Anumpa Achukma/Good News
Language Loss Can Be Reversed
2006.02
This is a newsletter dedicated to reporting the successes in revitalizing endangered languages worldwide. Share your good news with us by sending us an article about your program or current activity in revitalizing an endangered language.
Please forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested.
Produce—cause (a particular result or situation) to happen or come into existence
“I went to wänanga reo, which is a workshop, which is all in Mäori. You are not allowed to speak English. You can ask what a—what the Mäori word is for an English word. So if you didn’t know what telephone was, you’d say, ‘he aha te kupa Mäori for telephone?’ And that was the extent of …the English you were allowed to use.
And that …one week clicked a whole lot of my learning experience as a younger person into place and really firmed them into my mind. And also because you weren’t allowed to speak English, you…couldn’t think English either, so it [was] just dawning on me that in order to speak another language you had to think in that language….That was a huge lesson, I think, more than all those other things firming up, realizing that I had to actually change the way I think in order to talk, in order to speak Mäori…” [excerpt from interview]
Language orders reality.
Each language we speak represents a different ordering of reality, and, consequently, thought.
English is a language that has sentences that read like a shot across the page.
The man goes to town.
Notice the movement—from the actor, the man, begins the sentence. The actor is followed by the action, goes. The rest of the sentence is the end point of the action, the destination, the receiver.
Contrast this to the same sentence in Choctaw.
Hattak vt tamaha ia.
The sentence also begins with the actor, hattak. But what follows is his destination, tamaha. This configuration of placing the actor immediately adjacent to the destination suggests a different relationship. The reader or listener does not know the action until the end of the sentence.
In terms of images, in the Choctaw sentence, the listener has the image of the man and town together and then completes it with an action. In the English sentence, the listener has the image of the man and the action together and completes it with the receiver of the action. These following two sentences illustrate how this works.
The man goes home. Hattak vt chuka hukmi.[The man burns the home.]
Composing these sentences forces the speakers to think differently.
Culture expresses that ordering, so it is also important to preserve the culture as well. And as culture changes so should the language.
‘…what we have done in modern times is to make language for words that didn’t exist [before], like for computer. We call it rorohiko, which means “electric brain.”’ [excerpt from interview]
Along with the modern is the ancient, the ways of our ancestors. I just completed two different new year ceremonies based upon two different calendars. This participation reminded me that sometimes we get so busy just getting by in this modern world that it is easy to just let those traditions float away. But those traditions like the language were at the core of our existence. Also, the language represents that life. We need them both to keep the language alive.
Also consider the amount of language needed for the ordinary activities of any given day—greeting your family as they get up, talking over breakfast, getting the kids dressed, planning out the day, going to work and greeting others there, coming home and preparing dinner, and being with your family before bedtime. And in some languages, reading that bedtime story.
There are the days and nights of courtship and whispering sweet nothings to lovers, expressing love to children, parents, and grandparents.
Chi hullo li. Chi hullo li. Chi hullo li.
How do you say, “I love you”? With the language nearest your heart. And, then, there is the language of prayer. As we advance with technology, our languages need to advance with us.
Produce it—the old terms, the sacred terms, the everyday terms, the new terms.
Links to language materials and online courses
Ojibwe http://www.kstrom.net/isk/stories/language.html
Choctaw http://www.nativenashville.com/language/tutor_chata.htm
Cherokee http://www.nativenashville.com/language_tsalagi.htm
Online Cherokee courses http://www.cherokee.org
Online Choctaw courses http://www.choctawnation.com
Kumeyaay http://www.americanindiansource.com/kumeyaaylanguage.html
http://www.audioform.com/index.php?crn=3079
Caddo Cheyenee Choctaw Inupiag Lakota Apache Cherokee Chickasaw Hawaiian Kiowa Lenape Muskogee (Creek) Ojibwwe Salish Tlingit Yup’ik Mohawk Navajo Passamaquoddy Tanacross Athabascan Western Delaware
Native American fonts http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/native.html
Irish & Scottish Gaelic http://contemporarypoetry.com/brain/lang
Scottish Gaelic http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk.
Scottish Gaelic www.polygot.pitt.edu/mat/scottishgaelic/html
Maori http://www.aotearoa.co.nz/cultureflow
Hawaiian www.oocities.org/TheTropics/shore/6794/hltableofcontents.html
Hawaiian http://www.alohajoe.com/hawaiian_language_course.html
Send us your link to materials or courses
.
is sponsoring a unique hands-on technical training workshop to learn how to create a variety of materials using Native languages, images, and artwork from your own communities.
This year’s workshop is sponsored by the Oneida Nation Community Education Center, Green Bay, Wisconsin, April 27-29, 2006.
Last year’s workshop, held at the Pueblo of Pojoaque, was a resounding success.
Send Us Your News—let others
hear how well you are doing!
Send your success story to us at holabitubbe@gmail.com
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For previous issues of Anumpa Achukma, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli/anumpa.html
George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.
Choctaw/Cherokee
Fulbright Scholar