indigenous language
Philippine Conference Promotes Indigenous Languages
Last month, a government agency in the Philippines invited indigenous people from around the nation to promote peace by fostering the uses of their own languages, as well as the national language, Filipino. A well written story in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, one of the nation’s leading newspapers last week, reviewed the focus on peace […]
Inuit Languages Celebrated
Last Friday, February 28, the government of Nunavut concluded a two week celebration of Inuit native languages that began on Monday, February 17. The Nunavut Languages Commissioner, Sandra Inutiq, expanded what had previously been a one-week annual celebration into two weeks of activities. The point was to get school children more involved with using their […]
Zapotec Linguistics Analysis
Mark Sicoli is using a path-breaking linguistics analysis technique to better understand the ways that gestures and behaviors used by speakers of a Zapotec language affect their speech. He and a team of student assistants at Georgetown University are examining 40 hours of videos of people speaking Lachixio, one of the Zapotec languages, as they […]
New Dictionary for Ju/’hoansi Children
The University of KwaZulu-Natal Press has announced the publication of the Ju/’hoan Children’s Picture Dictionary, for 250 South African rands (U.S. $22.53), by Tsemkgao Fanie Cwi and Kerry Jones. The book will probably make important contributions to Ju/’hoansi educational programs. According to the announcement of the book on the website of the press, the wire […]
Preserving Lepcha Culture
The Digital Journal, an Internet news service based in Canada, published an opinion piece last week about a British Library project to archive in digital format the artifacts of written Lepcha culture. Fortunately, the story provides a link to the British Library website where one can find more information about the project and the actual […]
Mainwaring Celebrated the Lepchas
“Lepcha was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden,” thought G. B. Mainwaring, the British general and scholar who published in 1876 a comprehensive grammar of the Lepcha language. Geoffrey Gorer provided that quote on page 39 of his book Himalayan Village: An Account of the Lepchas of Sikkim. Gorer criticized Mainwaring’s Lepcha grammar […]
Tahitian Language Back in the News
Reports in June that the Tahitians were not allowed to speak their own language in the French Polynesia Territorial Assembly have irritated people in Tahiti. The assembly has taken up the matter and issued a protest, though some members of the opposition, the independence party, are opposed to even asking France for permission to speak […]
The Tahitian Language and Peacefulness
The Supreme Court of France recently struck down two laws passed in French Polynesia because some of the debates in the territorial assembly were held in the Tahitian language. In response, Édouard Fritch, the President of the Territorial Assembly, asked the President of France if he would support amending French laws to allow Tahitian to […]
Inuit Preschool for Language Training
The goal of raising Inuit children who are able to speak their native Inuktitut has just been undercut by the government of Nunavut, which has deleted funding for a preschool language immersion program in Iqaluit, the territorial capital. Despite comments by government representatives, it is not completely clear from a news report last week exactly […]
Strengthening the Uses of Inuit Languages
The Inuit are gradually losing their spoken languages, Inuktitut and Innuinaqtun, according to a report issued last week, and the government of Nunavut needs to do more to encourage their usage. Cathy Towtongie and Jack Anawak, respectively president and vice-president of the NGO Nunavut Tunngavik, Inc ( NTI), released the group’s annual report for 2009/10 […]
