Anumpa Achukma/Good
News
Language Loss Can Be Reversed
2006.05
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.
Publish/Teacher and Student Made Materials
In order to facilitate literacy in a language, there needs to be an abundance of books for children—and adults—to read. Maori language revitalization has advanced to a point that there are a growing number of publications in the Maori language. Desk top publishing and self-publishing in the US is the answer for Native languages. We know that it is quantity that builds a good reader.
There are some successful formulas that we can borrow. One key to success is to introduce the reading of stories. Another key ingredient for beginning readers is repetitious text, and, of course, pictures. This formula can be found in such popular books as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, and I Went Walking. Native American Early Childhood educators from the Pueblo*, Navajo, Arapaho, and Choctaw communities have begun this process of creating books in their own languages.
They began by doing a storyboard for their books so that they could see what goes on each page. For example, did they want picture and text on each page, or text on one page with the illustration on the facing page. Books are done in multiples of 8 pages and begin with a cover page and sometimes a copyright page. That was something else they needed to figure out.
Once that was done, they worked on their text, working on the repitition.
“Grandpa and I went shepherding. What did we see?”
All this involved discussions of language—how was that idea said in Navajo, for example. The Arapaho student made a trip home to talk to elders to get the language. The Choctaw student said she would have to phone her grandmother, and so it went.
The final step was to put it all together—the text and the pictures.
Of course, one book is not the answer, but it is a beginning.
Another idea these early childhood educators learned was having an entire class compose a story, and then turning that into a book of text. Each child gets a copy and does his/her own illustrations. This has an advantage because it uses vocabulary that children already know, thereby facilitating reading—matching the symbol to the word.
Another idea they learned was to have children write in journals every day and illustrate their journal entries. Later these can be read to an adult.
Basically, building literacy in an indigenous language is the same process as that in the dominant, world language.
What books have you and your language community produced? Write and tell us about it.
*Some Pueblos
have prohibitions against recording their language.
Now is the time to sign up
for Choctaw Classes.
Cherokee Classes begin
after Labor Day.
Catch the latest news on
the Comanche language at this website—
http://www.comanchelanguage.org/.
Nahuatl Language and Culture Workshops
Mapitzmitl offers these workshops. You can contact him at pazehecatl@hotmail.com. You can view video footage and photographs of Kalpulli Ehecatl (Community of the Wind) at http://kalpulliehecatl2.blogspot.com.
Send your success story to us at holabitubbe@gmail.com
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Ho Anumpoli! is a New Mexico non-profit organization. For more information about us, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli
For previous issues of Anumpa Achukma, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli/anumpa.html
George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.
Choctaw/Cherokee
Fulbright Scholar