FOUNDATION FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES

OGMIOSᚑᚌᚋᚔᚑᚄ

From Illustrated Dictionary of the South-West Aboriginal Language (Edith Cowan University, Claremont, Western Australia, 1996)

by Wilf Douglas (who died in March). His obituary appears on page 23.

OGMIOS Newsletter 2.11 (#23) : Spring — 30 April 2004ISSN 1471-0382 Editor: Nicholas D. M. Ostler

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 2OGMIOS Newsletter 2.11 (#23) : Spring — 30 April 2004

ISSN 1471-0382 Editor: Nicholas D. M. OstlerAssistant Editors: Roger Blench, Joseph Blythe, Serena D'Agostino, Christopher Hadfield, Francis M Hult, Andrea Ritter

Published by:Foundation for Endangered Languages,

Batheaston Villa, 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath BA1 7AA, Englande-mail: nostler@chibcha.demon.co.uk

Phone: +44/0 -1225-852865 Fax: +44/0 -1225-859258http://www.ogmios.org

Editorial: O Felix Peccatum Babel!...... 3Spoken Here: Travels among ThreatenedLanguages. Mark Abley.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Development of the Foundation ..... 3FEL Grants 2004 ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Alejandra Vidal (Pilagá).................................... 3

Jim Ellis (Talaabog) ........................................... 3

Andrei Filtchenko (Vasyugan Khanty) ............. 3

Daniela Croco de Oliveira (Sowaintê).............. 3

Mageret Okon (Kiong) ...................................... 3

Bidisha Som (Great Andamanese) .................... 3

This year's conference: FEL VIII Barcelona— On the Margin of Nations, 1-3 October2004... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3. Lang. Endangerment in the News ... 4Brazil’s Tariana and Sasha Aikhenvald: ForWant of a Word ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Chiricahua Apache: Movie spurs interest in‘Missing’ dialect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christraises profile of Aramaic .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

I'll teach you to speak Aramaic ......................... 6

Jesuit scholar who translated The Passion......... 6

Chile's Kawesqar, Yaghan: Say No More.. . 7

4. Appeals, News and Views fromEndangered Communities ................. 10Linguistic Study on the Usage of Irish in theGaeltacht Announced... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Official Language Status for Irish in Europe?.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Rajasthani language recognized ... . . . . . . . . 10

First ever daily newspaper in Welsh - Y Byd(‘The World’) .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Endangered Zolai, language of Myanmar. 11

Berber textbook goes on display .. . . . . . . . . 11

Microsoft working on Native Tongues .. . 11

User-friendly Dictionaries .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Gwynedd Council calls on Brittanygovernment to aid Breton ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Rodríguez Zapatero to strive for EUrecognition of Catalan.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

5. Allied Societies and Activities ..... 12NSW Aboriginal Languages DatabaseProject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Australia's endangered heritages .. . . . . . . . . . 13

Global Source Book on BioculturalDiversity: Call for Contributions.. . . . . . . . . 13

Native Amer. Literatures and Translation. 14

New Building Opened for EndangeredLanguages Archive and Research.. . . . . . . . . . 14

EBLUL recommendations for the Inter-Govt. Conf. on Draft Treaty of the EuropeanConstitution .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

6. Reports on Field Research........... 14Luri: final traces of a South BauchiLanguage of Central Nigeria .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Dyarum [=Kaiwari] people and theirlanguage .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Notes on the Panawa (Bujiyel) people andlanguage ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Notes on the Tunzu (Duguza) people andlanguage ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

7. Overheard on the Web................... 17Yale World Fellows Program... . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Digital race to save languages: Commentsfrom OLAC ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

8. Places to Go, on the Web and in theWorld............................................ 17Lesser Known Languages of India.. . . . . . . . . 17

Canadian Aboriginal News Service .. . . . . . . 17

Language Status in Afghanistan.. . . . . . . . . . . 17

Berkeley Survey Catalogue Online .. . . . . . . 18

Lexicography Discussion Group ... . . . . . . . . 18

Educational Linguistics Listserve.. . . . . . . . . 18

Creek Language Archive .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

New address for Cheyenne Language Page18

Valencian is now Valencian.org .. . . . . . . . . . 18

Kirrkirr 4.0 .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Linguist's Search Engine .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Info about Etribe.ca.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Research on Lang. Policy & Lang. Planning... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

10. Forthcoming Meetings.............. 1910th Linguapax Congress: Lang. Diversity,Sustainability and Peace, Barcelona, 20-3May 2004... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

4th SALTMIL Workshop on MinorityLangs. Lisbon, 24 May 2004... . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

11th Annual Stabilizing IndigenousLanguages Conf. Berkeley, 11-13 June,2004 ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20

Netherlands Organization for ScientificResearch (NWO), 23-28 August 2004,Amsterdam/Leiden: African, EndangeredLanguages, Andean-Amazonian .. . . . . . . . . . .20

August 26, 2004, NWO workshop EndangeredLanguages Program ......................................... 20

August 27/28 Symposium on Languages andCultures in the Andean/Amazonian Border .... 21

Symposium on Languages and Cultures of theAndean/Amazonian Border Area ................... 21

Law, Language and Linguistic Diversity,Beijing, 15-18 Sept. 2004 ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

III Mercator: Linguistic diversity andeducation: challenges and opportunities,Ljouwert (Fryslân), 25 - 27 Nov 2004... . .21

10. Publications of Interest..............21*Language Documentation and Description,vol. 1, ed. Peter K. Austin .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

Sharing a World of Difference: the Earth'slinguistic, cultural and biological diversity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21

"Native Languages As World Languages…","Lessons Learned for Native LanguageActivists …" ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Quichua and Spanish in the EcuadorianHighlands: The Effects of Long-termContact, by Marleen Haboud... . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

LINGUASHOP: CDROMs for MinorityLanguages of Europe .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

The lexicon of Proto Oceanic: culture &environment of ancestral Oceanic society.Vol. 2: physical env. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

"Getting Language Rights: the Rhetorics ofLanguage Endangerment and Loss" byJoseph Errington ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

*Thangani Bunuba: Stories from the BunubaElders of the Fitzroy Valley .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Beginning Creek: Mvskoke Emponvkv..22

"Language Shift from Mother Tonguestowards Fulfulde …"... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22

Learn Michif By Listening ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

11. Recent Meetings ......................23Does the EU have a language policy?Mercator Legislation conference, Tarragona... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

12. Valedictory...............................23Wilfrid Henry Douglas (died 22 March2004, aged 86) .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 3

Editorial:

O Felix Peccatum Babel!

Spoken Here: Travels amongThreatened Languages. MarkA b l e y .322 pp., Houghton Mifflin 2003; WilliamHeinemann 2004, ISBN 0 434 01153 3

Review by Nicholas Ostler

This Latin exclamation, "O Happy the Sinof Babel", one of the epigraphs that headthis book, is apparently due to J.R.R.Tolkien. Abley like most of the readers ofthis newsletter does not regard our divisioninto languages as a curse of humanexistence, and Tolkien, with hisimaginative creations of Middle-Earthlanguages in the style of Welsh, Finnishand Anglo-Saxon, has done as much asanyone to convey to fellow English-speakers what we are missing in ourmonolingual gloom.

Photo by Todd Church

Abley was first known to readers of Ogmiosin 1995 through his endangered languagepoem Glasburyon (still easily found atwww.ogmios.org/25.htm):

Tega du meun or glasburyon,k e r e f r i e n d e m i n - -"If you take the girl from the glasscastle,dear kinsman of mine," …yamna-men eso vrildan stiendeg e d e m i n v a r a t e din."As long as this world is standingyou'll be spoken of."

He has now written a book which is acontemplation on travels round a goodmany of the standing glass castles of theworld. He visits Northern Australia, to findMurrinh-Patha, the American South-east tospeak with the last speakers of Yuchi, theIsle of Man after Manx, Provence in searchof its "Lion's Tongue", the US North-eastfor Mohawk, and finally tracks down

Yiddish and Welsh. In the interims, hemeditates on some of the issues instinct inthese moments of life and death. Howdifferent are these worlds constructed inalien words? What has English got to dowith it? (As they say in Moscow, dont vorribi khepi.) How can some languages, likeBoro in the eastern Himalayas, offer wordsfor heart-rending concepts most of us miss?(onsra "to love for the last time", gagrom"to search below water by trampling,gabkhron "to be afraid of witnessing anadventure".) Can languages be sheltered,like endangered species? What does it taketo revive a language on the brink ofextinction?

This is a very thoughtful book. Abley has ajournalist's gift to jump from one incidentto another, autobiographical or historic,and draw from them telling details whichmake the reader think too. What of theparrot found by Alexander Humboldt, stillmouthing the Ature language after all itshuman speakers had gone?

Even if you are basically familiar with theendangered language predicament, I urgeyou to give this book a try. It is less acanter through the issues, as might havebeen written by a concerned linguist, farmore a ponder by a thinking outsider. He i ssensitive to the ambivalence of so manymembers of endangered languagecommunities, seeing how doubtful are therewards for loyalty to the old language. Butlanguage survival can only depend on suchindividuals.

He ends with a poignant re-analysis of theTower of Babel. What if God's motive werenot to punish overweening mortals forattempting a space programme, but rather toput them back on track; in fact, as the Booksays, to "scatter them abroad across the faceof the earth". This of course is just what allthose languages do, and have always done— put people in harmony with all the manyplaces that the earth has to offer.

But in reaching this humane conclusion,Abley is more orthodox than he may know.At least this was one meaning that ThomasAquinas too saw in the story:

Ita quidem et in turri Babel gestum est:malam enim pacem bona dissonantia solvit.Thomas Aquinas, Catena Aurea inMatthaeum, X, 13"Just so was it managed in the case of thetower of Babel: for a bad peace is dissolvedby a good dissonance."

2. Development of the Foundation

FEL Grants 2004

For reasons that still elude us — but musthave a lot to do with your generosity, andan increasing interest round the world in ourpublications — we find ourselves onceagain with more money to give away than

ever before: 3,500 pounds sterling thisyear. And this before we undertake ourserious fund-raising. (We can also thank thecurrent weakness of the US dollar, whichmakes our sterling go a lot farther.) Thefuture looks promising, if all of us can keepup this momentum.

Even so, we were able to give only 6 grants.They were chosen this year from a field of41 applications, almost all of them highlydeserving of support. It is still much toodifficult to win one of our awards. We shallgo on striving to improve matters, but asbefore, we are in your hands.

Most people will receive with this Ogmiosa plea to renew your membership in FEL:please take the opportunity to do so.Subscriptions to us in the UK are alreadycovered by GiftAid, if UK tax payers wish toask for this. We are not yet tax-deductible inthe USA; but our application is in with theInternal Revenue Service, and we hope toachieve this before the end of this year.

Here then are the lucky people, and thelanguages they want to foster.

Alejandra Vidal (Pilagá)receives US$1,580 to compile a firstpedagogical grammar, and a brief collectionof texts, in the Pilagá language of north-eastern Argentina, which has about 4,000speakers.

Jim Ellis (Talaabog)receives US$1,000 to publish an updatedCarolinian/Talaabog-English dictionaryand create reading materials for publicschool Talaabog classes. Talaabog is aminority language in the Pacific island ofSaipan, closely related to Carolinian, withfewer than a hundred speakers.

Andrei Filtchenko (VasyuganKhanty)

receives US$920 to document the languageand cultural heritage of the VasyuganKhanty of eastern Siberia. There are fewerthan 100 speakers of the language, all over50.

Daniela Croco de Ol ive ira(Sowain tê )

receives US$1,300 to collect data on theSowaintê language of Rondonia, Brazil,which is in the Nambikwara family, and wasthought to be extinct. Work will beundertaken with the last known speaker, amarried woman about 55 years old.

Mageret Okon (Kiong)receives US$961 to describe the phonologyof Kiong, a Korop language spoken byfewer than 1,000 in Okoyong in CrossRiver State, S.E. Nigeria. This is to be afirst step towards writing a grammar of thelanguage.

B i d i s h a S o m (GreatAndamanese)

receives US$609 to document the lexicon ofGreat Andamanese, together with agrammatical sketch. The language hasapproximately 36 speakers left, and i sspoken on the Andaman and Nicobar islandsin the Bay of Bengal.

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 4These grants are spread over languages inthree continents (S. America, Asia, Africa)and islands in two oceans (Pacific and andIndian). They are an earnest of theFoundation's commitment to languages allover the world

This year's conference: FEL VIIIBarcelona — On the Margin ofNations, 1-3 October 2004

This year FEL is returning to its Europeanroots. After four years ranging over theAmericas, North Africa and Australia, weshall be meeting in Barcelona, the capitalof Europe’s most populous non-nationallanguage community, and a global bywordfor style and elegance. Our content too willhave a more European tinge: some 35% ofthe presentations focus on Europeanminority languages, and their issues. Thisyear, for the first time, we shall haveposters as well as presentations– perhaps areminder of how distinctively literatealmost every minority language in Europeis. As a result, with close to 50contributions drawn from every continentunder sun, there is shaping up a riot oflinguistic colour, something else for whichEurope is all too famous, in many senses.

The theme for this year is On t h eMargins of Nations: EndangeredLanguages and Linguistic R i g h t s .Many minority languages are poised on theedge of different majority communities; theterms of debate of minority and majority arebeing re-defined in the present era of globalpowers and communications; and there is aninevitable interplay between centres ofgovernment and the initiatives coming upfrom local communities. Keynote speakerswill be flying in from the Basque Country(Patxi Goenaga), from California (LeanneHinton), and from Siberia via Fryslân onthe North Sea (Tjeerd de Graaf).

The conference proper runs from 1 to 3O c t o b e r , but there are also uniqueopportunities before and after to visitcuriosities in this corner of Europe. On 29-30 September we shall visit the V a ld ’ A r a n , across the Pyrenees, whereCatalunya administers a region that speaksnot Catalan (nor Spanish, French orBasque!) but Occitan. And on 4 October weshall be in P e r p i n y à in Llenguadoc-Rousillon, where Catalan is still (andincreasingly) spoken within France.

Full details of the conference — and a fairswathe of Catalan’s history (we arebenefiting richly from the learning of ourconference chair, Joan Albert Argenter, theholder of the UNESCO Chair on Languagesand Education in Barcelona) — will soon beavailable at our web-site www.ogmios.org.In the meantime, a good contact to getdetails is Joan Moles JMoles@iecat.net,with postal address :Càtedra UNESCO de Llengües I Educació, 8th

FEL, Institut de Estudis Catalans, Carrer deCarme 47, E-08001 Barcelona, Catalunya,Spain.

3. Lang. Endangerment

in the News

Brazil’s Tariana and SashaAikhenvald: For Want of a Word[from New Scientist 9 April 2004::www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp]

Photo by Michael Amendolia

Imagine how different politics would be ifdebates were conducted in Tariana, anAmazonian language in which it is agrammatical error to report somethingwithout saying how you found it out - asAlexandra Aikhenvald tells us its speakerstell her. Tariana is in danger of dying. Witheach such disappearance we risk losinginsights into different ways of thinking.Aikhenvald told Adrian Barnett about therace to record languages

Tell us about recording a d y i n gl a n g u a g e . . .A student of mine found an old man whosaid, “Yes, I speak Baré” - an Amazonianlanguage that we thought was extinct. Ichecked that he knew the few Baré words Iknew, then I sat down and talked with himfor two months. Senhor Candelário was agreat man. He would tell hunting stories,and stories about his life.

His mother had been the only person hecould speak Baré with. After she died hekept it alive by talking to himself when hewas drunk. So the language had been almostliterally pickled in alcohol until I recordedit. When I left we both said: “See youagain.” Six months later I got news that hehad died.

So Baré died with him?A language doesn’t fall over a precipice, i tsort of slides into oblivion. A few peopleknow five Baré words here, 20 there. Somebecome “rememberers,” that is, they canproudly recite poems or stories at length,but have no idea what they mean. At thatstage all the concepts, the elegance and theembodied world view have gone. You justhave shards. So functionally, yes, Baré i sgone.

Isn’t it dangerous, travelling tothese remote places?

I suppose it is, but because I am a womanand alone, people trust me and I can getinformation that would probably beimpossible otherwise. I did once have to runaway from a drunken miner. But that was ina town. In the more remote villages theylike me, I have respect and I am safe. I havealso been adopted into families.

And the environment?I have seen snakes. People think that if yougo to these places you must be some kind ofIndiana Jones character but I am not. I grewup in a big city. I can’t swim. I can’t evenride a bicycle.

That makes you sound braver s t i l l ,canoeing on jungle rivers...Maybe just light-headed. I don't think aboutit. I can’t possibly learn to swim. But it’sincredibly fascinating to discover a wholelanguage. Of course, when I come back Iusually have some sort of infection orstomach disease. But eventually I get betterand then I want to go back.

How do you explain what you ared o i n g ?When I was preparing a bilingual dictionaryof Tariana - another Amazonian language -and Portuguese I gave a workshop and about300 people came. I showed them this verypoor, very old Tariana grammar book andexplained that I wanted to do a more truthfulone - I said, “Your names will be on i tbecause it is a community book.” And theysaid, “Oh yes, then we can teach ourchildren better. This old book has manymistakes. Our language will be likePortuguese, it'll be a proper language.”

And what does that mean to them?In that area you are identified with yourfather’s language, and if you speak aborrowed language like Portuguese instead,you are a lesser person. But with adictionary they can say, “Now, I amlearning my father’s language back” andthis gives them some security andconfidence. They start to speak it with prideand not apologetically. I find that veryrewarding.

What happens then? You c a nhardly say to most people, “ S o ,tel l me about your transit ivev e r b s . . . ”I always do whatever the people in thevillage are doing. If I didn’t join in theywould treat me differently. When I hearsomething interesting I either ask a directquestion or I get them to tell me stories. Iask questions and people say, “Oh, how didyou know that? OK, we will talk to youmore.”

Once I asked, “Can I use this word thisway?” and the response was, “Of course,you’re foreign, you can say a wrong thing.But I can't say that.”

What’s the most difficult languageyou've come across?

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 5It took me 10 years to get the grammar ofTariana. Of course, Finnish is probablyharder.

How did you become fascinated b ylanguages? I grew up in Moscow, in what was supposedto be a monolingual society, but in thestreet I’d hear all sorts of different accentsand speech patterns.

Then we used to go to Estonia for oursummer holidays. If you spoke Russian toan Estonian they ignored you but if youlearned some Estonian they were very nice.

Also my great-uncles and great-aunts wereJewish, educated people originally fromUkraine, and I was intrigued by theconsistent language mistakes they made.

And at school?When I was 11 and I was rebelling, Icollected the phrase “I don't want to go toschool” in as many languages as I couldfind. I had it in 52.

What languages did you s tudyformal ly?At university I started on Balto-Finniclanguages, as I already knew Estonian. Thenmy supervisor said, “With your name, theauthorities will never let you be amainstream scholar in the USSR.” I shouldstudy something obscure. I had a Jewishname and Russia was very anti-Semitic. Ilooked around, became fascinated by Hittiteand the Anatolian family of languages, andthat became my master’s.

A colleague recommended Berber for myPhD. It was the classic colonial situation:the French linguists had dismissed theselanguages as “just dialects,” so there weresome 14 languages that no one wasstudying.

How did you get from North Africato the Amazon?Perestroika started, thankfully, and I sawthis job in southern Brazil. I got it, thenfound that many Brazilian linguists areextremely possessive of “their” languages.But there is this huge Arawak languagefamily, spanning South America, whosemembers are as different from each other asEnglish is from German and are as differentfrom members of other language families asthese are from Hungarian.

So few linguists study Arawak languagesthat you can just pick and choose. I decidedto go to the least explored part, which i swhere Brazil, Venezuela and Colombiameet. I arrived at this tiny border town andwithin a few days of just walking around Iheard two languages that were supposed tobe extinct.

How do you reach the more remotegroups?I arrive in the town, some people will pickme up and we go upriver in one of theircanoes. I think they cooperate partly

because I am not Brazilian. There is a lot ofinstitutionalised racism in Brazil and as aforeigner I am seen as being outside that. Ithelps immensely. And these people aretrying to protect their cultural traditions andlanguages against encroaching linguisticd o m i n a n c e - t h i s internationalmonolingualism.

Why is it important to preservethese languages?First, to learn about how peoplecommunicate and how the human mindworks. What are the categories that areimportant enough for people to expressthem in their languages?

If these so-called “exotic” languages die,we’ll be left with just one world view. Thiswon’t be very interesting, and we’ll havelost a vast amount of information abouthuman nature and how people perceive theworld.

Second, without their language and itsstructure, people are rootless. In recordingit you are also getting down the stories andfolklore. If those are lost a huge part of apeople’s history goes. These stories oftenhave a common root that speaks of a realevent, not just a myth. For example, everyAmazonian society ever studied has a legendabout a great flood.

What’s your favourite example of abig difference between languages?In English I can tell my son: “Today I talkedto Adrian,” and he won’t ask: “How do youknow you talked to Adrian?” But in somelanguages, including Tariana, you alwayshave to put a little suffix onto your verbsaying how you know something - we call i t“evidentiality.” I would have to say: “Italked to Adrian, non-visual,” if we hadtalked on the phone. And if my son toldsomeone else, he would say: “She talked toAdrian, visual, reported.” In that language,if you don’t say how you know things, theythink you are a liar.

This is a very nice and useful tool. Imagineif, in the argument about weapons of massdestruction, people had had to say how theyknew about whatever they said. That wouldhave saved us quite a lot of breath.

And what about different types ofvocabulary?The story about Inuit words for snow iscompletely wrong. That language groupuses multiple suffixes, so you can derive not50, but 150 words for snow. But the Tarianado have a lot of terms for ants. It isimportant to know that some bite andothers are edible, for instance.

Do languages hold any surprisesfor you?I had been working with Tariana for nineyears before I came across the word for“purple.” I was astounded. I did not realisethere could be a word for purple in alanguage that does not distinguish betweengreen and blue.

S u c h t h i n g s g e t l anguagesdescribed as “primitive”...There is no such thing as a primitivelanguage. Many tribal people now speakseveral languages. They can often learnEnglish or Portuguese much more easilythan incomers can learn their language.

People complain about irregular verbs inPortuguese, but that’s nothing compared tothe irregular verb structure in Navaho, forexample. I’ve known missionaries say,“These Indians, they are just making it up adhoc. They are just doing it to be difficult andto keep us out.” Such people do notappreciate the level of sophistication andcomplexity some of these languages havereached.

How do you decide when to stopgathering information?With Tariana I stopped when I was notfinding any new verbs. There were stillmore names for birds and ants. But I couldnot identify all of them anyway. And thereare so many languages to work on. Adictionary means that the language is notcompletely lost and it empowers those whospeak the language to preserve their culturalidentity. That’s good.

H o w m a n y l a n g u a g e s h a v edisappeared in the last century?About 60 or 70 per cent of linguisticdiversity in the north-western region ofBrazil has gone in the last 100 years. Onthe Atlantic coast of Brazil it’s worse -about 99 per cent - and around the world thefigure is 60 to 70 per cent. It has been veryrapid.

Is there a lost language that y o uwould love to have spoken?Oh, yes. So many, so many ...

What language do you dream in?If I dream of Tariana, they speak Tariana.Sometimes I dream of Estonia, and theyspeak Estonian. In my nightmares, peoplespeak to me and I understand, but I can’tanswer ...

Chiricahua Apache: Movie spursinterest in ‘Missing’ dialectTuesday, December 16, 2003

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) Word sweptthrough the Mescalero reservation like anearly winter wind that characters in the film,The Missing, spoke a dialect of Apache.Most adult Apaches in the audiences havesaid they could understand every word of theChiricahua dialect. That’s what Mescalerocouncilman, Berle Kanseah and Chiricahualinguist, Elbys Hugar intended as technicaladvisers for the new Ron Howard film.“Television and popular culture are killingminority cultures, starting with language,”Kanseah said. It was the first film that anyof them could remember in which Apachewas spoken well enough on screen to beunderstood. Usually, Westerns were dubbed

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 6in Navajo, a related language, saidsupporting actor Steve Reevis, a MontanaBlackfoot, who has worked several filmsbut never spoken Apache before TheMissing.

The film is set in southwestern New Mexicoin 1885, just as the last of the Apacheconflict was ending. The slavers are led by abrujo, a medicine man gone bad, played byEric Schweig. “Many Apaches have goneback two and three times to see the film,”Kanseah added.

The producers gave a screening for 500Mescalero students in Alamogordo lastmonth, and the tribe has been bussingstudents to cinemas in nearby Ruidoso. “Itmade me feel proud,” said Megan Crespin,8, from Santo Domingo School. Therearen’t that many Chiricahuas left. They wererounded up and sent to Florida in 1886,shunted back to Alabama, Oklahoma andfinally to the Mescalero homeland in south-central New Mexico in 1913.

There are only about 300 people who arefluent in Chiricahua today.

Mel Gibson's The Passion of theChr i s t raises profile of Aramaic

The heartening decision to shoot this filmin its supposed original languages —Aramaic and Latin — has provoked a suddenwidespread recognition that, despite theurban myth, English was not "good enoughfor Jesus" after all. Indeed, one of MelGibson's motives for choice of language isreputedly that he wanted to get away fromthe association with "British English" thatseem to be hang about movie treatments ofChrist and his era.

A number of press articles have appearedwhich endeavour to trace the few remainingmodern speakers of Jesus's mother tongue(which had once been spoken from Egypt tothe Hindu Kush as the lingua franca of thePersian Empire, and which, borne byChristian missonaries, would later go on toreach Kerala and Mongolia). One smallcommunity where it survives close to itsorigins, in Ma'aloula, Syria, has beenparticularly favoured. (see e.g. the FinancialTimes article of 27 March by Kim Ghattas athttp://www.mafhoum.com/press7/187C35.htm )Many more articles are gathered at

http://www.yourdictionary.com/elr/christ.htmlbut few throw much light on the features ofAramaic "as she is spoke" in thereconstruction of Fr William Fulco. Hereare a couple of articles which give a littlemore l inguis t ic information, andincidentally suggest a little of what it takesto revive a language of the past, even forsuch a momentary resurrection as a film-shoot.

I'll teach you to speak AramaicBill Cleveland (Georgetown Voice) 26 Feb2004

Three years ago, Fr. William Fulco, S.J.received a phone call from a productioncompany asking him to help translate amovie script. "Hey, Padre, its Mel. I've gota project for you," said a voice on the otherend of the phone. As a professor of AncientMediterranean Studies at Loyola MarymountUniversity in Los Angeles, where heteaches courses like "Near EasternArchaeology" and "Intermediate ClassicalHebrew," his litany of languages includesAramaic and Latin. Fulco realized he wasspeaking to Mel Gibson, and soon agreed tohelp Gibson work on The Passion of TheChrist, a movie version of the biblicalstory that comes out this week. The film'sdialogue is completely in Aramaic andLatin. Fulco helped with both.

Translating the script was not a simpleexercise. "A lot of the language is anartistic interpretation," says Fulco. "Youhave to get a story out of it. The problem isthat the thinking in ancient languages i sdifferent from the thinking in English. It'snot just like a mathematical transcription;it's a different way of thinking."

The Aramaic was particularly challenging,as it is a language with no tenses. Fulco'stask was further complicated by a lack ofinformation about Aramaic as it was usedduring the first century. "We have Aramaicdocuments from the Hebrew Bible, but that'sabout four or five hundred years earlier," hesays. The next set of extant texts is about500 years too late. The difference is far fromnegligible: "Aramaic changes as much asEnglish did from Beowulf to Chaucer tomodern English," says Fulco. "But wewanted it to be as authentic as possible. Itried to be as plausible as I could with theAramaic."

Fulco's work on the movie began astranslator, but he quickly realized he wouldneed to be on the set to coach the actors indelivering their lines.

"I had to coach all of the actors witheverything they said. I gave them aphonetic transcription and I also gavethem, beneath the phonetic transcription,the exact translation," he says. The idea wasto get the actors to understand the meaningof each sound, and emphasize accordingly,and it seems to have worked. Many peoplewho have seen the movie commented thatthe actors speak Aramaic as if it was theirfirst language. "For some strange reason, Ithink they had an easier time with theAramaic than with the Latin," he says."They worked harder with it. It was moreforeign to them and more fun to do, whereaseverybody thought they knew a bit of Latinand they were caught off guard."

Fulco then retranslated most of the ancientdialogue back into English. In the film, thisretranslated script is used in the subtitles togive audiences a truer sense of thedialogue…

Jesuit scholar who translated T h ePa s s i o n

Nathan Bierma (Chicago Tribune), 3 Mar 04

… In 2002, Gibson gave Fulco the scriptwritten by Benedict Fitzgerald, mostlyderived from the Gospels, and asked Fulcoto translate it into Aramaic , Hebrew andLatin. Fulco later translated the script backinto English subtitles.

The use of multiple languages in the filmreflects the linguistic diversity of Palestineduring Jesus' life. Most people spokeAramaic, which the Jews adopted whileexiled in Babylon in the 6th Century beforeJesus' birth. Hebrew, their language beforethe exile, was retained in religious writingsand liturgy (and is spoken by Jesus inprayer in "The Passion"). Latin was spokenby the Roman soldiers occupying theregion. Greek was spoken throughout theRoman Empire, thanks to Alexander theGreat, but was seen as a sign ofsecularization and thus resisted by manyJews.

Fulco left Greek out of The Passion,substituting Latin in occasional cases whereGreek might have been used. He also mademostly imperceptible distinctions betweenthe elegant Latin of Pilate and the crudeLatin of soldiers, thanks to an X-ratedsource he found on his shelf.

"I tracked down some obscene graffiti fromRoman army camps," Fulco said."Somebody who knows Latin really well,their ears will fall off. We didn't subtitlethose words."

Fulco even confessed to some linguisticmischief.

"Here and there I put in playful things whichnobody will know. There's one scene whereCaiaphas turns to his cohorts and sayssomething in Aramaic. The subtitle says,`You take care of it.' He's actually saying,`Take care of my laundry.'"

Other linguistic tricks of Fulco's serve afunction in the script.

For example, he incorporated deliberatedialogue errors in the scenes where theRoman soldiers, speaking Aramaic, areshouting to Jewish crowds, who respond inLatin. To illustrate the groups' inability tocommunicate with each other, each side

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 7speaks with incorrect pronunciations andword endings.

Later, "there's an exchange where Pilateaddresses Jesus in Aramaic, and Jesusanswers in Latin. It's kind of a nifty littlesymbolic thing: Jesus is going to beat himat his own game," Fulco said. "One line [inthat exchange] I kind of enjoyed is whenJesus says, `My power is given from above,otherwise my followers would not haveallowed this.' That's [spoken in] thepluperfect subjunctive."

It takes a linguist to appreciate thatgrammatical nicety as remarkable for beinguttered by a Palestinian Jew who mostlyspoke Aramaic and Greek.

For the relatively few Middle EasternChristians who still speak Aramaic, "ThePassion" may sound riddled with mistakes --spurring Fulco to point out, "modernAramaic dialects are as different [fromancient ones] as Chaucer and modernEnglish."

Still, now that the movie is in generalrelease, Fulco fully expects to get an earfulabout his use of languages.

"We linguists are a crazy bunch," he said."The more obscure the language, the morepeople try to prove their territoryworthwhile and say, by God, we're going tosniff out errors."

Chile's Kawesqar, Yaghan: SayNo MoreBy JACK HITT: New York Times, February29, 2004

Languages die the way many people do; athome, in silence, attended by loved onesstraining to make idle conversation. “Didyou sell any baskets,” Gabriela Pateritoasks her neighbour, Francisco Arroyo in hervowelly Spanish. She’s in her two-roomsnack in Puerto Eden, a tiny fishing villageon Wellington Island in the Patagoniaregion of southern Chile. There is a long,long silence. She’s a short woman, densefrom some 70 years of life, but with a girl’shead of beautiful black hair. In the room areFrancisco and a few others, among the lastsix speakers of Kawesqar, the languagenative to these parts since the last ice age.

Linguists now estimate that half of the morethan 6,000 languages currently spoken inthe world will become extinct by the end ofthis century. In reaction, there are numerousefforts to slow the die-off – from graduatestudents heading into the field to compiledictionaries, to charitable foundationsdevoted to the cause, like the EndangeredLanguage Fund, to transnational agencies,some with melancholic names appropriateto the task, like the European Bureau forLesser Used Languages.

Chile started a modest program, not longafter the ugly debates surrounding

Christopher Columbus in 1992, to saveKawesqar (Ka-WES-kar) and Yaghan, thelast two native languages of southern Chile.But how does one salvage an ailinglanguage when the economic advantages of,say, Spanish are all around you? And is i tpossible to step inside a dying language tolearn whether it can be saved and, morerudely, whether it should be?

Gabriela crams another stick into her woodstove to keep us dry and warm. The rain i scoming now like nails, as it does mostdays. The silence stretches out. You beginto feel it, like a cold draft. Three or fouraching minutes of it. My boots need someexamining.

“Canastos,” mutters Francisco, repeatingthe Spanish word for baskets, his gruntingtone suggesting a bad day. When languagesdie under the pressure of a dominant tonguelike Spanish, there is a familiar path ofretreat. The language will withdraw from thepublic sphere first, hiding out in the livingrooms and kitchens of the fluent, where i tbecomes increasingly private and intimateand frail. Francisco takes a two-foot lengthof reedy grass and softens it by rubbing i tagainst the stove. All around weavingbegins –the distinctive Kawesqar baskets,small with long grassy handles.

“It’s been raining all day,” Francisco adds,again in Spanish. Juan Carlos, who is 39and my guide, motions me to give him acigarette. Juan Carlos was born and grew uphere but left at 15 for school. Now college-educated, he has devoted his life and work tohelping the Kawesqar community. (He hasjust finished a documentary film about theKawesqar.) He doesn't smoke, he told me,except here. For the last few days, smokingand enduring long silences have prettymuch accounted for our social life. I haven’tsmoked seriously for 15 years. I’m blowingthrough two packs a day.

Every window here frames a magnificentphoto op. Outside Gabriela’s is a curvingline of shacks hugging the shore of a smallbay, bright red and yellow fishing boatsbeached in front, and behind, a dramaticascent of mountains capped in white,gushing here and there with little snow-meltwaterfalls. Full-spectrum rainbows breakout so frequently that no one notices but meand the tourists. They, too, are visible outof the window, all wearing their orangecruise-ship-issue rain slickers, theircameras aimed aloft. To get here, it’s athree-day chug by boat through the cold,uninhabited island channels of Patagonia.Once a week, the tourists come. They haveless than an hour onshore to feel theintensity of its remote beauty (and maybebuy a native basket) before motoring out tothe anchored cruise ship and a night ofpisco sours.

“A lot of rain,” announces Juan Carlos. Thefire crackles and hisses. The rain continues,staccato. “Rain,” Gabriela adds.

I sit quietly, smoking my way through theirSamuel Beckett dialogue. “Not manybaskets,” Francisco says, offering his fullreport. I wonder if I should ask them tospeak Kawesqar, but I don’t want to intrude.I want to get a sense of when they naturallyconverse in their language. Later, JuanCarlos tells me that the elder Kawesqar feelawkward speaking their moribund languagearound me. It’s a combination ofembarrassment and a sense that they don’twant to make me feel uncomfortable. As therain pours down, I light up a cigarette. Myvery presence here to observe this thing,difficult to see, has made it disappear.

The Kawesqar are famous for theiradaptation to this cold, rainy world ofislands and channels. The first Europeanswere stunned. The Kawesqar and the othernatives of the region travelled in canoes,naked, oiled with blubber, occasionallywearing an animal skin. The men sat at thefront and hunted sea lions with spears. Thewomen paddled. The children stayed in thesanctuary between their parents,maintaining fire in a sand pit built in themiddle of the canoe. Keeping fire going in aland of water was the most critical andsingular adaptation of the Kawesqar. As aresult, fire blazed continuously in canoesand at the occasional landfall. The firstEuropean explorers marvelled at the sight ofso much fire in a wet and cold climate, andthe Spanish named the southernmostarchipelago the land of fire, Tierra delFuego.

When Charles Darwin first encountered theKawesqar and the Yaghans, years before hewrote The Origin of Species, he is said tohave realized that man was just anotheranimal cunningly adapting to localenvironmental conditions. But that contactand the centuries to follow diminished theKawesqar, in the 20th century, to a fewdozen individuals. In the 1930s, theremaining Kawesqar settled near a remotemilitary installation – Puerto Eden, nowinhabited mostly by about 200 Chileansfrom the mainland who moved here to fish.

The pathology of a dying language shifts toanother stage once the language hasretreated to the living room. You can almosthear it disappearing. There is Grandma,fluent in the old tongue. Her son mightunderstand her, but he also learned Spanishand grew up in it. The grandchildren alllearn Spanish exclusively and giggle atGrandma’s funny chatter.

In two generations, a healthy language,even one with hundreds of thousands ofspeakers, can collapse entirely, sometimeswithout anyone noticing. This process i shappening everywhere. In North America,the arrival of Columbus and the Europeanswho followed him whittled down theroughly 300 native languages to only about170 in the 20th century. According toMarianne Mithun, a linguist at theUniversity of California at Santa Barbara,the recent evolution of English as a global

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 8language has taken an even greater toll.“Only one of those 170 languages is notofficially endangered today,” Mithun said:“Greenlandic Eskimo.”

Without the revitalization of youth, alanguage can go from being alive toendangered (declining speakers among theyoung), then moribund (only elderlyspeakers left alive), then dead (the lastknown speaker dies) all linguistic terms ofart.

William Sutherland, the author of a study inNature magazine last spring, compared thedie-off to an environmental catastrophe.According to Sutherland, 438 languages arein the condition of Kawesqar, that is, withfewer than 50 speakers, making them“critically endangered” a category that inthe animal world includes 182 birds and 180mammals. Languages “seem to follow thesame patterns” as animals, Sutherland told areporter for Bloomberg News. “Stabilityand isolation seem to breed abundance inthe number of bird and animal species, andthey do the same for languages.”Converse ly , the ins tab i l i ty andhomogenization of the global economy i screating a juggernaut of monoculture,threatening plants and animals. But,Sutherland makes clear; the one life formeven more endangered is human culture.

According to Daniel Nettle and SuzanneRomaine, authors of Vanishing Voices, thelast time human language faced such a crisisof collapse was when we invented farming,around 8000 B.C., during the switch-overfrom highly mobile hunting and gatheringto sedentary agriculture. Then the multitudeof idioms developed on the run cohered intolanguage families, like Indo-European,Sino-Tibetan and Elamo-Dravidian. Thedifference this time is that with eachlanguage gone, we may also lose whateverknowledge and history were locked up in itsstories and myths, along with the humanconsciousness embedded in its grammaticalstructure and vocabulary.

One often hears the apocryphal story aboutthe Inuit and their 40 words for “snow.” Trueor not, it acknowledges the inherent humansense that each language, developed over acertain time and geography, is a revelationof what we call “a sense of place.” To letlanguages die out, en masse, is to permit thephrase “terra incognita” to creep back ontoour environmental maps. One organizationo f l i n g u i s t s , b i o l o g i s t s andanthropologists, known as Terralingua, isworking to keep languages alive byhighlighting what gets lost when they fadeaway. “I remember when I was doingfieldwork in Mexico,” said Luisa Maffi,Terralingua’s president. She encountered aman whose native Mayan was alreadyblurred with Mexican Spanish. He hadtravelled with his 2-year-old daughter to ahealth clinic because she was sick withserious diarrhoea. “He no longer knew theword for yakan k’ulub wamal,” she said,using the Mayan term for a plant long

known to cure the problem. “It wasprobably growing in his backyard.”

A handful of linguists dismiss salvageefforts like Terralingua’s as futile exercises.They say languages just die, as spokenLatin did, and then are reborn as French,Spanish and Italian. No big deal. Or morebluntly, all this sentimentality about dyinglanguages is just another symptom ofacademe’s mewling, politically correctminority-mongering. In the magazineProspect, the writer Kenan Maliksummarized this position in an essay titledLet Them Die.

“There is nothing noble or authentic aboutlocal ways of life; they are often simplydegrading and backbreaking,” Malik argued.“What if half the world’s languages are onthe verge of extinction? Let them die inpeace.”

Linguists counter that yes, there is a naturalprocess of language death; but the order ofmagnitude of the current die-off is whatshould create concern. What’s happeningwith human culture now, they say, shouldshock people the way the Cuyahoga Rivercatching fire in 1969 radically changed howmany thought about the environment.

To general linguists, the dismissiveposition is just deliberate ignorance. Butthey also argue that the utilitarian case i stoo narrow. In peril is not just knowledgebut also the importance of diversity and thebeauty of grammar. They will tell you thatevery language has its own unique theologyand philosophy buried in its very sinews.For example, because of the Kawesqar’snomadic past, they rarely use the futuretense; given the contingency of movingconstantly by canoe, it was all butunnecessary. The past tense, however, hasfine gradations. You can say, “A bird flewby.” And by the use of different tenses, youcan mean a few seconds ago, a few days ago,a time so long ago that you were not theoriginal observer of the bird (but you knowthe observer yourself) and, finally, amythological past, a tense the Kawesqar useto suggest that the story is so old that it nolonger possesses fresh descriptive truth butrather that other truth which emerges fromstories that retain their narrative powerdespite constant repetition.

“There was once a man and a woman whokilled a sacred deer,” Gabriela began,translating into Spanish a Kawesqar taletold in the mythological tense. “Afterward agreat flood came. The waters rose until theywere standing in it up to their waist.Everyone died but the man and the woman.”Then, in time, she went on, from just theselast two Kawesqar, they figured out a way toendure, repopulate the land and revive thelife of the Kawesqar among the channelislands.

Outside, the rain kept coming down.

The rhythm of Puerto Eden became easierafter a few days. The fishermen headed out inthe morning, and the rest of us made socialcalls. In time, I got to hear some actualKawesqar spoken, and it sounded a lot likeHollywood’s generic Apache, but with a fewunique and impossible sounds. I learned tosay (My name is Jack, what’s yours?)

During these visits, always and constantly,dominant-culture television hollered at usfrom a corner. Besides meeting theKawesqar in Puerto Eden, I have to say, Icaught up on a lot of missed episodes of“MacGyver” and “Baywatch.”

Later in the week, Juan Carlos and I spentmore time at his sister’s house, and therethe evidence of European culture insinuatingitself deeply into the minds and habits ofthe Kawesqar was everywhere.

Maria Isabel is a few years older than herbrother. She was sick as a child and wasraised in Punta Arenas, on the Chileanmainland. She studied and lived inmetropolitan Santiago. She never had aKawesqar youth and can't speak thelanguage.

“I am Kawesqar,” she told me in Spanish, asif to acknowledge the inexplicable tugidentity has on all of us. When I asked her ifshe intended to learn her mother’s language,she insisted that she would. “I hope nextyear,” she said, unconvincingly.

I spent a lot of time with Maria Isabelbecause her husband, Luis, was installingtheir first flushable toilet. When we weren’ttalking about Kawesqar, we were measuringholes, figuring out how to run a sewer pipeinto the bay and reading the toilet-assemblyinstructions (helpfully printed in fivedominant languages). Eventually, the holewas properly centred, so we set down thebeeswax ring, lifted the porcelain carefullyand pressed it into its permanent location.

Does anything say Western dominance quitelike the flush of a private john?

Well, maybe one other thing. In ourintimate chats and smokes, Juan Carlos toldme about his own three children. He liveswith them back on the mainland, in a housewhere two other adults speak someKawesqar. One is Juan Carlos’s brother,Jose, a professor of anthropology at theUniversidad Arcis Magallanes in PuntaArenas.

And the other is Oscar Aguilera, a linguist atthe university. He’s of Spanish descent, buthe has devoted his life’s work to thelanguage of the Kawesqar.

Aguilera arrived in Puerto Eden fromSantiago in 1975 with the simple intentionof “describing” the language as a linguist.There he met a people nearly cut off fromthe outside world. Among the little contactthey’d had, oddly, was with NASA. Thespace agency came to the village in 1959 to

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 9conduct experiments on the ability ofhumans to withstand extremely coldtemperatures. An elderly villager toldAguilera that the NASA scientists asked oneKawesqar man to sit naked in a cold tentwith his feet in a bucket of water. He fled inthe middle of the night.

Aguilera befriended Gabriela’s in-laws andknew Gabriela’s husband well. He got toknow her two young boys, and when theywere teenagers, Aguilera took them toSantiago, where they finished school andwent to college. Now they all live togetherin Punta Arenas with Juan Carlos’s threeyoung children, who use the affectionateterm for “grandfather” with Aguilera.

When I visited the home for dinner onenight, the three children ran up to greet me.They attend the local British school, and sowere taught in Spanish and English. Onelittle girl proudly read me last night’shomework: “I played in the yard,” and “Irode my Bicycle,” she beamed. It’s coolspeaking the dominant language.

Later, I asked Juan Carlos why they didn’tspeak Kawesqar at home. Wouldn’t it makesense, since the children were at that magiclanguage-acquisition stage of youth?

“We are going to teach them later,” he said.Juan Carlos added that they needed theproper books. Of course, Aguilera is theman who compiled the grammar andteaching manual for Kawesqar and i sworking on a dictionary with Jose. Butgovernment funds for these projects arespotty, and Aguilera admits it will be yearsbefore they are completed.

Their answers revealed just how difficultlanguage resurrection is. Learning alanguage, even your mother’s, requiresenormous motivation. Plus, Juan Carlosand Jose say they are “semi-speakers”- inpart because they were taken away fromhome so young to be educated in Spanish-dominated schools. Even the fluentKawesqar speakers in Puerto Eden haveoccasionally asked Aguilera, thelexicographer, to remind them of a certainword. “Some days,” Aguilera told me whenwe were alone for a while, “I think that Imight be the last speaker of Kawesqar.”

Among linguists, the sorrowful story of the“last speaker” is practically a literary genre.The names ring out, like a Homericcatalogue. Ned Maddrell, the last speaker ofManx, died in the village of Cregneash onthe Isle of Man in 1974. Tevfik Esenc, thelast speaker of Ubykh, died in Turkey in1992. Red Thunder Cloud, the last speakerof Catawba, died in 1996. More are coming.Marie Smith-Jones in Alaska, the lastspeaker of Eyak, is 83 years old.

Farther south from the Kawesqar, I learned,lived the last speaker of Yaghan. Manypeople urged me to visit Puerto Williamsand its native settlement, called Ukika,because of that intriguing notion, that all of

Yaghan now dwells entirely in the mind ofone elderly woman, Cristina Calder—n.

Right away, though, I discovered that the“last speaker” of Yaghan is accustomed tocharging passengers from the cruise shipthat arrives each week for the privilege oftaking her picture or hearing a few of thelast words in her unusual-soundinglanguage. From me she wanted impossiblesums of money. When I tried to sneak inearly one morning for a quick interview,word travelled in the village so fast thatwithin minutes her granddaughter/bookingagent was through the door and a screamingmatch broke out (not in Yaghan).

That night, Aguilera and I decided to pursuea rumour that there was in fact anotherYaghan, a penultimate speaker namedEmelinda, who hadn’t mastered the cruise-ship racket. We managed to get insideEmelinda’s house without attractingattention.

She was a kind old woman whose Yaghan,according to Aguilera, was authentic. Ourconversation was brief and brittle. When Iasked Emelinda what could be done to keepYaghan alive, she said she was alreadydoing it, as if a formal programme wereunder way. “I talk to myself in Yaghan,”Emelinda explained in Spanish. “When Ihang up my clothes outside, I say the wordsin Yaghan. Inside the house, I talk inYaghan all day long.”

I asked her if she ever had a conversationwith the only other person in the world whocould easily understand her, CristinaCalderón, the official “last speaker” ofYaghan. “No,” Emelinda said impatiently,as if I’d brought up a sore topic. “The twoof us don’t talk.”

After returning from Chile, I learned that thelast-speaker hustle isn’t new. RememberRed Thunder Cloud, the last Catawbaspeaker? Actually, he was Cromwell AshbieHawkins West, the son of an African-American druggist in Newport, R.I.According to Ives Goddard of theSmithsonian, West was “a great mimic andfast learner.” He quickly mastered thelanguage, donned some turquoise jewelleryand, until his death in 1996, worked thelast-speaker circuit. Usually, he could befound at county fairs, hawking Red ThunderCloud’s Accabonac Princess AmericanIndian Tea: “fresh from the American forestto you.”

There’s a paradox in those last-speakerstories. After all, what is driving theselanguages off the cliff but sheer economics?It only makes a kind of poetic sense that intheir death throes their speakers wouldresort to economic ploys. But this is alsowhere the environmental metaphor ofendangered languages falls apart. Gettingdown to a few in number is irreversibly theend of, say, a fern or a tiger. For humans,it’s often the beginning of politics.

The very success of English as a globallanguage is prompting a revival of ancestraltongues. Compared to the die-off now inprogress, it’s a drop in the bucket. Still,many native American languages havereac ted aga ins t these near-deathexperiences. The Miami in Oklahoma andthe Mohawk straddling the Canadian borderhave full-scale programmes for languagerevival. Native Hawaiian, also written offonly a few decades ago, has 18 schoolsteaching a new generation in the originallanguage of the islands.

Partly with money from governmentlawsuits: the Catawba received $50 millionin 1993 after suing over land claim disputesdating to 1760, and partly with revenuefrom casinos, many of these tribes arerushing to get the programmes up andrunning before the last of the speakingelders die. The Tuscarora tribe near NiagaraFalls, N.Y., is down to Howdy Hill, the lastspeaker who grew up learning the languageat home. But now a revival program claimsas many as 25 new speakers.

Other languages are long past the lastspeaker, yet revival is still not out of thequestion. Stephanie Fielding is the great-great-niece of Fidelia Fielding, the lastspeaker of Mohegan, who died in 1908.Fielding is currently enrolled in M.I.T.’slinguistics programme. She is 58 anddevoted to resurrecting her ancestors’language, largely from her aunt’s diaries.The academic degree to which she aspireshas not yet been accredited. A master's witha concentration in “language reclamation”will be available from M.I.T. at the earliestby 2005 or 2006, according to NorvinRichards, an associate professor oflinguistics.

“The number of people who contacted us inthe last year is about 20, which inlinguistics is a bit largish,” Richards said.M.I.T. will have to compete with theUniversity of Arizona and the University ofAlaska Fairbanks, which already offerreclamation degrees.

Most of these language-revival movementsmodel themselves on the national languageof Israel. For more than two millenniums,Hebrew was found almost exclusively inScripture and rabbinical writings. Its retreatwas nearly complete – out of the publicsquare, into the house and finally into thescrolls of the Torah. But the early pioneersof what would become Israel faced apolitically charged question: which of theirlanguages should dominate? AshkenaziYiddish? Russian? German? SephardicLadino? The commonly agreed-upon answerwas supplied by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, theJewish linguist who used the stiff, formallanguage of the Bible to conjure intoexistence a modern version – now the mainlanguage of 3.6 million people. (Of course,Hebrew’scomeback has helped drive Yiddishand Ladino into “endangered” status.)

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 10Language revival as a means of identitypolitics may well be the way of the future.The big fight in linguistics over the pasttwo decades has been about English First.But first is no longer the question. Now thequestion is: What will be your secondlanguage? In America, the drift in high-school curriculum has always been toward asecond dominant language; French,Spanish, German, maybe Chinese if you’rea rebel. But what if the second languagecould be that of your ancestors?

That possibility is already proving to bequite popular with many people. As theirinitiatives succeed and become morevisible, they will drive into the open aquestion for English-speaking Americans,the owner-operators of the dominantlinguistic ecosystem. Do we want to dwellin a society that encourages linguisticrevival and cultural diversity, knowing thatwith it may come a lot of self-righteousminority-pitying? Or, shall we just sitcontentedly amid a huge cultural die-off,harrumphing like some drunk uncle at thefamily reunion angrily spilling his beer andgrowling, “Let ‘em die.” Keep in mind thatif the actuarial tables are correct, it meansthat once the languages start to die off inearnest, there will be a “death of the lastspeaker” article in the papers, on average,every 12 days.

4. Appeals, News and Views from

Endangered Communities

Linguistic Study on the Usage ofIrish in the Gaeltacht AnnouncedDublin, 31 Jan 2004Éamon Ó Cuív, T.D., Minister forCommunity, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairsannounced today that a contract to undertakea linguistic study on the usage of Irish inthe Gaeltacht is being awarded to Acadamhna hOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, University ofIreland, Galway, in conjunction with theNational Institute for Regional and SpatialAnalysis, University of Ireland, Maynooth.

It is estimated that the study, which willcost EUR550,223 (value added taxincluded), will take over 2 years to completeand that it will commence at the beginningof April this year. The intention is to usethe results of the study as a basis tostrengthen the linguistic development ofthe Gaeltacht as an area in which Irish isspoken and to review the official Gaeltachtareas as was recommended in the Report ofthe Gaeltacht Commission 2002.

"In view of the great changes that haveoccurred in the Gaeltacht since theestablishment of the Department of theGaeltacht in 1956 when the last majorarrangement of the boundaries of theGaeltacht was made-in terms of language

and settlement patterns, as well aseconomic, social, and technologicalchanges-it is necessary now to look afreshat the multilingual community that is in theGaeltacht today" says Minister Ó Cuív.

Announcing the news at the launch of aDevelopment Plan for the Irish Languageand the People of the Gaeltacht in Iveragh,Co. Kerry, the Minister said that it wasvitally important to evaluate the bestmethods of strengthening the Irishlanguage as the language of the Gaeltachtthrough providing comprehensivelinguistic information that would give abetter understanding of the forces affectingthe sustainability of the Irish language inthe Gaeltacht.

"Everybody agrees that there is acontinuing decline in the use of the Irishlanguage in the Gaeltacht", said theMinister. "If this decline continues it isonly a matter of time until there is an end tothe Gaeltacht as it was historicallyunderstood. It is vitally necessary thereforethat the Department of Community, Ruraland Gaeltacht Affairs should take steps nowto assemble and use comprehensiveinformation as a basis for developingfurther realistic policies to halt this decline.The challenge is to find the best way tostrengthen and preserve a productive, viableIrish language community for the future.That is the purpose of the linguistic studyand it is another practical step that indicatesthe appreciable progress being made inimplementing the recommendations in theReport of the Gaeltacht Commission."

The Minister said that the Irish-speakingand Gaeltacht community was under pressurefrom one of the most widely used languagesin the world. As a result of this it wasnecessary to look at strategies that wouldhelp in the successful delivery of the Irishlanguage from generation to generation inthe Gaeltacht and that would increase itsusage as an everyday language in all aspectsof life in the Gaeltacht. "It is mostimportant to find ways in which the nativepopulation of the Gaeltacht will be preparedto and confident about delivering thelanguage from generation to generation",said the Minister.

He said that no decision would be madeabout redrawing the Gaeltacht Boundariesuntil the results of this study were availableand had been considered carefully.

In the meantime, the new positive measuresannounced by the Minister over the last fewmonths to strengthen the Irish language inthe Gaeltacht would be progressed -including the awareness campaign,amendments to Scéim Labhairt na Gaeilge,home visitors, language planning, youthservices and improvements to the languageassistants scheme and the sports campsscheme. In accordance with the relevantpublic procurement procedures, a SteeringCommittee was established in September2003 to advise the Department in selecting

the most appropriate tender for the study.Seosamh Mac Donnacha, Acadamh nahOllscolaíochta Gaeilge, University ofIreland, Galway, in conjunction with An Dr.Conchúr Mac Giollagáin, the NationalInstitute for Regional and Spatial Analysis,University of Ireland, Maynooth, andRoinn na Gaeilge, St. Patrick's College,Drumcondra, Dublin will be in charge of thework.

Official Language Status for Irishin Europe?

Alasdair MacCaluim <staran@tesco.net>adds:

More than 50,000 people have demandedthat the Government look for Official Statusfor the language in Europe on the Web (linkbelow). Is your demand included?

TUILLEADH EOLAIS | MORE INFO:http://www.PetitionOnline.com/mod_perl/ signed.cgi?gaedhilg http://217.136.252.147/webpub/eurolang/ pajenn.asp?ID=4531

Rajasthani language recognized

Lakhan Gusain <lgusain@umich.edu>writes:

Finally we did it. I am very happy toannounce that Rajasthani language has beenrecognized by Rajasthan Assembly andwithin few days, hopefully, be recognizedby the Government of India. Here I willquote some lines from respected SriRamnivas Lakho t i a , Chairperson,Rajasthani Academy's mail.

Apropos your e-mail dated November 25,2003, I am glad to know that you arecontinuously thinking about Rajasthanilanguage. You may be aware thatRajas than Vidhan Sabha hasunanimously passed a resolution onRajasthani language. In this connection,I would like to inform you that theCentral Government has been requestedto recognize Rajasthani language underthe 8th Schedule of the Constitution.

R.N. LAKHOTIAChairperson, Rajasthani Acad., NewDelhi

I have been preparing "A Report about theStandardization, Implementation andTeaching of Rajasthani" which is going tobe debated in parliament within few days. Iwill send you a copy of this report fornecessary comments (before sending to Dr.L.M.Singhvi, Former High Commissionerto Britain, Sri R.N. Lakhotia, LanguageAffair Committee--Parliament of India, andLanguage Committee -- RajasthanAssembly), and other prominent figuresthat are struggling for the cause ofRajasthani and its "Existence" since 1947.

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 11Now we want the same response from theEighth Schedule of the Constitution ofIndia. Hereby, I would like to thank all myrespected Teachers, Leaders, Seniors,Colleagues, students, friends and Rajasthaniwell-wishers for their very nicecooperation. We will fight for our "Voice"till it gets its Respect and Honour.

Lakhan Gusain, Faculty3511, Frieze BuildingDepartment of Asian Languages & CulturesUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor; Michigan 48109-1285 Tel: (734) 936-8809 (Office) (734) 996-4065 (Home)Fax: (734) 647-0157Web: www.bastigiri.org/lakhan

First ever daily newspaper inWelsh - Y Byd (‘The World’)

"Rebecca Williams" <rfw@aber.ac.uk>

Annwyl Gyfeillion,Mae’n bleser gennym allu’ch cyfarch chi, arddechrau 2004, gyda newyddion am y papurnewydd dyddiol Cymraeg cyntaf erioed, sefY Byd. Bydd sefydlu’r Byd yn gam aruthrolo bwysig yn hanes yr iaith a’r gymunedGymraeg.

Dear Friends,We are pleased to be able to greet you, at thebeginning of 2004, with news of the firstever daily newspaper in Welsh - Y Byd (‘TheWorld’). Establishing a daily paper will bean immensely important step in the historyof the Welsh language and the Welshcommunity, including all those learning thelanguage or studying in Welsh-medium andbilingual schools and colleges.

Welsh is one of the few minority languagesin Europe that does not have its own dailypaper, and two years of research haveconvinced us that the venture is viable.

At <http://www.ybyd.com> you will find anEnglish section and have the opportunity tojoin Clwb Cefnogwyr Y Byd - ourSupporters’ Club and become part of thishistoric venture.

And please, spread the word amongst yourfriends and colleagues!

Blwyddyn Newydd Dda.

Endangered Zolai, language ofM y a n m a r

F r o m T r i b a l M e d i a Group<tribalmedia@rediffmail.com>

Myanmar has been ruled since 1962 byhighly repressive authoritarian militaryregimes. Since 1988, when the armed forcesbrutally suppressed massive pro-democracydemonstrations, a junta composed of seniormilitary officers has ruled by decree,without a constitution or legislature. The

most recent Constitution promulgated in1974, permitted both legislative andadministrative restrictions on religiousfreedom, stating "The national races shallenjoy the freedom to profess their religion,provided that the enjoyment of any suchfreedom does not offend the laws or thepublic interest" Most adherents of allreligions that are registered with theauthorities generally are allowed toworship as they choose; however, theGovernment has imposed restrictions onfreedom of the Press, certain religiousactivities and frequently abused the rights tofreedom of religion and NOWENDANGERED OUR LANGUAGE-ZOLAI.

Till the early 1990s we were able to teachZOLAI as one subject in the schools withinour district (Tedim) to students from Class Ito IV, but no exams is ever conducted forZOLAI. In the early 1990s military andother Junta associates have moved in andtheir children took alternative subject inBurmese in lieu of Zolai. Since thenrestrictions and obstacles hauled now andthen on the school authorities in our areahave met a disastrous level of discontinuingour Language, the only learning centre.Now in 1995 an order was issued and atranslated copy is attached herewith for yourkind information and concern. Its been near10 years now and the younger generationsare beginning to feel the loss and the olderones feel the pain. But there is little we cando. It is being kept alive by the fewliterature in the form of hymns and Bibleswithin the Christian Church.

TMG request your esteemed foundation toresponse to this threat of ours otherwisewithin the next five to ten years ouryounger generations will not speak or readour ZOLAI because of the big influence andforced usage of Burmese on our people.

NB: A photostat copy of the original orderin Burmese version is available from us ifyou need so, please..

Secretary Tribal Media Group

Berber textbook goes on display

Jordan Lachler <lachler@UNM.EDU>

A Berber cultural institute in Morocco saysthe first textbook aimed at teachingchildren how to read and write the Berberlanguage will be on display on Sunday at abook fair in Casablanca. The director of theRoyal Institute of Berber culture, Dr AhmadBoukous, told the BBC that although threedialects of Berber were spoken all over thecountry, not many people knew how towrite the script, called Tifinagh. Themajority of Moroccans are of Berber originand many speak one of its dialects, butArabic is still the official language.Activists are demanding Berber should begiven official status. Last September thegovernment allowed the language to be

taught in schools alongside other languagessuch as English and French.

Microsoft working on NativeT o n g u e s

BBC World Servicehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3490863.stm

The Welsh language is to be introduced intoMicrosoft Windows as part of a project toincrease usage by minority languagespeakers.

It is one of 40 new languages due to beadded, in response to complaints fromaround the world that youngsters werelosing their native tongues. Microsoftprogrammes already run in 40 languagesincluding English, Spanish, Arabic andChinese variants. A Welsh start menu andsome commands will be available in aboutsix months. Microsoft said it has receivedcomplaints from places such as Catalonia,Malaysia and the Arctic regions of Canada.

'Digital divide'They claim the switch from nativelanguages online is also affecting everydayspeech, said BBC North America BusinessCorrespondent Stephen Evans. Some arguethe fewer languages the better for globaltrade and understanding, but Microsoft i ssiding with "linguistic diversity", he said.The other big linguistic groups to benefitfrom the expansion will be speakers ofGujarati and Tamil in India, of Catalan inSpain, and of Bahasa in Malaysia. Nativelanguages from Northern Canada andEthiopia will also be added. Start menus andinstructions like 'save' and 'search' will beintroduced, said Microsoft. The company'sworldwide public sector senior vicepresident Maggie Wilderotter said they wereworking with governments and academicsto develop the languages over the next year,for Microsoft Windows XP and MicrosoftOffice 2003. Dato' Hj A Aziz Deraman, ofthe national language authority ofMalaysia, said the availability of Windowsin Bahasa would speed up IT literacy andhelp bridge the "digital divide" betweenrural and urban areas.

User-friendly Dictionaries

We live at a time when native speakers are(in my opinion, justifiably) increasinglycalling for greater ownership of materialsproduced about their languages, greaterinput into decision-making in theproduction of those materials, andincreasingly stating their desire to havethose materials truly usable by nativespeakers. Which dictionaries of aboriginal(First Nations, etc.) languages have provento be most user-friendly to native speakersof those languages, and what features ofthose dictionaries have made them user-friendly? Which dictionaries are widely used

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 12(not simply purchased) by native speakersthemselves?

Wayne LemanBusby, Montanawayne_leman@sil.org

Gwynedd Council calls onBrittany government to aidBreton

Bruxelles 23 Apr 2004 Davyth A. HicksIn a significant move Gwynedd Council innorthwest Wales informs Eurolang that i thas off icial ly cal led on Bretongovernmental bodies to take action for theBreton language.

In the letter, addressed to the Presidents ofthe five Breton departments and the newchief of the Breton ‘region’, Jean Yves leDrian, the leader of Gwynedd Council, R.Wyn Williams, expresses “sadness andconcern regarding the lack of politicalsupport and the current financial and legalsituation of the bilingual Diwan schools inBrittany”.

“These schools are an imperative resourcefor the future of the Breton language, andone could argue that without these schools,the future of the Breton language looksmore doubtful than ever.

“Many towns in Gwynedd are twinned withsimilar towns in Brittany, and to hear ofthe situation of the language has generatedgreat concern in Gwynedd, a County whereWelsh, the sister language of Breton,receives so much support and assistance.

“I urge you to do all that you can to giveBreton the opportunity to survive, throughdiscussing this problem with yourgovernment and elected representatives inyour region and France.” It also invites the Breton leaders to come toGwynedd “to experience the Welsheducation Plan and to see the clearadvantage of educating our young peoplebilingually”. (Eurolang)

Rodríguez Zapatero to strive forEU recognition of Catalan

Barcelona 19 Apr 2004, Alexia Bos Solé

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the leader ofthe Spanish Socialist Party, was formallydeclared as Spain’s Prime Minister last weekafter a vote in the national parliament.During the investiture debate, Mr.Rodríguez Zapatero referred to reforming theAutonomy Statutes affecting Catalonia, theBasque Country and Galicia and the ‘limited’reform of the Spanish Constitution. He alsostated that: “The government will worktowards obtaining recognition for theCatalan language in the EU.”

Zapatero said he accepted the reform of theAutonomy Statutes, but he gave twoconditions for these changes to take place:that they should be conducted with respectfor the Spanish Constitution and that thereshould be a broad political and socialconsensus. He pointed out that the reform ofthe Statutes had to serve to increase “socialcohesion” and not to create “splits orconflicts within the Community.”

As for the reform of the SpanishConstitution, Mr. Zapatero is proposing a“limited, specific modification” but the aimwill always be to “strengthen” theConstitution itself. Such a reform wouldaffect four areas: the reform of the Senate;giving equal status to women in thesuccession to the Spanish throne; theinclusion of the 17 autonomouscommunities in the text of theConstitution, which contains no referenceto them at present; and the addition of areference to the European Constitution.

Spain's Prime Minister-elect also promisedto campaign for Catalan to be made anofficial EU language. Catalonia already hasa degree of autonomy from Madrid but thenationalist parties have asked for moremeasures to augment the recognition of theCatalan nation. "The government will worktowards obtaining recognition of theCatalan language in the EU," said RodríguezZapatero last Thursday during the debate inthe Spanish parliament. He was respondingto the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) partywhich had requested that Catalan bementioned in the EU's first constitution asan official language.

Zapatero said he was not sure if there wouldstill be time to mention Catalan in thecharter because the text has to be adopted inJune, and that the decision requires theunanimity of all Member States. However,if in the end he does not manage to attainthe goal of official status fro Catalan in theEU, he promised his “commitment ofrespect and support” to all of Spain’sofficial languages by stating that he willensure that the Constitution be translatedinto Catalan, Basque and Galician.

In Brussels the EU's translation andinterpreting services are already makingefforts to cope with the expansion of thenumber of official languages from 11 to 20,when Europe enlarges in May. Up to 7.3million people speak Catalan with nearly10 million able to understand it. This wouldmake it the eighth most spoken language inthe EU, ahead of most of the languages ofthe new EU members, except for Polish.

For now the future of Catalan in the EUappears set to rely on the importance thatthe new Spanish Prime minister gives i t .(Eurolang)

5. Allied Societies and Activities

NSW Aboriginal LanguagesDatabase ProjectChristopher J. Kirkbright LL.B., B.Juris.,Dip. Mus.( kirkbright@iprimus.com.au)

The initial phase of this project will runfrom November 2003 till the end of June2004. Basically the idea of the project is tocreate a database for NSW languages, whichwill bring together existing resources forNSW languages and provide tools andtechniques for creating new resources.

The situation to date has involved manysmall-scale projects operating in a largelyuncoordinated way across the state. Whilesome excellent results have come out ofthese efforts we feel that more could beachieved and the access to these outcomescould be improved. For instance, theAwabakal people of the Newcastle area haved e v e l o p e d a websitew w w . a b o r i g i n a l h u n t e r . c o m whichincludes language material. While thismaterial may be of interest to manyAboriginal people, whether or not theyhave Awabakal ancestry, chances are thosepeople are unaware of this information or ofhow to access it. The idea is to encouragelocal autonomy in projects but allow eachlocal project to draw on the availableresources, wherever they are. This can bemanaged through a central database, whichcan be accessed remotely.

A similar concept underpins the FirstV o i c e s P r o j e c t i n Canada<www.firstvoices.com>:

FirstVoices is a group of web-based toolsand services designed to support Aboriginalpeople engaged in language archiving,language teaching & culture revitalization.

By the end of 2003, 20 groups ofIndigenous language recorders will beactively recording words and phrases. Theselanguage archives will be accessible atFirstVoices.com as the archives build. Asmore language communities sign up toarchive their languages at FirstVoices,members of the public will gain access to agrowing collection of language data,including text, pictures, sound and video.

In the NSW Database Project the emphasiswill also be on providing access forIndigenous people to information andtools. To that end it is essential that theproject design should involve ongoingcommunity consultation.

The project will advance through a series ofstages.Stage 1November 2003 - January 2004Initial research and development of theconcepts underpinning the DatabaseProject. This will involve consultation with

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 13the ALRRC Advisory Board in earlyDecember.Stage 2January 2004 – May 2004Initial basic and applied research will becarried out through five language projectsacross the state. This will allowimprovement in the database design,development of tools and furthercommunity consultation.Stage 3May-June 2004Assessment of outcomes of the fivelanguage projects. Consolidation of thewebsite design. Development of a strategicplan for the future of the NSW LanguagesDatabase Project.

Draft Statement on Communityp r o j e c t sConducted throughout NSW to cover thewhole stateInvestigate community aspirations for NSWlanguagesRecording and documenting languageUses of database for language knowledgetransmission (eg dictionary making,language teaching tools, archiving[5 projects under consideration]

Some initial thoughts on the DatabaseFunctions of the Database• to preserve language and related culturalmaterials for the Indigenous peoples ofNSW• to provide a resource base for languagerevitalization efforts• to enable access for Indigenouscommunities to their linguistic and culturalheritage

Documentat ion1. ‘Basic’ language documentation: a list ofall documentation on NSW languages;profiles of each NSW language; onlinematerials eg wordlists; audio files; scans ofmanuscript and typescript material2. Other supporting documentation:genealogies; life histories; photos etc3. Language revitalization documentation:a c c o u n t s / e x a m p l e s o f l a n g u a g erevitalization in NSW, other parts ofAustralia and elsewhere in the worldOne goal is to produce The Handbook ofLanguage Revitalization fo r NSWLanguages. The earlier work, Paper and talk:a manual for reconstituting materials inAustralian indigenous languages fromhistorical sources (edited by NicholasThieberger, Canberra: Aboriginal StudiesPress, 1995), is an important and stilluseful guide but is not specific to NSW andalso now needs updating, especially becauseof advances in ICT.4. ‘Processed’ language documentation: thispart of the database would house materialsthat had been produced after some kind ofprocessing. This could run from theconversion of a manuscript by R.H.Mathews into typescript through to theproduction of suitable pedagogicalmaterials. At present much of thepedagogical material is locally produced andephemeral. This part of the database wouldallow at least for the preservation of suchmaterial and possibly for wider access.

Access and CompatibilityCrucial to the development of the databasewill be issues of access and compatibility.In terms of compatibility it obviouslymakes sense for the NSW AboriginalLanguages Database to link effectively withthe Indigenous Languages Database underdevelopment at AIATSIS (see State ofIndigenous Languages in Australia – 2001,e s p e c i a l l y A p p e n d i c e s 2 & 3ht tp : / /www.ea .gov .au / soe / t echpape r s / i n d e x . h t m l ) . The NSW Databaseshould not involve duplication of effort butinstead be complementary to this and otherd a t a b a s e s , l i k e OLAC[http: / /www. language-a r c h i v e s . o r g / ] or PARADISEC[ht tp: / /www.paradisec .org .au/ ] .In fact, the NSW Database will have muchmore detail precisely because it is a morespecialized database.

Whatever the eventual shape of the databasefor NSW Languages a number of factorsarise in connection with access. One of themost important is that the relevantAboriginal community should have controlover its linguistic and cultural heritage.Another issue is the level of detail thatdifferent user groups need or require. Onepossibility would be to set up a range ofoptions: basic; detailed; advanced. Forinstance with online dictionaries, someusers basically just need the word, perhapswith an audio file, and its meaning; otherusers may want more detail such as therelationships between this word and itsequivalent in neighbouring languages; andfinally, other users may want all the detailthat is available. Any of these issues willneed to be refined and resolved afterappropriate community consultation.

Community ConsultationALRRC as a whole and this Database Projectin particular will operate through ongoingcommunity consultation. Overall this ishandled through the Indigenous AdvisoryBoard but on a day-to-day basis theexpectation is that appropriate communityconsultation should be sought on a local,regional or statewide basis, as relevant.

Future of the DatabaseOver the next few years the evolvingdatabase would be housed and managed byALRRC.. If, at some time in the future,ALRRC could not continue then some kindof contingency plan should be set up sothese important functions can bemaintained. In the event that ALRRC itselfevolves into a more permanent entity itseems appropriate for ALRRC to continuethis overall management function with thedirection of its Indigenous Advisory Board.

Australia's endangered heritagesMichaelWalsh<mjw@mail.usyd.edu.au>

A team of us are engaged in a major projectw h i c h w i l l b r i n g togetherethnomusicologists and linguists to focus

on a particular language with specialreference to its song language and use offigurative language. The AustralianResearch Council site gives these details:DP0450131 Prof AJ Marett, Dr MJ Walsh,Dr N Reid, Dr LJ FordTitle: Preserving Australia's endangeredheritages: Murrinhpatha song at Wadeye2004-2008 : $650,000

This project will produce authoritative,t ho rough and arch iva l ly soundmusicological and linguistic documentationof one of Australia's most vibrantindigenous song traditions, the publicdance songs of Murrinhpatha people atWadeye, NT. We will work with traditionalowners to document three song genres(Dhanba, Wurlthirri, and Malkarrin) in thelight of their historical and contemporaryinterrelationships with other local genres.More broadly, we will assess the songcorpus as endangered cultural heritage ofnational and international significance, andwill develop and apply appropriateelectronic media interfaces to ensurelongterm conservation and accessibility ofthe research within the community andoutside.

Global Source Book onBiocultural Diversity: Call forC o n t r i b u t i o n sEllen Woodley Ewoodley@uoguelph.ca

Terralingua would like to collaborate withpractitioners of biocultural diversityconservation to gather information for aGlobal Sourcebook on BioculturalDiversity. This publication, which will beavailable both in print and electronicformat, will provide the bioculturaldiversity field with its first global source ofinformation.

The loss of languages, cultural practices andindigenous ecological knowledge all reflectthe breakdown in the relationship betweenhumans and their environment. Seekingsolutions for the sustainability of bothhuman communities and the environmentmust recognize the link between culturaldiversity and biological diversity.Terralingua invites you to work togetherwith us to document information onbiocultural diversity conservation on aglobal scale. We are asking for your inputin a survey of biocultural diversity projects,programs, and initiatives. The survey willbe the basis of an inventory andclassification of such activities around theworld. Based on further collaboration andinformation gathering, some projects willbe selected as "model" examples of projectsthat support biocultural diversity. Theseexamples will specifically highlight localstories in the voices of the peopleinvolved. Discussion of "best practices"and "lessons learned" will offer guidance forfuture efforts at biocultural diversitymaintenance and restoration.The Source Book will benefit practitionersof biocultural diversity conservation by

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 14increasing the visibility of this newlyemerging field and by developing a networkof people actively involved in these issues.The survey form and further details areava i lab le on t h e Internet at:www.terral ingua.orgor may be obtained by contacting:Ellen Woodley Ewoodley@uoguelph.ca

Native Amer. Literatures andT r a n s l a t i o n Brian Swann (swann@cooper.edu)

The University of Nebraska Press hasinvited me to edit a series titled "NativeAmerican Literatures and Translation." Weintend to publish about two books a yearand I am in the process of solicitingproposals. I am particularly interested inthe practical and theoretical problems oftranslations from Native Americanlanguages throughout the Americas, as wellas in collections of translationsthemselves. It might be a good idea to lookat my Coming to Light and Voices fromFour Directions, as well as On theTranslation of Native American Literatures,though I am open to other formats andapproaches. Perhaps we will be able toutilize technical innovations such as CD-ROM and the Internet.

Proposals should be as detailed as possibleand addressed to:

Brian SwannHumanities and Social SciencesCooper UnionCooper SquareNew York, NY 10003Phone 212-353-4279Fax 212-353-4398swann@cooper.edu.

Please do not send proposals via e-mail.Feel free to put out the word.

New Building Opened forEndangered Languages Archiveand Research

"Linguists estimate that if we don’t doanything, half of the world’s languages willdisappear in the next 100 years,” saidProfessor Peter Austin of the School ofOriental and Africa Studies at the Universityof London. “There are currently about 6,500languages in the world, so that’s 3,000languages completely going.” Prof Austinholds the first Marit Rausing Chair in FieldLinguistics. On 24 March Princess Anneopened the new £2 million Research Centrebuilding at SOAS which will house theEndange red Languages AcademicProgramme and the Endangered LanguagesArchive.

The event and the issue was widely taken upin the British media, with interviews onBBC World Service, Radio 5, BBC Brazil,Radio Solent, Radio Cardiff, Scotland“Newsdrive”, and including the agenda-setting Today programme on Radio 4: high

prestige, but requiring attendance at thestudio by 6 am!. RTE Radio 1 of Dublin, theGuardian and the Financial Times Scienceeditor, Clive Cookson, all got into the act.,and traces can still be found athttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/2945575.stmandhttp://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/artsandhumanities/0,12240,754400,00.html

EBLUL recommendations for theInter-Govt. Conf. on Draft Treatyof the European Constitution

European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages,Brussels, 18 April 2004

On 18 April 2004 the Board of Directorsadopted its recommendations for the IGC onthe Constitutional Treaty.

EBLUL supports the constitutional processof the EU and emphasises the importance oflinguistic diversity among the 40 millionEU citizens. The EU includes more than 60language communities, with regular use ofregional and minority languages.Respecting, promoting and protecting themwill maintain and extend Europe’s culturalheritage and tradition. Therefore EBLULproposes 3 recommendations.

The first is to support the Presidencyproposal of the Naples MinisterialConclave of 25 November 2003 on ArticleI-2. This Article refers to the EU’s b e l i e fin rights for members of m i n o r i t yg r o u p s , which by the CopenhagenCouncil of 1993 are viewed as a necessarycondition on new member states.

The second recommendation is to add to theanti-discrimination Articles III-3 and III-8the possibility of discr iminat ionbased on language. In contrast with theCharter of Fundamental Rights -which nowis included in the Draft Treaty- and theEuropean Convention of Human Rights, theEuropean Treaties so far have never includeddiscrimination based on language. Theamendment is of importance, since ArticleIII-3 and III-8 create a competence for theUnion to act in these areas, whilst therelevant article in the Fundamental RightsCharter solely establishes the principle ofnon-discrimination.

The last recommendation is to extend thequalified majority voting system(QMV) to Culture and Educationmatters as suggested by the Conventionunder Articles III-182 and III-183. So far thequalified majority vote has only beenapplicable in the field of education.

6. Reports on Field Research

Luri: final traces of a SouthBauchi Language of CentralN i g e r i a

Roger Blenchsummarising work by Bernard Caron

The following notes are based on a paper inpress by Bernard Caron combined withsome information I have collected. The Lurilanguage was first recorded in the BauchiState survey of Campbell & Hoskison(1972). A hundred-word wordlist is held inthe archives of the Nigeria BibleTranslation Trust, Jos. This is probably thesource of the population figure of 30speakers given in the Ethnologue and theIndex of Nigerian languages (Crozier &Blench 1992). Campbell & Hoskison wereunable to classify the language except tonote that it was Chadic, which is strange,since it appears to be a standard SouthBauchi language. The next record of Luri isin CAPRO (1995: 260-262) which wasbased on research by Patience Ahmedconducted in 1992. She records the name ofthe language as Luri or Zagsi (presumably aversion of Zakshi) and says that Luri wasstill spoken when she visited. At that time,Luri was still spoken in Luri and Kayardavillages. Bernard Caron (in press) visited inDecember 2001 and October 2002. Thevillage of Luri ( lúr ) is some 15 km.southeast of Bauchi town, close to Langas(9°83 E, 10°17 N). According to Caron,following the creation of a GrazingReserve, the Luri people were compelled tomove away and a new Luri was founded some10 km. away. The speakers of Luri haveswitched to either Hausa or Langas(=Nyamzak). However, the old chief, Musa,refused to relocate and lives there with hiswife. These are probably the last twospeakers of the language and both are overeighty so eliciting information is a slowprocess. Luri is quite similar to Nyamzakand probably should be treated as a dialectof it.ReferencesCampbell, N. and J. Hoskison 1972. Bauchiarea survey report. Institute of Linguistics,ms. Mimeo (research conducted 1969/70)CAPRO Research Office 1995. Unmask thegiant. Jos: CAPRO Media. [Bauchi]Caron, Bernard (in press) Luri. Quelquesnotes sur une langue tchadique du Nigeria. inBoyeldieu, P., Hommages à France Cloarec-Heiss. Louvain-Paris: Peeters, 2003.Crozier, D. & R.M. Blench 1992. An Indexof Nigerian Languages. Edition 2. Dallas:Summer Institute of Linguistics.

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 15

The Dyarum [=Kaiwari] peopleand their language

Roger Blench, Mallam Dendo Ltd.Friday, 30 April 2004

On the edge of Izere land, squeezed betweenthe Izere (Plateau) and the Tunzu (EasternKainji) are an isolated group of peoplelocally known as the Kaiwari. This nameseems to be a version of Kaiyorawa,recorded in various sources. These arereferred to in Temple (1922:171) as a ‘septof the Hill Jarawa’. This is repeated in allsubsequent sources. Their correct nameseems to be Dyarum. Locally, Dyarum isconsidered to be a language that has ‘nearlygone’. Their settlements are about 7 km.south of Toro town in Toro LGA with a mapreference of N10˚ 02, E 9˚ 04. In Crozier &Blench (1992: 43), Kaiyorawa is said to bea cover term for the Geji cluster also in ToroLGA, consisting of Bolu, Geji and Zaranda.However, these are separate peoples, andthe Dyarum say that their language i sclosest to Danshe, which would be logical,as the Danshe are another Chadic group onthe edge of Izere territory not so very faraway. If so, they would be an undocumentedmember of the Zeem cluster, which consistsof Zeem, Danshe and Lushi. The main andindeed only source on these languages i sShimizu (1978) where the Zeem groupingfirst appears.

The name Kaiwari is given by outsiders. Forthemselves they are: as one person M\nDyarum, as the people Dyarum, and theirlanguage is Ndyarum T\.

A visit was made on 28/12/03 to try andestablish the status of Dyarum. The Sarki(=Chief) Dauda Aliyu of Fadagoshi kindlyassisted our team to find other speakers,who included Galadima Abdullahi andMuhamman Gidado. A list of some 150words of Ndyarum T\ was compiled in agroup elicitation session.The Dyarum inhabit one large settlementdivided into four sections and are highlyIslamized, although one section oftraditionalists persists. The four sectionsare:

# Name M e a n i n g1 Mi˜gami Upper settlements

# Name M e a n i n g2 Mintiri People of the other

side of the stream3 Mimb\nd\ ?4 Fadagoshi Old palace

Hausa-ization is proceeding apace and somehouseholds now do not speak the languageat all. I estimated that there are probably2000 ethnic Dyarum and of those only alimited number speak thelanguage well. The chiefhimself does not have afluent command ofNdyarum T\ and none ofthe young people presentat the meeting couldspeak it. Nonetheless,the older informants haveremained fluent andperhaps the language isstill commonly spokenin isolated hamlets. Butthere is no doubt that it i svery endangered.

The Ndyarum T\l anguageAlthough a Chadiclanguage, Ndyarum T\has clearly come underthe strong influence of neighbouringBenue-Congo languages. It has twopluralization strategies from Chadic,suffixes -s\ and –˜. Some examples aregiven below:

G l o s s s g . p l .eye i r ir\ ˜arm taw taws\knee vørø ˜ vørø˜s\back kar\ kwar\˜

These resemble Gùùs (=Sigidi) described byCaron (n.d.). But some plurals are formed bylabialising the first consonant of the stem,which is typical of Plateau languages,though not, curiously of Izere, its nearestneighbour. Examples:

G l o s s s g . p l .ear k\m kw\ms\head g a m gwams\cheek ˜g\m n `gw\m \

Shimizu (1978) does not give plurals, so i tis unclear how widespread these strategiesare. However, a comparison with the 100words of Chaari (i.e. Danshe, the languageDyarum people say is closest to their own)shows considerable divergence for manycommon items. Some of this may be due tothe influence of nearby Tunzu, to judge bymy own sketchy data on that language.Certainly, the Dyarum and the Tunzu haveconsiderable numbers of common culturalelements. Dyarum seems to be of particularinterest and a high priority for more detailedinvestigation.ReferencesCaron, B. n.d. Gùùs, aka Sigidi (Chadic,West-B, South Bauchi): grammatical notesand vocabulary. ms. circulated at theBiennial International Colloquium on theChadic Language Family, July 5 - 8, 2001,Leipzig.Gunn, H.D. 1953. Peoples of the PlateauArea of Northern Nigeria. IAI, London.Shimizu, K. 1978. The Southern Bauchigroup of Chadic languages . AfricanaMarburgensia, Sonderheft 2.

Temple, Olive 1922. Notes on the Tribes,Provinces, Emirates and States of theNorthern Provinces of Nigeria. ArgusPrinting and Publishing Co. Capetown.

Notes on the Panawa (Bujiyel)people and language

Roger Blench, Mallam Dendo Ltd.John Garah Nengel, Jos University

The Panawa (Bujiyel) language forms part ofthe ‘Jere cluster’ and is in turn part of theNorthern Jos group of the East Kainjilanguages spoken north of the town of Josin Central Nigeria. There is no reference tothis language other than as a dialect ofSanga (=Gusu), which is inaccurate. Thereare passing references in the ethnographicliterature, such as Temple (1922:84) whorefers to them as the ‘Bugel’ and Gunn(1953:12) as the ‘Bujiyel’. All subsequentreferences repeat the same information.This note makes further informationavailable on the status of the language. The

Figure 1. Location of Dyarum

Jos

Toro

Fadagoshi

Photo 1. Five of the remaining speakers of Dyarum

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 16survey was conducted on 19th December2003 and we were guided by Mr. YakubuAmadu, a former student of John Nengel.Mr. Amadu also kindly assisted us tocomplete a wordlist of his language. Theson of the former chief of Akus_ru kindlyanswered our questions, as well as allowinga variety of traditional objects to bephotographed.

The Panawa live south of the Jos-Bauchiroad which runs east of Jos, in the Torolocal government area, Bauchi State. Their

villages are reached by a road that runs some5km. south of the town of Tilden Fulani,which is about 20 km. east of Jos. Figure 1is a sketch map of the location of thePanawa.

The correct name for one Panawa person i sunuPanawa and for the people anaPanawa.The name of the language is iPanawa.iPanawa has no recognised dialects. Theorigin of the name Bujiyel is unknown, butpresumably has some link with the nearbyBuji people. They live in five villages:

# Orig ina lname

Modernname

E t y m o l o g y

1 Akus´ru FadanBujiyel

seat of chiefpriest

2 Zaba˜a — name offounder

3 Adiz\n\ — down on theplain

4 Akayzoro — ?5 Ka˜kay — in charge of

ritual

The Panawa originally lived on a large hill,Owo Panawa, just behind their presentsettlements. The villages on the plain todaywere the same five villages situated on thehill, and they moved, wholesale, to theplain in 1948. These villages are alsoexogamous clans. Clans 1, 4 and 5 couldnot marry among themselves but had tomarry clans 2 and 3.

The closest language to iPanawa is ´Boze(Buji); indeed, lexically it is very close andwould conventionally be described as adialect. However, the tone system i smarkedly different, making it a differentlanguage in an important sense. A littleEnglish is spoken but Hausa is widespread.Because of marriage between the Panawa andneighbouring tribes, Izere, Iguta and

Fulfulde are commonly spoken secondlanguages.

The population of the district is about20,000 but the great majority of these aresettlers along the road. There are probablyno more than 3-4000 Panawa. The dispersednature of their settlements makes suchestimations very difficult. The main threatto iPanawa, as elsewhere in this region, i sHausa, which is spoken in schools andbetween young people. However, childrenwere observed to be speaking their mother

tongue, so the threat to thelanguage is present, but notyet extreme.

ReferencesGunn, H.D. 1953. Peoplesof the Plateau Area ofNorthern Nigeria. IAI,London.Temple, Olive 1922. Noteson the Tribes, Provinces,Emirates and States of theNorthern Provinces ofNigeria. Argus Printing and

Publishing Co. Capetown.

Notes on the Tunzu (Duguza)people and language

Roger Blench, Mallam Dendo Ltd.John Garah Nengel, Jos University

30 April 2004The Tunzu (Duguza) language is an EastKainji language spoken northeast of Jostown in Central Nigeria. Tunzu is classifiedtogether with Janji, Guta and the Jere clusterwithin East Kainji (Crozier & Blench1992). Although it is clearly divergent, thewordlist taken suggests that Tunzu i scorrectly placed in this group. The earliestreference to this language is Temple(1922:96), followed by Gunn (1953:31),Shimizu (1975:12) and Nengel (1999).There appears to be no published data on thelanguage at all. A survey was conducted on30th December 2003 and this note makesfurther information available on the statusof the language.

The following are the correct names forpeople and language in the Tunzu language;

one person Tunzúpeople àTunzûthe language ìTunzû

The origin of the name Duguza is uncertain,but it is just possible that it is a distortedversion of the autonym, Tunzu. It may bethat the name was originally *Tugunza. Ifso, these processes could have occurredwhen Hausa speakers heard the name:

t > d (a common phonologization)loss of nasalization

And then in modern iTunzu an intervocalic–g- could have been lost and the final –abecome –u through vowel regularization.

Tunzu could be transformed into Duguza.The Hausa realisation, Duguza, might thuspreserve features lost in the modern form.Nonetheless, it should be dropped as areference name.

Figure 3: Location of Tunzu

Jos

Magama

GadaOther Tunzu villages

Ajirizo

Temple (1922: 96) gave the population as275, the Local Authority Census of 1971 as500 and the Ethnologue quotes an unsourcedSIL estimate of 1973 as 2000. The people’sown estimate of the number of speakers i s2500, which seems reasonable. There areprobably another 2000 ethnic Tunzu whodon’t speak the language. Figure 1 is asketch map of the location of the Tunzu;

The Tunzu live in 5 villages in Jos EastLocal Government, Plateau State, with twosettlements, Kurfi and Magama, in ToroLGA, Bauchi State. However, these lattertwo are highly Islamised and the language i slargely lost to Hausa. Their mainsettlement, Gada, is marked on maps andother villages are very close. The villagesare

# Orig ina lname

Modernname

L o c . MapR e f

1 Ajirizø Derezok JosEast

N10˚01, E9˚ 07

2 Dacuwa Paa JosEast

3 Nømøn Nømøn JosEast

4 Mincari Shibiri JosEast

5 Kurfi Korofai Toro6 Magama Magama Toro7 Gada Gada Jos

EastN10˚02, E9˚ 06

The existing references to the location ofthe Tunzu are confused and it appears thereason is that in the nineteenth century,Hausa raiders scattered the community andfractions of it fled to a number of quiteremote areas. These migrants eventuallyassimilated with the peoples among whomthey lived, although some have retained apartial knowledge of the language andculture of origin. At least five migrantgroups are known, among the Boze, Guta,Ribina, Jere and Dass peoples. Those

Figure 2. Location of Panawa

Jos

Tilden Fulani

Akuseru

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 17

among the Ribina, Jere and Boze1 have losttheir language. Those who live among theGuta are ‘still trying’ and are said to speak amixed language, with elements of iTunzuand iGuta. Those among the Dass (a Chadiclanguage, unrelated to Tunzu) havepreserved their cultural identity and haverecently made efforts to send their childrento live among the Tunzu so that they willlearn the language.

Hausa is widespread and has largely drivenout Tunzu in Kurfi and Magama. Apart fromHausa, Izere and iBunu are the commonlyspoken second languages. Nonetheless,compared with some of the neighbouringlanguages, the Tunzu people are making aneffort to ensure that the language i smaintained. For example, they encourageTunzu who migrate to the towns to sendtheir children back to the village so thatthey will have at least a rudimentarycommand of the language. Children in therural community all seem to be fairly fluent,despite the bias towards Hausa in theschools system. Nonetheless, there is noroom for complacency as Hausa has madeconsiderable inroads in the languages oftheir neighbours.

ReferencesCrozier, D. & R.M. Blench 1992. An Indexof Nigerian Languages. Edition 2. Dallas:Summer Institute of Linguistics.Gunn, H.D. 1953. Peoples of the PlateauArea of Northern Nigeria. IAI, London.Nengel, J.G. 1999. Precolonial Africanintergroup relations in the Kauru andPengana polities of Central NigerianHighlands, 1800-1900. Frankfurt am Main:Peter Lang.Shimizu, Kiyoshi 1975. The languagegroups in and around Benue-Plateau State.mimeo. Centre for the Study of NigerianLanguages, Kano.Temple, Olive 1922. Notes on the Tribes,Provinces, Emirates and States of theNorthern Provinces of Nigeria. ArgusPrinting and Publishing Co. Capetown.

7. Overheard on the Web

Yale World Fellows ProgramDoug Whalen<whalen@HASKINS.YALE.EDU>President, Endangered Language Fund

There is an interesting program at Yale thatbrings "early mid career" leaders fromaround the world to Yale for four months as"World Fellows." The goal is to broadenthe international community by providingcontacts among people involved indecision-making at a high level. "It offers agroup of emerging leaders from diverse

1 It appears to be this group that Gunn (1953:31)refers to, not the Tunzu proper.

countries and cultures the opportunity tobroaden their knowledge, gain newperspectives, sharpen their skills, and buildthe networks of relationships needed tomeet the demands of issues on the local,national, and global scales."

Previous fellows have mostly come fromthe worlds of government, policy andindustry.  It would be great if we couldinclude language activists in the mix.   I fany of you know of a good possibility, Iwould be happy to help with the applicationprocess. The first requirement is that theapplicant not be a US citizen; then, theymust be established in their career but earlyin it, so it is usually people in their 30's orearly 40's.

Please see their web site for some moredetails:http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/html/program.html

The current fellows are shown here:http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/fellows/bios.html   

Digital race to save languages:Comments from OLAC

Researchers are fighting against time tosave decades of data on the world’sendangered languages from ending up on thedigital scrap heap.

Computer scientist and linguist, ProfessorSteven Bird of Melbourne University -- whowas one of the founders of of OLAC, theOpen Language Archive Community -- saysmost computer files, documents andoriginal digital recordings created morethan 10 years ago are now virtuallyirretrievable. Linguists are worried becausethey have been enthusiastic digitalpioneers. Attracted by ever smaller, lighterequipment and vastly improved storagecapacity, field researchers have graduatedfrom handwritten notes and wire recordingsto laptops, mini-discs, DAT tape and MP3.

“The problem is we are unable to ensure thatdigital storage lasts for more than 5 to 10years because of problems with new mediaformats. Magnetic storage simply degradesover time,” said Professor Bird.

The Open Language Archive Community(OLAC) is an attempt to create aninternational network of internet-baseddigital archives, using tailor-made softwaredesigned to be future-proof. “We’re devisingways of storing linguistic informationusing Extensible Markup Language, (XML)which is basically a language forrepresenting data on the web,” said Prof.Bird. “XML is an open format that we canbe sure will be accessible indefinitely intothe future. The real challenge for us asarchivists is to constantly upgrade thevideo, audio and image files that we have sothat they can be integrated with these newXML documents,” he added.

There are problems, however, with usingthe internet as a storage medium. Manyindigenous communities fear it could lead tounrestricted access to culturally sensitivematerial, such as sacred stories, which couldbe abused or exploited, perhaps forcommercial gain. Professor Bird sayslinguists recognise it is not a good idea toput sensitive material onto the internetwithout any safeguards.

"We are [looking at] the technologies usedin internet banking for secure transfer andcontrol - right at the point this material i sfirst captured." In theory, a field researcherwould enter information about futurerestrictions as the material is recorded orwritten down and those safeguards wouldaccompany the recording right through thedata chain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/2857041.stm

Steven Bird and Gary Simons, OLACCoordinators, note:

A summary of the developments in the OpenLanguage Archives Community (OLAC)since our last general news posting inSeptember is available athttp://www.language-archives.org/

8. Places to Go,

on the Web and in the World

Lesser Known Languages of India

The Central Institute of Indian Languages,Mysore, India, launched a website on lesserknown languages of India, on Dec. 9, 2003,during the inaugural function of theInternational Conference on HimalayanLanguages. The address ishttp://www.ciil-spokencorpus.net

Canadian Aboriginal NewsS e r v i c e

The Canadian Aboriginal News is asubscribers list. Original news stories willbe posted here from across Canada and theworld by the Aboriginal News Service.Subscriptions are: $10 CDN/month. Formore information visithttp://www.canadianaboriginal.ca

Language Status in Afghanistan

Harold F. Schiffman notes:I have posted a link to the English versionof the new (final) Afghanistan Constitutionon our Afghanistan languages website; theEnglish pdf version is available here:

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 18http://www.constitution-afg.com/resrouces/Draft.Constitution.pdf(yes, there is a typo in this URL...)

Article 16 mentions language rights:

Article 16:

From among the languages of Pashto, Dari,Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashaei,Nuristani and other languages spoken in thecountry, Pashto and Dari are the officiallanguages of the state.

The state shall adopt and implementeffective plans for strengthening anddeveloping all languages of Afghanistan.Publications and radio and televisionbroadcasting are free in all languagesspoken in the country.

(This is the same text as in previous drafts;)

There is also a web-site derived from arecent meeting on languages of Afghanistanand the surrounding region:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/salrc/afghanistan.html

Berkeley Survey Catalogue OnlineLeanne Hinton reports:

I am pleased to announce that the catalog ofthe Survey of California and Indian OtherLanguages, which was off-line for monthsdue to a computer hack-in, is now on-lineagain. The catalog can be accessed at:http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/Survey/archives.html

You can search by language, family, stock,collector or consultant. If you have anyquestions or would like to make anappointment to visit the Survey, pleasec o n t a c t m e(hinton@socrates.berkeley.edu) or theSurvey assistant, Rainbow Willard(rainboww@socrates.berkeley.edu).

Lexicography Discussion Group

Wayne Leman invites you to join theLexicography e-mail discussion group thathe is organizing:

Anyone active in lexicography fieldwork(including dictionary making) or teaching(or with a serious interest in lexicography)is welcome to join and contribute to thediscussions.

The list will entertain discussion on anylexicographical topics of interest to the listmembers, including announcements ofresearch or publications, discussion oflexicography computer software, discoveryprocedures, lexical relations, universalsemantic domains, aboriginal groupintellectual property rights, dictionary-making, etc.  It will be open to anyonestudying the lexicon of any language, but I

suspect some of the most active memberswill be from SSILA.

The list website is:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lexicographylist/

from which anyone may join. Or one mayjoin by sending a message to:

lexicographylist-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Educational Linguistics Listserve

Edling-L is an international forum forstudents, faculty, and practitioners todiscuss research, current issues, and trendsin educational linguistics. Edling-L servesas a venue for open discussion among allscholars studying language issues in bothformal and informal education.

Edling-L members are encouraged to engagein lively conversation on research ideas andconcerns in addition to sharing informationabout upcoming conferences and researchmeetings, calls for papers, publicationreleases, research resources, bibliographicinformation, stories of language ineducation from popular media, and othermatters of interest.

To be added to the list, send an e-mail topennelf@dolphin.upenn.eduFor more information visithttp://dolphin.upenn.edu/~pennelf/ELF/listserv.html

Creek Language ArchiveFrom Jack Martin:

Readers may be interested in visiting theCreek Language Archive.  This site i sdesigned to make many of the publishedsources on Creek available to a wideraudience as pdf files and html pages. It alsoprovides basic information on Creek,including a short talking dictionary andsections from a textbook in progress.http://www.wm.edu/linguistics/creek

New address for CheyenneLanguage Pagehttp://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

Valencian is now Valencian.org

The International site for the Valencianlanguage (Valencianlanguage.com) hasbeen changed tohttp://www.valencian.org

Please also use this new e-mail:info@valencian.org

Kirrkirr 4.0

Christopher Manning reports:

I've made available on the web a newversion of Kirrkirr, Kirrkirr 4.0:http://nlp.stanford.edu/kirrkirr/

Kirrkirr is a dictionary presentationprogram, aimed at novice users ofindigenous language dictionaries.  Itoperates over XML dictionaries, but i sflexible as to how exactly the dictionary i sstructured. The emphasis is on innovativemethods for dictionary informationpresentation and visualization. There werepresentations on it at both the 2000 and2001 meetings:http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/LSAhttp://www.ldc.upenn.edu/annotation/database

As well as all the usual sorts ofimprovements and fixes, there is nowperhaps enough documentation on gettingdictionaries to work inside Kirrkirr thatsomeone other than the program's authormight be able to succeed in doing it:http://nlp.stanford.edu/kirrkirr/dictionaries/

Linguist's Search Engine

From: Philip Resnik:For the past while, we've been working on aproject we call the Linguist's Search Engine(LSE), an easy-to-use web tool that permitslinguists to do searches they could noteasily do on Google or Altavista--forexample, searches involving syntacticstructure, constructions, and the like. I'mhappy to say the LSE is now up, running,and available. If we've done it right, whatyou'll find at http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/should be pretty self-explanatory.  Forthose who prefer explanations of the non-self variety, a Getting Started Guide can befound athttp://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/lse_guide.html

Finally, there are discussion forums set upat http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/forum/ thatwill, we hope, give rise to a genuine LSEuser community on the Web.

Since this is the first time we're opening theLSE up to all users, there may still be sometechnical glitches. If you encounter anyproblems, please bear with us, and e-mail usat lse@umiacs.umd.edu to let us know.Please also let us know, via the discussionforums, what interesting experiences youhave, positive or negative, and whatfeatures you'd like to see added to make theLSE more useful.

Info about Etribe.ca

Etribe Network is proud to introduce theFirst Native American Portal operated byFirst Nation's people. After years ofplanning and months of development EtribeNetwork has now become a reality for allpeople to enjoy. We are pleased to bringyou The Etribe Portal Version One whichwill provide you with everything andanything Native.

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 19In launching The Etribe Portal, we areasking that you show your support and signup to the community. Etribe hopes to beyour Yahoo, MSN or AOL but NativeAmerican operated and powered by thepeople. The Etribe Portal contains all majorcomponents that most major sites offer. Wehave our own Email System (Apowwow),Employment/Job (NDNJobs), Personals(RezFox), News (Etribe News), Calendars,Models, Photo Sharing (RezPics), SearchEngine (World Wide Waboos) and much,much more. Make the Etribe Portal yourhomepage.

Etribe will be undergoing testing in whichwe will rely on our people to help us makeeveryone's experience an enjoyable one.We are open for suggestions, comments andrecommendations to ensuring that it i scomplete and functional.

We are looking for Native Newscontributors, Models for our sites,discussion topics and feedback, pictures,Powwow Listings, Conference Listings, andanything else you'd like to share withpeople across Turtle Island. We will beimproving every day and we hope toprovide you with tools needed to bring ourpeople together through technology. Wewill be providing opportunities for Artiststo post their artwork and poets to post theirliterature.

For all interested advertisers we will beoffering sections throughout the site for themarket ing of products , services,organiza t ions or events . Banneradvertisements, link locations, andspecifically targeted areas will be open forclients to advertise. For example, if you’re acar dealership and want to advertise yourAutomobile business, we will have customareas to advertise in the Auto Section of TheEtribe Portal. Just our way to promote ourFirst Nation businesses, organizations andevents.

I n c l o s i n g , p l e a s e visithttp://www.etribe.ca to sign up to the FirstNative American online community.Remember this Portal is yours and we areasking all to contribute. It's our way tobring Native People closer together.

Research on Lang. Policy & Lang.P l a n n i n g

http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/poileasadhWilson McLeod <w.mcleod@ed.ac.uk>

The Department of Celtic and ScottishStudies is endeavouring to establish aCentre for Language Policy and LanguagePlanning. A series of seminars, conferencesand research reports will tackle a range ofsubjects relating to language policy andlanguage planning both within Scotlandand internationally. For example:

Texts from seminars

o Philip Gawne, 'Securing the Future ofManx Gaelic' (25.2.04)

o James Oliver, 'Stands Gaelic Where i tDid?' (3.12.03)

o Kenneth MacKinnon, 'Bòrd Gàidhligna h-Alba: New Thinking for a FreshStart?' (5.3.03)

o Alan Davies, 'The Native Speaker inApplied Linguistics' (19.2.03)

o Niamh Nic Shuibhne, 'LegislatingLanguage: Current Developments inIreland' (5.2.03)

o Davyth Hicks, 'Scottish Place-names:Planning the Linguistic Landscape'(24.4.02)

o Dónall Ó Riagáin, 'Gàidhlig and theother lesser used languages: whatfuture in the new Europe?' (6.3.02)

o Konstanze Glaser, 'Essentialism andRelativism in Gaelic and SorbianLanguage Revival Discourses '(30.1.02)

o Wilson McLeod, 'An EaconamaidhG h à i d h l i g : D u i l g h e a d a s a nTeòridheach agus Pragtaigeach'(5.12.01)

Bibliographies on language policy

• Gaelic in Scotland: Sociolinguisticsand Language Policy Bibliography1980-2004

• Minority Ethnic Languages inScotland: Sociolinguistics andLanguage Policy Bibliography 1980-2004

• 'A Selected Classified Bibliography ofthe Scots Language' (CarolineMacafee, University of Aberdeen)

Research reports

• Faclair Na Pàrlamaid: A CriticalEvaluation (Wilson McLeod, October2001)

• The State of the 'Gaelic Economy': AResearch Report (Wilson McLeod,October 2001)

• Revitalising Gaelic? Critical Analysisof Report of Taskforce on PublicFunding of Gaelic (AlasdairMacCaluim, Wilson McLeod, Oct2001)

10. Forthcoming Meetings

1 0th Linguapax Congress: Lang.Diversity, Sustainability andPeace, Barcelona, 20-3 May 2004

The need to preserve the languages of theworld and counter the processes of languageshift that are taking place worldwide hasbecome a major concern shared byresearchers, scholars and leaders of manylanguage communities.

The congress will be in the framework ofthe Universal Forum of Cultures - Barcelona2004. Working sessions will be of twotypes. On the one hand, the keynotecommunications, that will give a generaloverview on the three main axes of thecongress (language diversity, sustainabilityand peace) and the possible interrelationsamong them, taking into account the newcultural, social, political and economicfactors stemming from an increasingglobalization process. On the other hand,the five parallel workshops that will be heldin the afternoon sessions will have a morespecific approach to linguistic diversity andits relation to language policy andplanning. Working languages will beCatalan, Engl ish, French a n dS p a n i s h .

Linguapax was born as a UNESCO initiativeto bring a linguistic solution to specificissues in the area of peace research, defenceof human rights and promotion of educationfor democracy by using innovative methodsfor language teaching. This philosophy i snow embodied in the Linguapax Institute,an international NGO based in Barcelona,aimed at promoting peace through therespect of linguistic diversity and thepromotion of plurilingual education. TheUniversal Forum of Cultures – Barcelona2004 that will take place from May 9 toSeptember 26 2004 is an internationalevent intended to offer a new and creativespace for reflection and ex-perimentation inrelation to the main social and culturalconflicts that humanity is faced with at theoutset of the twenty-first century. Theconvergence of proposals and objectives ofthese two initiatives have motivated thejoint organization of this internationalcongress.

Invited Speakers:o David Crystal, Univ. Wales, Bangoro Bernard Comrie, Max Planck Institute

for Evolutionary Anthropologyo N a n c y H o r n b e r g e r , U n i v .

Pennsylvania.o Suzanne Romaine, Univ. Oxfordo Albert Bastardas, Univ. Barcelonao Fernand de Varennes, Murdoch

University, Australiao Miquel Siguan, Univ. Barcelona.o Jean-Jacques Van Vlasselaer (Carleton

University, Canada)o Anne Marie Beukes (RAU University,

South Africa)o David A. Klaus (Independent

consultant)o Joan Argenter (Inst. Catalan Studies,

UNESCO Chair Langs & Education)o Anvita Abbi (Jawaharlal Nehru

University, India)o Esteban Emilio Mosonyi (National

Univ. Venezuela)o Jorge Pocaterra (Ministry of Education,

Culture and Sports, Venezuela)

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 20

o Lachman Khubchandani (Pune Centrefor Communication Studies, India)

o François Grin (Univ. Geneva)o Elana Shohamy (Univ. Tel Aviv).o Miquel Strubell (Open Univ. Catalonia,

Europa Diversa)o Susana Cuevas (National Institute of

Anthropology and History, Mexico)o Niamh Nic Shuibhne (Univ. Edinburgh)o Denis Cunningham (FIPLV, World

Federation of Modern LanguagesAssociations, Australia)

o Nicholas Ostler (Foundation forEndangered Languages)

o E. Annamalai (Terralingua)

Plenary sessionsIntroductory Speech1. Language Diversity2. Sustainability3. Peace

Workshops1. Positive models of languagepolicy and planning2. Case studies of languagerevitalization and standardisation3. Evaluation on the currentsociolinguistic research. Newtrends and paradigms4. Language law and languagerights5. Agents in favour of languagediversity (NGO, IGO, civil societyorganizations)

Linguapax Awardsthis year to Joshua Fishman andFernand de Varennes.

For more details: http://www.linguapax.org

4th SALTMIL Workshop onMinority Langs. Lisbon, 24 May2 0 0 4

The 4th International Workshop of theISCA Special Interest Group on Speech andLanguage Technology for MinorityLanguages (ISCA SIG-SALTMIL) will beheld in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 24, 2004,in 2004 International Language Resourcesand Evaluation Conference (LREC).

The workshop, “First Steps for LanguageDocumentation of Minority Languages:Computational Linguistic Tools forMorphology, Lexicon and CorpusCompilation,” is intended to continue theseries of SALTMIL/LREC workshops oncomputational language resources forminority languages that was held in Granada(1998), Athens (2000), and Las Palmas deGran Canaria (2002). The Lisbon 2004workshop aims to share information ontools and best practices so that isolatedresearchers need not start from scratch. Animportant aspect will be the forming ofpersonal contacts, which can minimizeduplication of effort. Information on

sources of funding for minority languageswill also be presented, and there will bediscussion on the strategic priorities thatneed to be addressed in this area.

The workshop will feature presentations ofexisting speech and text databases forminority languages, with particularemphasis on software tools that have beenfound useful in their development. Topicswill include: Linguistic Corpora, AutomaticSpeech Recognition, Acoustic Modelling,Dict ionary Development, LanguageModelling, Natural LanguageProcessing, Computational Lexicography,Machine Translation, and InformationRetrieval.

The first session of the workshop willconsist of invited talks focusing on currentmethodologies for language documentationand computational linguistic toolsavailable for minority languages. E.g.:• Dafydd Gibbon (Bielefeld University),

“First Steps in Corpus Compilation”• Xabier Artola (Univ. the Basque Country),

“First Steps in Lexicon Resources”• Bojan Petek (Univ. Ljubljana, Slovenia),

“Experiences Defining a Network ofExcellence on Portability of HumanLanguage Technologies”

• Kenneth R. Beesley (Xerox [to beconfirmed]), “First Steps in Morphology”

The second session will focus on programsand initiatives for supporting minoritylanguage documentation. Its main aim is toprovide a forum for fostering new contactsamong researchers working in this area.

The deadline for abstracts was February 11th.All contributions (including invited papers)will be printed in the proceedings (CD).They also will be on the SALTMIL website(http://193.2.100.60/SALTMIL). Fees forthe Workshop are 85 Euro if you are not atLREC, or 50 Euro if you are. These fees willinclude a coffee break and the Proceedingsof the Workshop. Registration will behandled by the LREC Secretariat.

For further information on the conferencevisit www.lrec-conf.org.

11th Annual StabilizingIndigenous Languages Conf.Berkeley, 11-13 June, 2004

The 11th annual Stabilizing IndigenousLanguages Conference (SILC), “Language i sLife,” hosted by the Advocates forIndigenous California Language Survivaland the Survey of California and OtherIndian Languages (Linguistics, UCBerkeley), will be held at Berkeley June 11-13, 2004. The Stabilizing IndigenousLanguages steering committee invitesinterested individuals and groups to givepresentations at SILC this year, either inthe form of a 15-minute talk (or less), a 11/2 hour workshop, or else to join one ofour suggested panels, which will be 1 1/2hours in length. Suggested panels include:

• Master-apprentice programs• Immersion schools• Archives and intellectual property rights• Developing and using new writing

systems• Revitalizing languages without speakers

They will also make time and space for theshowing of films on language loss andlanguage revitalization, if you haveanything you would like to show. Thedeadline for presentation submission i sMay 15, 2004.

For registration and presentation forms,v i s i t w w w . a i c l s . o r g orhttp://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/SIL9brochure.html

Netherlands Organization forScientific Research (NWO), 23-28August 2004, Amsterdam/Leiden:African, Endangered Languages,A n d e a n - A m a z o n i a n

The NWO's Endangered LanguagesProgramme, is sponsoring three endangeredlanguage projects: two in Africa, and one inSouth-America. On August 26, 2004, a one-day workshop will be organized in theCultural Center of the Vrije Universiteit(Amsterdam). Before and after the NWOworkshop there will be two conferences:one on African linguistics, and one onAmazonian linguistics and anthropology.

Andean Amazonian LinguisticsThe NWO workshop on the endangeredlanguages program as well as the conferenceon languages and cultures of theandean/amazonian border area will be heldin the cultural center de Griffioen of theVrije Universiteit Amsterdam, TheNetherlands.

August 26, 2004, NWOworkshop EndangeredLanguages Program

o Opening session Dr. R. Smeets( U n e s c o , C h a i r m a n programcommittee)

o Prof. Dr. M. Mithun (Univ. SantaBarbara):Language death and languagemaintenance

o Prof. Dr. P. Newman (IndianaUnivers i ty) : The EndangeredLanguages issue is not quite sohopeless a cause

o Dr. J.A.B.K. Essegbey,. K.G.E. DorvloM.Phil and Dr. F.K. Ameka (LeidenUnivers i ty , Nether lands) : Thelanguages and cultural heritage of S.Ghana-Togo Mountain Groups

o Dr. A. Amha, M. Seyoum MA and Dr.M. Mous (Leiden University, TheNetherlands)

o Stemming the Tide: The Dime andZargulla languages of South WestEthiopia

o D. Mahecha MA, J.M.G. Higuita MAa n d L e o W e t z e l s (Vrije

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 21U n i v e r s i t e i t , A m s t e r d a m , T h eNetherlands): The Puinave and Nukaklanguages of Colombia

Workshops :EL Research & Intellectual Property RightsOrality and LiteracyPreparing reading materials for the languagecommunity

August 27/28 Symposium onLanguages and Cultures in theAndean/Amazonian Border

Key-note speakers:o Willem Adelaar (Leiden University,

The Netherlands): The Importance ofToponymy for Disappearing andRecently Extinguished Languages

o Stella Telles(Universidade Federal dePernambuco,Brazil: Por onde andam osadvérbios - família Nambikwára

o Jon Landaburu (CELIA, Paris, France):La modalité épistémique dans quelqueslangues du sud de la Colombie.

o Marcelo Fiorini ( Hofstra University,USA): What the Birdman Said: Music,Sent iment , and Discourse inNambikwara.

o Aryon Rodrigues (UFB, Brasília,Brazil):Tupí languages in Rondôniaand in eastern Bolivia

In the last afternoon, a program will beoffered for the general public. Among otherthemes, attention will be given to theUNESCO's decision to declare the oral andgraphic expressions of the Wajãpi Indiansas a ''Masterpiece of the Oral and IntangibleHeritage of Humanity''. We are trying tobring to Amsterdam a Wajãpi person and anoutside specialist in Wajãpi culture, toexplain the varied significance of Wajãpipainting (including body painting).

Symposium on Languages andCultures of theAndean/Amazonian Border Area

The conference on languages and cultures inthe Andean/Amazonian Border Area will beheld at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, onAugust 27 and 28, 2004.

Participants will NOT be asked to pay anyregistration fee. However, since for mattersof organization we must know how manypersons we may count on, we kindly requestthose that wish to attend (part of ) thepresentations to notify Leo Wetzels by e-mail until July 15th 2004.

Note: Please register separately for NWOEndangered Languages Research workshopwith the secretary of the Endangeredlanguages Program, Marc Linssen (e-maillinssen@nwo.nl) before July 1, 2004.

Conference committee:Gabriel Antunes g.antunes@let.vu.nlCristina Borella c.borella@let.vu.nlLeo Wetzels WLM.Wetzels@let.vu.nl

Law, Language and LinguisticDiversity, Beijing, 15-18 Sept.2 0 0 4

This is the Ninth International Conferenceof the International Academy of LinguisticLaw – in co-operation with the China Univ.Political Science and Law and the Instituteof Applied Linguistics, Chinese Ministry ofEducation.

The Conference will be held at the BeijingFriendship Hotel (No 1, ZhongguancunNandajie, Haidian District).The workinglanguages are Chinese, English and French.

The Scientific Committee of the Conferenceis formed by Profs. Li Yuming, XuXianming, Wang Jie, Guo Chengwei, SuJinzhi and Zhou Qingsheng (Beijing) andProfs. Denise Daoust, Angéline Martel,André Braen, Joseph-G. Turi and JoséWoehrling (Montréal and Ottawa).

Abstracts' deadline was Jan 31, 2004. Theregistration fee is $250. The fees includedocumentation, lunches and 1-day tour.

Prof. Guo ChengweiChina Univ. Political Science and Law, 25Xitucheng Road, Haidian District, Beijing100088 China E-mail: zfkyc@263.net

tel.: 86-010-62229838 (or: 69745577,extension 4962); fax: 86-010-89718283(or: 62228905).

III Mercator: Linguistic diversityand education: challenges andopportunities, Ljouwert(Fryslân), 25 - 27 Nov 2004

The symposium is organised by Mercator-Education in collaboration with the othertwo Mercator centres; Mercator-Media andMercator-Legislation. It will be the thirdsymposium in a row. The first MercatorInternational Symposium was organised inAberystwyth on 8-9 April 2003 with astheme: "Shaping an agenda for the globalage", and the second Mercator InternationalSymposium in Tarragona on 27-28 February2004 with theme: "Europe 2004: a newframework for all languages?".

Key issues of the forthcoming symposiumwill be:· Comparison of educational systems· Minority languages and policy· Information and infrastructure· Linguistic diversity in the new EU memberstates· Media & education· Mother tongue and 2 other languages

People are encouraged to submit a paperproposal (max. 500 words). Deadline i sJune 1, 2004. The symposium programcommittee will send notification of theacceptance of papers before July 1, 2004.A b s t r a c t s c a n b e s e n t to:<mercator@fryske.akademy.nl>

More information soon at the website<http://www.mercator-education.org>Mercator-Education, Fryske AkademyPostbus 54, 8900 AB LeeuwardenNetherlands Tel: +31 (0)58-2343063

10. Publications of Interest

Note:Items marked with an asterisk (*) areavailable for review by readers. Write to theeditor to request a copy.

*Language Documentation andDescription, vol. 1, ed. Peter K.A u s t i nThis is the first publication of the HansRausing Endangered Languages Project<http://www.hrelp.org/home.htm>and records the Proceedings of the Project'slaunch event and workshop: EndangeredLanguages: Charting the Way Forward.Over 70 people were in attendance.

The focus of the workshop was ontechniques of language documentation, butthe volume also features keynote addressesby Prof David Crystal and HRELP's mainsponsor, Lisbet Rausing.

Peter K Austin : IntroductionLisbet Rausing: Launch of the Hans RausingEndangered Languages ProjectDavid Crystal: Endangered Languages: whatshould we do now?Tony Woodbury: Defining documentarylinguisticsColet te Grinevald: Speakers anddocumentation of Endangered LanguagesEva A. Csato and David Nathan: Multimedia& documentation of Endangered LanguagesWilliam A. Foley: Genre, register andlanguage documentation in literate andpreliterate communitiesJohanna Nichols and Ronald L. Sprouse:Documenting lexicons: Chechen and IngushPeter Wittenburg: The DoBeS Model oflanguage documentationDaniel L. Everett: Documenting languages:a view from the Brazilian AmazonE. Annamalai: Opportunity and challenge oflanguage documentation in IndiaNicholas Ostler: Desperate straits forlanguages: how to survive

From Zara Pybus: <zp2@soas.ac.uk>, +44-20-7898-4578, or at HRELP, DeptLinguistics, SOAS, Thornhaugh St, RussellSq., London WC1H 0XG, UK.

Sharing a World of Difference:the Earth's linguistic, culturaland biological diversity

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Luisa Maffi, DavidHarmon et al.This UNESCO publication (Paris 2003)reflects collaboration of Terralingua with

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 22the World Wildlife Fund. It stresses thediversity of life in Nature and Culture,Cultural and Linguistic Diversity,Languages and their Users, BioculturalDiversity and the Road Ahead. It comes witha useful wall-map, correlating the world'slanguages with the different climate andecological zones.

ISBN UNESCO 92-3-103917-2UNESCO, 7 place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris07 SP France.http://www.unesco.org/publishing

"Native Languages As WorldLanguages…", "Lessons Learnedfor Native Language Activists …"

The Grotto Foundation, a charity with aNative Languages Inititative, has beenworking with Minnesota's indigenouslanguages, releasing online publications.These include:

"Native Languages As World Languages: AVision for Assessing and SharingInformation About Native LanguagesAcross Grant-making Sectors and NativeCountry," by Richard LaFortune (Yupik).

"Encouragement, Guidance, Insights, andLessons Learned for Native LanguageActivists Developing Their Own TribalLanguage Programs," by Darrell R. Kipp,Co-Founder of the Piegan Institute.

These documents are on the following link:http://www.grottofoundation.org/download_fset.html

Quichua and Spanish in theEcuadorian Highlands: TheEffects of Long-term Contact, byMarleen Haboud

The English version of Marleen Haboud's"Quichua y Castellano en los AndesEcuatorianos" has finally arrived, includingmore updated maps, charts, demographicinformation and much more. For mored e t a i l s , p l e a s e v i s i t<http://tpemindo.tripod.com/libro.html>.

This book is about one of the mostfascinat ing areas of l inguis t ics ,sociolinguistics, language and ethnicity,language changes induced by languagecontact. Marleen Haboud provides seriousdiscussion and new ways of interpretingdata concerning language attitudes, ethnicidentity and language change. The voices ofQuichua speakers and Spanish speakers arereproduced as a means of learning andunderstanding multicultural societies.

LINGUASHOP: CDROMs forMinority Languages of EuropeFrom:Louis Janus <lctl@UMN.EDU>Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2004 11:15:34 -0600

http://www.linguashop.com

including CDROMS for: Irish-Gaelic,Welsh, Cornish, Scots-Gaelic, and Breton.Also Occitan, Catalan, Basque, Italian (andof course French, German and Spanish).

The lexicon of Proto Oceanic:culture & environment ofancestral Oceanic society. Vol. 2:physical env.Malcolm Ross, A. Pawley, M. Osmond

This is the second in a series of fivevolumes on the lexicon of Proto Oceanic,the ancestor of the Oceanic branch of theAustronesian language family. Eachvolumedeals witha particular domain ofculture and/or environment andconsists of acollection of essays each of which presentsand comments on lexical reconstructions ofa particular semantic fieldwithin thatdomain.

Volume 2 examines how Proto Oceanicspeakers described their geophysicalenvironment. An introductory chapterdiscusses linguistic and archaeologicalevidence that locates the Proto Oceaniclanguage community in the BismarckArchipelago in the late 2ndmillennium BC.The next three chapters investigate termsused to denote inland, coastal, reef and opensea environments, and meteorologicalphenomena. A further chapter examines thelexicon for features of the heavens andnavigational techniques associated with thestars. How Proto Oceanic speakers talkedabout their environment is also described inthree further chapters which treat propertyterms for describing inanimate objects,locational and directional terms, and termsrelated to the expression of time.

PL 545, 2003 ISBN 0 85883 536 3xviii +387 pp, Australia A$88.00(inc GST)International A$80.00From: PICS, RSPAS, ANU, Canberra ACT0200 AustraliaTel: +61 (0)2 6125 3269 Fax:+61 (0)26125 9975Thelma.Sims@anu.edu.au

"Getting Language Rights: theRhetorics of LanguageEndangerment and Loss" byJoseph Errington

American Anthropologist 105 (2003): 723-32.recommended by "P. Kerim Friedman"kerim.list@oxus.net, who writes:

Errington usefully re-frames debates aboutlanguage preservation in a way that directlyrelates to the discussions on this list whichinitially prompted the bibliography. NoraEngland's article on the contribution ofMayan linguists to the preservation of theirlanguage, from the same issue, is equallyrelevant, and should also be added to thelist. Actually, the whole issue is relevant,

since it is focused on this topic, but thesetwo articles caught my attention at the time.

More generally, see "Bibliography onLanguage Standardization, LanguageAttitudes, Minority Languages, and relatedtopics."<http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/bibliogs/standard.html>

*Thangani Bunuba: Stories fromthe Bunuba Elders of the FitzroyVal ley

This is a collection of stories, toldbilingually in Bunuba and English, withlavish full-colour illustration by theauthors. It features stories from theDreamtime, Bushtucker stories, stories fromthe Early Days,and stories since theComing of White People.

ISBN: 1-875167-10-2Kimberley Language Resource Centre 1998:PMB 11, Halls Creek, Western Australia.

Beginning Creek: MvskokeE m p o n v k v

Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd); Book and CDedition (May 2004,) $29.95, 256 pagesISBN: 0806135832

Beginning Creek provides a basicintroduction to the language and culture ofthe Mvskoke-speaking peoples, Muskogee(Creek) and Seminole Indians. Written bylinguistic anthropologist Pamela Innes andnative speakers Linda Alexander and BerthaTilkens, the text is accessible to generalreaders and students and is accompanied bytwo compact discs.

The volume begins with an introduction toCreek history and language, and then eachchapter introduces readers to a newgrammatical feature, vocabulary set, andseries of conversational sentences. Thechapters conclude with brief essays byLinda Alexander and Bertha Tilkens onCreek culture and history and suggestionsfor further reading.

The two audio CDs present examples ofceremonial speech, songs, and storytellingand include pronunciations of Mvskokelanguage keyed to exercises and vocabularylists in the book.

Although Mvskoke speakers include theMuskogee (Creek) and Seminole Nations ofOklahoma, the Poarch Band of CreekIndians in Alabama, and some FloridaSeminoles, the number of native speakersof Mvskoke has declined.

"Language Shift from MotherTongues towards Fulfulde …"( r e f f r o m R o g e r B l e n c h<r.blench@odi.org.uk>

OGMIOS Newsletter of Foundation for Endangered Languages 2.11 (#23) (Spring 2004) page 23ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS,Volume 45, Number 3 (Fall 2003)Language Shift from Mother Tonguestowards Fulfulde in Adamawa State, Nigeria:Causes and Consequences, GBENGAFAKUADE, MATUDI GAMBO, andABDULLAHI BASHIR

Learn Michif By ListeningCD produced by Peter Bakker and NormanFleury. (First edition, March 2004)

Michif is a mixed language, and endangered.The verbs are from Cree (Algonquian,Amerindian) and the noun phrases fromFrench, with virtually all of thecomplexities of the French noun phrases(gender, definiteness, number) and of theCree verb (six or seven consecutivemorphemes). An Audio CD has just comeout. This Audio-CD contains some basicsentences (greetings, questions, weatherconversation, etc.), some vocabulary in aspoken dictionary, and one story and aprayer. Speakers are Norman Fleury andJulius Grant. Single copies of the CD areavailable from:

Pemmican Publications, 150 Henry AvenueWinnipeg, Manitoba R3B OJ7, Canada

or contact Peter Bakker: linpb@hum.au.dk

The CD texts can be found on this website:http://www.hum.au.dk/lingvist/lokal/michif/michif-CD-texts.doc

11. Recent Meetings

Does the EU have a languagepolicy? Mercator Legislationconference, Tarragona Madrid 6/03/04 17:03 Eurolang by Davyth Hicks Mercator Legislation held a successful,ground-breaking conference at the weekendin Tarragona, Catalonia, bringing expertsin language legislation from across Europeto discuss ‘a new framework for alllanguages’. However, there was strongcriticism of the EU institutions from someof the speakers over the lack of languagepolicies designed to help minoritisedlanguages. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, a well knownacademic and language activist, launchedthe conference with a stinging indictmentof States and the lack of rights for mother-tongue-medium education, in what shedescribed as the 'hot potato' of humanrights. She strongly criticised the EU DraftConstitution where "market values arebeing used to judge language usage" and saidthat: "The Convention ... does even lessthan the Framework Convention on theProtection of National Minorities, which sofar was thought to be a low point, about

which Patrick Thornberry [a UK law expert]uttered the following memorable words:"there is just enough substance in theformulation to prevent it becomingcompletely worthless"." Legal academic, Niamh nic Shuibhne, in anincisive talk asked the question: "Is there alanguage policy in the draft constitution?"Her answer was a blunt and resounding"No". She found five main problems: thelack of any guiding principle to underpinpolicy; concerning linguistic diversity,which languages are included and does thisinclude language rights; nothing legallybinding for action against languagediscrimination; no legal basis as the EU canonly act if a treaty gives it the power to; andthat only bigger languages will benefit. Shedescribed the Draft as an "utterly missedopportunity" and that while it has"principled statements it does not createany substantive duties or obligations." Begona Antxustegi and Amaia Agirre fromthe Basque Government Department forLanguage Policy also criticised theEuropean Commission's Action Plan forLinguistic Diversity questioning itsusefulness when minoritised languageagencies will have to compete with those ofthe dominant languages. They alsodiscussed the lack of accurate informationabout minoritised languages in Europe andthe need for a legal framework which wouldmake language rights enforceable. On a different note European Bureau ofLesser Used Language's (EBLUL) President,Bojan Brezigar, outlined the slow but steadyprogress being made with language rights atthe European level. While describing the defacto situation for European linguisticdiversity as 'still awful' he concentrated onthe Draft Constitution and outlined EBLUL'srecommendations on the wording of theDraft.

12. Valedictory

Wilfrid Henry Douglas (died 22March 2004, aged 86)

H i s s o n R o b D o u g l a s writes:<rob.douglas@baptistcare.com.au>Decades before Mabo and the word “LandRights” had become commonplace inAustralia, Wilf Douglas was asked for helpin identifying sacred sites between Lavertonand the WA-NT border. The Irish-bornmissionary, linguist and Bible translatorreplied in characteristic fashion with thewords: “Every square inch of land in thatarea is sacred”.

It was such high respect for the Aboriginalpeople, their culture and their language thatset Mr Douglas apart and was a feature ofmore than 60 years tireless work, learningand understanding Aboriginal languages,and the people who spoke them. Years

spent sitting on the ground in dustyAboriginal reserves and camps aroundAustralia resulted in significant technicalstudies being produced of languages asvaried as the Western Desert languages ofCentral Australia, the Nyoongah languageof the South West of WA and the Watjarrilanguage of the Murchison region of WA.Although he never went to high school, MrDouglas lectured in universities andmentored PhD students. Beyond technicalstudies he felt a deep and lasting duty toshare the Christian Gospel with Australia’sAboriginal population.

After his first attempts at learningNyoongah at the West Australian wheatbeltsiding of Badjaling at the age of 21 and astint in the army, Mr Douglas, his wife Bethand baby son John, found themselves in theKimberley with the United AboriginesMission and it was while they were workingon Sunday Island at the mouth of the KingSound that he succeeded in his firststumbling attempts at translating the Bibleinto Bardi. This interest in linguisticsattracted opposition from some whobelieved that such an emphasis onAboriginal languages would “take thepeople back to heathenism”, but MrDouglas persisted at linguistic coursesconducted by the Summer Institute ofLinguistics (SIL) and Sydney University toexpand his new found linguistic skills.

The mission asked the Douglas family in1951 to work at their mission station atOoldea, a railway siding between PortAugusta and Cook on the Transline in SouthAustralia. Here he made his first seriousbreakthrough in understanding what hedescribed as the Western Desert language,eventually producing a grammar andphonology for what had previously been anunwritten language.

From the sandhills of Ooldea, came a moveto Warburton Ranges in the central desert,where major works were achieved includingan Introduction to the Western DesertLanguage (pub. Sydney Univ. 1957) and anIllustrated Topical Dictionary of theWestern Desert Language, (1959).

Wilf was a regular tutor, and for some yearsPrincipal, of SIL training courses inMelbourne and later Brisbane. In 1966 heattended Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Coursein Mexico which enriched his own skillsand enabled him to check with translationsinto Central and South American languages.

Only a fortnight before his death, thesecond edition of the Illustrated Dictionaryof the South West Language was publishedby a valued colleague, Dr Toby Metcalfe. In2001, Mr Douglas had been presented theBible Society’s Elizabeth Macquarie Awardfor his lifelong services to translation. Itreads in part: “Many Aboriginal Bibletranslations owe their existence to hisdedicated enthusiasm and many Bibletranslators owe their skills to his faithfulteaching.”

Foundation for Endangered Languages

Manifesto

1. Preamble

1 . 1 . The Present Situation At this point in human history, most human languages are spoken by

exceedingly few people. And that majority, the majority of languages, isabout to vanish.

The most authoritative source on the languages of the world

(Ethnologue, Grimes 1996) lists just over 6,500 living languages.Population figures are available for just over 6,000 of them (or 92%). Ofthese 6,000, it may be noted that:

• 52% are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people;• 28% by fewer than 1,000; and• 83% are restricted to single countries, and so are

particularly exposed to the policies of a single government. At the other end of the scale, 10 major languages, each spoken by

over 109 million people, are the mother tongues of almost half (49%) ofthe world's population.

More important than this snapshot of proportions and populations is

the outlook for survival of the languages we have. Hard comparable datahere are scarce or absent, often because of the sheer variety of thehuman condition: a small community, isolated or bilingual, may continuefor centuries to speak a unique language, while in another place apopulous language may for social or political reasons die out in little morethan a generation. Another reason is that the period in which records havebeen kept is too short to document a trend: e.g. the Ethnologue has beenissued only since 1951. However, it is difficult to imagine manycommunities sustaining serious daily use of a language for even ageneration with fewer than 100 speakers: yet at least 10% of the world'sliving languages are now in this position.

Some of the forces which make for language loss are clear: the

impacts of urbanization, Westernization and global communications growdaily, all serving to diminish the self-sufficiency and self-confidence ofsmall and traditional communities. Discriminatory policies, and populationmovments also take their toll of languages.

In our era, the preponderance of tiny language communities means

that the majority of the world's languages are vulnerable not just to declinebut to extinction.

1 . 2 . The Likely Prospect

There is agreement among linguists who have considered the situation

that over half of the world's languages are moribund, i.e. not effectivelybeing passed on to the next generation. We and our children, then, areliving at the point in human history where, within perhaps two generations,most languages in the world will die out.

This mass extinction of languages may not appear immediately life-

threatening. Some will feel that a reduction in numbers of languages willease communication, and perhaps help build nations, even globalsolidarity. But it has been well pointed out that the success of humanity incolonizing the planet has been due to our ability to develop cultures suitedfor survival in a variety of environments. These cultures haveeverywhere been transmitted by languages, in oral traditions and latterlyin written literatures. So when language transmission itself breaks down,especially before the advent of literacy in a culture, there is always alarge loss of inherited knowledge.

Valued or not, that knowledge is lost, and humanity is the poorer.

Along with it may go a large part of the pride and self-identity of thecommunity of former speakers.

And there is another kind of loss, of a different type of knowledge.As each language dies, science, in linguistics, anthropology, prehistoryand psychology, loses one more precious source of data, one more of thediverse and unique ways that the human mind can express itself through alanguage’s structure and vocabulary.

We cannot now assess the full effect of the massive simplification of

the world's linguistic diversity now occurring. But language loss, when itoccurs, is sheer loss, irreversible and not in itself creative. Speakers of anendangered language may well resist the extinction of their traditions, andof their linguistic identity. They have every right to do so. And we, asscientists, or concerned human beings, will applaud them in trying topreserve part of the diversity which is one of our greatest strengths andtreasures.

1 . 3 . The Need for an Organization

We cannot stem the global forces which are at the root of language

decline and loss. But we can work to lessen the ignorance which sees language loss as

inevitable when it is not, and does not properly value all that will go whena language itself vanishes.

We can work to see technological developments, such as computing

and telecommunications, used to support small communities and theirtraditions rather than to supplant them.

And we can work to lessen the damage:

• by recording as much as possible of the languages ofcommunities which seem to be in terminal decline;

• by emphasizing particular benefits of the diversity stillremaining; and

• by promoting literacy and language maintenanceprogrammes, to increase the strength and morale of the users oflanguages in danger.

In order to further these aims, there is a need for an autonomousinternational organization which is not constrained or influenced bymatters of race, politics, gender or religion. This organization willrecognise in language issues the principles of self-determination, andgroup and individual rights. It will pay due regard to economic, social,cultural, community and humanitarian considerations. Although it maywork with any international, regional or local Authority, it will retain itsindependence throughout. Membership will be open to those in all walksof life.

2. Aims and ObjectivesThe Foundation for Endangered Languages exists to support,

enable and assist the documentation, protection and promotionof endangered languages. In order to do this, it aims:-

(i) To raise awareness of endangered languages, bothinside and outside the communities where they arespoken, through all channels and media;

(ii) To support the use of endangered languages in allcontexts: at home, in education, in the media, and insocial, cultural and economic life;

(iii) To monitor linguistic policies and practices, andto seek to influence the appropriate authorities wherenecessary;

(iv) To support the documentation of endangeredlanguages, by offering financial assistance, training, orfacilities for the publication of results;

( v ) To collect together and make availableinformation of use in the preservation of endangeredlanguages;

(vi) To disseminate information on all of the abovea c t i v i t i e s a s w i d e l y a s possible.

Membership of the Foundation is open to everyone. If you would like to join, and do not havea membership form, please contact the Editor at the address given on page 2.