duluth education professor Mary Hermes says saving an endangered language goes beyond just enriching the people who speak it. "I think people have got to get beyond thinking it's just for the Ojibwe people, that we want to save their Ojibwe language. There's 10,000 years of human evolution and knowledge in that language," she says. With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Hermes is combining the skills of native speakers with video technology to help others, young and old, learn the language in the most natural way. She's doing it by videotaping short movies of everyday situations, from going to a rummage sale to planting a garden to helping out a sick relative. "Because Ojibwe isn't spoken on a regular basis, there's not a store or a rummage sale or a resort, but part of what we're doing is trying to re-envision what that would be like," explains Hermes.

Thanks to Living Languages where I first read this :)

The rest of this article + (very interesting) video can be accessed here

Fight for Nyoongar language

A QUEENS Park-based Aboriginal group is fighting to preserve the Nyoongar language. The language appears in Western Australian culture, and is featured on street signs, place names and during Welcome to Country ceremonies. However, Nyoongar Language Program interim chairman Joe Collard said such references were not understood and the language was slowly dying out.“Names like Joondalup and Dwellingup – these are our place names that have wonderful histories,” he said. “So many place names across the South-West derive from Nyoongar words, which have associated stories. We could offer these stories to people.” Mr Collard said he was concerned with the low number of fluent Nyoongar language speakers.

To continue reading this article, click here

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs leaves legacy in Cherokee language

The Cherokee Nation lowered its flags to half mast Oct. 6 in honor of Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, 56, who died Oct. 5 in California after a long battle with cancer. For the Cherokee Nation, its work with Apple has resulted in the adaptation of the Cherokee language to modern technology and renewed hope that the language will not only survive, but thrive. In 2003, Apple began supporting the Cherokee language by including a font and keyboard in the company’s computer operating system. 'Anything a person can do in English can be done in Cherokee in part because of [Steve Jobs'] innovations and his support of [the] language', CN Language Technologist Joseph Erb said.

To read the full article, click here

In the World: Murmurs of Mayan

Along with its stunningly accurate calendar and majestic pyramidal architecture, the Mayan civilization deserves recognition for another unique feature: its language. Mayan languages are a rich source of data for linguists aiming to develop a universal theory of language, but like many of the world’s tongues, their speakers are steadily dwindling in number. MIT undergraduate John Berman spent the past summer in a remote village in Mexico studying Chol — a Mayan language spoken in the southern state of Chiapas — in the hopes of capturing some important features of its grammar and vocabulary. Chol has several elements that differentiate it from English and other well-documented languages, including its manner of expressing possession and the structure of its nouns and verbs.

To read the full article, click here

Africa pushes for indigenous language in continet's development

Emphasising the need to take knowledge back to people, the Conference on African Renaissance, Integration, Unity and Development ended in Pretoria last Friday with a call to empower the people and promote an increased use of African languages in all spheres of national, regional and continental development. The two-day conference discussed at length how to use African languages and the meaning of language as an identity of the people's repository of knowledge.

Click here to read the rest of the article

Workshop works to revitalize Native American - Tlingit - language

Elders, fluent Tlingit speakers, language teachers and learners gathered in Juneau recently to work towards Tlingit language revitalization. The “Honoring Our Ancestors, Teaching Our Language” workshop was sponsored by Goldbelt Heritage Foundation through an Administration for Native Americans language grant; the grant was titled “Tlingit Language Flowing Through Generations: A Region wide Approach to Language Revitalization'.

Teachers work with elders throughout the year enhancing their understanding of the verb forms and then take that new knowledge and translate it into language lessons for youth. Every member of this team is committed to language revitalization and the benefits inherent herein to heal past historical trauma many of our elders experienced from being punished for speaking their first language within schools. Holding on to the language is a crucial endeavor as teachers strive to learn from our fluent speakers.

Read the article in full here

Cape Cod's first language is spoken again

Imagine helping to recreate the language your ancestors spoke. You have to start thinking like them, even if you don’t have all their words, and even if they did not have to name all the things that you work with today. “There must have been a word, for example, for watermelon,” Nitana Hicks of Mashpee told an audience at Tales of Cape Cod in Barnstable Village this week, but that word had been lost as use of the language died out because of the dominance of white settlers. So, said Hicks, who was talking about her part in a reclamation project for the language of the Wampanoag, she thought that “wet-squash” suited the summer fruit. By agreement of others, then, in modern Wampanoag, “wet-squash” it is. Right now, there is a 7-year-old child on Cape Cod who is being raised with the native tongue as her first language. Hicks said 250 families are enrolled in classes that allow everyone of native descent “to get to the level they want.”

As preliminary work, the language project has created a dictionary, some Wampanoag-based word games, coloring and storybooks, and even a three-day “immersion camp” where only the native language is spoken. A major characteristic of the language that Hicks called “complicated” is that it does not distinguish between genders but does separate “animate” and “inanimate.”

Click here to read the full article

Australian project hunts lost indigenous languages

Librarians in Australia have launched a three-year project to rediscover lost indigenous languages. The New South Wales State Library says fragments of many lost languages exist in papers left by early settlers. Before British colonialisation began there in 1788, around 250 aboriginal languages were spoken in Australia by an estimated one million people. Only a few dozen languages remain and the communities number around 470,000 people in a nation of 22 million.

The rest of this article can be read here

Federal Agencies Take Action to Digitally Document Nearly 50 Endangered Languages

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced the award of 10 fellowships and 24 institutional grants totaling $3.9 million in the agencies' ongoing Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program.

This is the seventh round of their campaign to preserve records of languages threatened with extinction. Experts estimate that more than half of the approximately 7,000 currently used human languages are bound for oblivion in this century, and the window of opportunity for high-quality language field documentation, they say, narrows with each passing year.

These new DEL awards will support digital documentation work on almost 50 endangered languages, enhance the computational infrastructure of the field and provide training for the next generation of researchers.

To continue reading this article, click here

Endangered Alphabets

In doing some linguistic research, I came across a fascinating project, called the Endangered Alphabets Project. Fundraising is needed for this project - below is an introduction to it & the full website can be accessed here, at The Endangered Alphabets Project.

The world has between 6,000 and 7,000 languages, but as many as half of them will be extinct by the end of this century. Another and even more dramatic way in which this cultural diversity is shrinking concerns the alphabets in which those languages are written.

Writing has become so dominated by a small number of global cultures that those 6,000-7,000 languages are written in fewer than 100 alphabets. Moreover, at least a third of the world’s remaining alphabets are endangered–-no longer taught in schools, no longer used for commerce or government, understood only by a few elders, restricted to a few monasteries or used only in ceremonial documents, magic spells, or secret love letters.

The Endangered Alphabets Project, which consists of an exhibition of fourteen carvings and a book, is the first-ever attempt to bring attention to this issue.