Vs Senior Exit Blog

Action

vsseniorexitblog — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:29:56 +0000

Thankfully I’ve come across some actions that have been taken to preserve Native American languages, and while there should be a lot more government support, at least there’s been the Native American Languages Act of 1990 and the Esther Martinez Native American Language Preservation Act of 2006 which provided “federal grants to Native American language immersion programs.” All of this was found at the The Leadership Conference website which has links to other sites that contain information on several institutes/schools that are dedicated to preserving our indigenous North American languages. Among these sites is a lobbyist page about a Quaker group’s persistence that has gotten some legislation passed and is continuing to promote language preservation for Native Americans along with even more links to additional websites. All of this is quite encouraging to know that there have been successful efforts in the past and there are groups out there taking active measures to preserve not just languages but culture as well.

Linguistics in Colleges

vsseniorexitblog — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:40:16 +0000

It’s interesting to see the different areas of Notre Dame’s language department with everything from studying abroad to foreign language movie nights. One of the recent activities is the irish literary competition won by Notre Dame’s Professor O Condhubhair in the prose category for a book he wrote. This is encouraging to the language enthusiast to see how such an obscure language such as Gaelic is being preserved even here locally. New classrooms are to be renovated in Debartolo Hall for the romance language department, and many students and faculty seem passionate about their research and promotion of the languages they are studying. Notre Dame doesn’t seem to have a focus on endangered languages but their classics department has programs that include Latin, a dead language, as well as Greek and Arabic which are not too common in the U.S.

Western Carolina University has taken action to preserve the Cherokee language by teaching it to the newest generation of Native Americans since most of the fluent speakers of Cherokee are all over 50. And now there is a high concern for endangered tongues from the University of Cambridge. So it would appear that only certain universities, probably those close to indigenous speakers or those with an expansive language program are concerned with language extinction. This is better than nothing of course but the more I think about it, I am surprised that there isn’t a greater concern from our intellectuals and those specializing in linguistics about this issue, if anything, those should be the people taking a more active role in society since they are most knowledgeable about it. Well, now I’m going off on a tangent, so I better stop. But I’m glad to see there are efforts out there to preserve quiet cultures.

Solutions Anybody?

vsseniorexitblog — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:06:50 +0000

Now that I’ve covered at least most of my bases, I’ve started to realize I haven’t come across many suggestions for solving the problem of language extinction, so I went looking around. I came across this site which includes one particularly vital method of preserving and even restoring dead languages as a means of preventing this problem from continuing. Although these are steps already being taken by linguists, it really just needs more attention from the public to gain support. What needs to be done is a documenting of all endangered languages (which is a current effort that needs to be multiplied by 200) including interviews and recordings. Part of the reason why these efforts aren’t enough is that funding for such ambitious projects and the resources for such an undertaking are limited. Small groups of linguists are the ones taking action, but perhaps what is really needed is a government-funded national attempt combining these linguistic groups for one big project rather than numerous small ones. Of course an important thing to keep in mind is the fact that the indigenous people involved in these projects should benefit from these attempts since they are the “owners” of such valuable information.

Some additional resources I found that I will keep track of here that would be interesting to come back to.

Gaelic, an ancient tongue

vsseniorexitblog — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:46:12 +0000

There are languages such as Gaelic, known as Irish or Gaeilge by the Irish, that used to be the national tongue of the country, and is now diminishing. There are efforts to preserve Gaelic, such as “the Gaelic College” located in Scotland, but English has been the dominant tongue spoken on the Emerald Isle for centuries now. Most people traveling to Ireland will only hear English, although many signs are still written in both languages. This is an example of how the written form of Gaelic is more preserved than the spoken form except in the northwest of Scotland and on the islands, where it is still spoken. A new fact I’ve learned is that the Gaelic used in Scotland and Ireland used to be the same thing but over hundreds of years have diverged. Unfortunately, English is still dominant due to the “consolidation of English power in Ireland” when the Gaelic chieftains were defeated in 1601. Sadly, their ancient culture has also declined, but some people still hold on to this ancient tongue, and it is up to today’s generation to keep these ancient languages preserved as long as we can. Thanks to the college in Scotland whose mission is to teach this ancient tongue, preservation is possible and people do still have an interest in these endangered languages. It is this type of action that more people need to strive towards in order to save other languages and retain cultural diversity.

Texting, the Downfall of English?

vsseniorexitblog — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 02:26:16 +0000

As yet another question has entered my radar on this topic, I’ve decided to add some thoughts on texting and how it’s contributed to the degradation of language, (with a focus on English in particular). I found an article from Newsweek that directly addresses this topic (maybe a helpful angle on the general subject). Another interesting site with some language statistics just for fun. I found that there are about 999,500 words in the English language, and one statistic from the psychology textbook states, “Athough you probably know between 60,ooo and 80,000 words, you use only 150 words for about half of what you say.” Knowing that this is the case and that our language has changed so much from its original state, shouldn’t we be more concerned? We are destroying our own language. Basically people have chosen the shorter, more informal versions of most words, and with technology, we’ve chosen to abbreviate a lot, contributing to this simplifying of our language that’s led to a loss of language skill.

What We Don’t Know

vsseniorexitblog — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:35:24 +0000

I think I will first need to explain what the issue is since I believe I covered the reason for the importance of language preservation in my last post. I was talking to a friend this weekend about my project, and I told her I would be researching language loss. When I told her that languages are going extinct she asked “what languages? what’s going extinct?” Well, I realize many people don’t realize this is an issue in the first place, because it isn’t exactly common knowledge.

This is why I’m about to enlighten you and I know I’ll learn a lot along the way too. First of all, it may be helpful to know that there is a history behind these endangered languages (how they came about, why they’re endangered, etc.) that I didn’t know about until now. According to Kari Lydersen, Washington Post Staff Writer, languages started out small and developed rurally back when we were hunter-gatherers, (which would explain why there are so many varieties of Native American languages). Here is an interesting site I found that shows regionally the different Native American language families, of which there is an estimated 1,800 Native languages originally spoken before they were wiped out. But anyway, back to Lydersen who says “Languages typically die when speakers of a small language group come in contact with a more dominant population.” And earlier in the article she stated that “Language extinction has been a phenomenon for at least 10,000 years, since the dawn of agriculture.” So I guess languages are directly linked to our lifestyle, but it’s not a recent thing at all. (I’ll admit I didn’t know this until today).

So, just to circle back to my original purpose of today’s post, some people still don’t realize that languages are being lost. So think about it, Native Americans, aboriginal peoples, and indigenous tribes around the world speak languages we’ve never heard of; but we also know that they are contained in small populations and are slowly being eradicated by colonialism and globalization. This much we know already, but it’s never brought up and so we’ve forgotten about them. The more dominant certain languages become, the less others get used because the native speakers of that language end up using the culturally dominant tongue more and more until eventually the native tongue just dies out. So there you have it, the hidden issue that I’m so concerned about…are you concerned yet?

The Issue of Language Loss

vsseniorexitblog — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 18:44:20 +0000

My strong interest in languages started in tenth grade when I took the best class I’ve ever had, AP Human Geography. I learned a lot from this class, from demographics to energy issues and more, but a lot of what I learned about our world is quite disheartening.The sad truth of globalization and americanization, is that the world is losing its diversity, which includes languages. As “western culture” (aka the American way) spreads more places and becomes more dominant, English is slowly taking over and many languages are going extinct. This especially concerned me of all the issues we discussed in that class, and I’ve always loved hearing other languages and experiencing culture.

When we look at the big picture, it is easier to see why preserving languages is so important. Languages are a vital part of culture, and without language, we lose culture, and without culture we lose diversity, and without diversity, we lose the history of our neighbors and ourselves. What a boring world we would have without languages! Anyway, I could go on for days, and the amount of statistics and lists of languages is really overwhelming, but for now I’ll just summarize some of the information I’ve found so far.

It is said that there are approximately 7,000 languages in the world, and there is a strong possibility that nearly half of them may disappear by 2100. If this isn’t bad enough, the statistics say that there only 276 of these languages are spoken by at least a million people (according to H. Russel Bernard of University of Maryland) This means that the other 96% of languages are spoken by small numbers of people, usually tribes or a handful of older generations that haven’t passed down their language. There is some hope however because people like Shobhana Chelliah who are working on language preservation projects with the help of grants. It is this kind of cultural awareness that really intrigues me and I’ll be putting more in-depth information on the next blog, so be looking for that!

Intentions

vsseniorexitblog — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:36:00 +0000

My intentions…well I have intentions but honestly I am a bit lost as far as a solid idea, so I have nothing concrete at the moment, partly because I have been waiting for inspiration to come to me as I so often do and haven’t found it yet. I do have a couple possibilities though, my first idea involving languages and our conserving–or lack of–them. I am highly interested in languages as I have been for about three years now, and I will probably be going to college to be an interpretor/translator. Of course I want to do my project on something I am passionate about, languages being one of them, but I’m just not sure there is anything controversial enough about languages, so I am open for suggestions; well actually, to be completely frank, I am desperate for suggestions.

My other idea is one involving a new interest of mine, and it is very controversial: gun control. This topic seems promising to me since it is so debatable from both sides, but the other thing that worries me is the fact that we have to bring people in when we present our finished projects, and don’t we have to bring in people that know a lot about our topic?