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A Model for Indigenous Language Revival
This research based on my master's thesis explores Nahkawēwin language revitalization. This study draws on the language nest model, which first originated with Maori grandmothers and their grandchildren in the 1970s. In this study, my mother and I created what I refer to as a "mini" language nest in both of our homes to teach my children Nahkawēwin in a holistic manner. I call this a "mini" language nest because our nest only involved myself, my mother, and my children, when other language nests around the world have had multiple grandmothers and children who are participants of the language nest. This article aims to show how this approach to language nests can be used to revitalize or revive a language using intergeneration learning and teaching. In this study, I reflect on the different challenges one may face while creating a mini language nest, and how one might overcome these challenges through different language strategies, frameworks, and teaching tools. I do not wish to present language nests as a foolproof solution; rather, I share the reality of how one thought or intention can change the outcome of language learning in a positive manner. The language nest did not only teach my children their language, it brought us together with compassion, enthusiasm, and hope. Keywords: Indigenous, language, revitalization, revival, language nest, linguistic landscape, intergenerational learning.
This book provides an overview of the issues surrounding language loss. It brings together work by theoretical linguists, field linguists, and non-linguist members of minority communities to provide an integrated view of how language is lost, from sociological and economic as well as from linguistic perspectives. The contributions to the volume fall into four categories. The chapters by Dorian and Grenoble and Whaley provide an overview of language endangerment. Grinevald, England, Jacobs, and Nora and Richard Dauenhauer describe the situation confronting threatened languages from both a linguistic and sociological perspective. The understudied issue of what (beyond a linguistic system) can be lost as a language ceases to be spoken is addressed by Mithun, Hale, Jocks, and Woodbury. In the last section, Kapanga, Myers-Scotton, and Vakhtin consider the linguistic processes which underlie language attrition.
What do studies of pidgins and creoles have to do with indigenous language maintenance? The development of pidgin and creole languages always occurs in the context of language contact, often between a European colonial language and one or more indigenous languages. All Native languages in North America have been in contact with a European language (usually English) for at least the last two hundred years. Educators and researchers in the area of Native language maintenance often comment that students are not learning the "proper" language. In many cases, young children come to school with a knowledge of only English, so they are learning the Native language as a second language. What often happens is that they learn Native vocabulary but maintain English grammatical structures and phonological distinctions. Are they speaking the Native language? Are they speaking English? Or are they speaking a "mixed" language? Pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages are examples of how new languages develop over time through language contact. Perhaps the Native languages as spoken by young people can be regarded as types of pidgin languages. If we look at language learning in this way and realize that all languages change over time due to various influences, perhaps we can be more accepting of the way that Native languages are spoken today and encourage young people to continue speaking the language, in whatever form.
This paper reports on the progress of a group of adults who have been connecting by telephone to learn to speak Deg Xinag, the language of the Deg Hit'an (Ingalik Athabaskan). The Deg Hit'an are the westernmost of the Athabaskan peoples, living near the confluence of the Yukon and Innoko Rivers in Alaska. Since Deg Xinag speakers, all elders, number fewer than 20, and the learners, young adults, are spread among sites too distant to allow them to meet, a one-credit distance education class was organized under the authority of the University of Alaska, Interior Campus--Mcgrath Center. After a first semester fraught with scheduling difficulties and poor phone connections, the second semester class of four speakers and eight learners met once a week for 1 hour with 2 hours of homework. Student-selected goals included learning to perceive and produce the sounds of the language in the context of common expressions and being able to use some expressions in daily routines. Class activities included listening to the speakers converse, speakers modeling the words followed by round-table repetition by learners, and conversation. One of the learners, the teacher-of-record, compiled phrase lists from the conversations and faxed them to students. Each student also completed an independent project, such as translating a children's book or creating a song. In addition to permitting a language learning situation that otherwise could not exist, telephone conferencing created valuable opportunities to use the language in real-life activities. (Author/SV)
Conservative attitudes toward loanwords and toward change in grammar often hamper efforts to revitalize endangered languages (Tiwi, Australia); and incompatible conservatisms can separate educated revitalizers, interested in historicity, from remaining speakers interested in locally authentic idiomaticity (Irish). Native-speaker conservatism is likely to constitute a barrier to coinage (Gaelic, Scotland), and unrealistically severe older-speaker purism can discourage younger speakers where education in a minority language is unavailable (Nahuatl, Mexico). Even in the case of a once entirely extinct language, rival authenticities can prove a severe problem (the Cornish revival movement in Britain). Evidence from obsolescent Arvanitika (Greece), from Pennsylvania German (US), and from Irish in Northern Ireland (the successful Shaw's Road community in Belfast) suggests that structural compromise may enhance survival chances; and the case of English in the post-Norman period indicates that restructuring by intense language contact can leave a language both viable and versatile, with full potential for future expansion. (Revival, purism, attitudes, norms, endangered languages, minority languages, contact)
Sleeping languagesSleeping Language' to L. Frank Manriquez. 13Sleeping languagesLanguage DeathLanguage Death," p. 490. 16Dorian," p. 492. 17The Master-Apprentice Learning ProgramArikara (Sahms) Language ProgramThe Use of Linguistic ArchivesMutsun language FoundationLanguage Death
- Leanne Hinton
Leanne Hinton ("Sleeping languages," p. 413) credits the term 'Sleeping Language'
to L. Frank Manriquez.
13. "Sleeping languages", p.414.
14. "Language Death," p. 162.
15. "Language Death," p. 490.
16. "Dorian," p. 492.
17. "The Master-Apprentice Learning Program", p.223.
18. "Arikara (Sahms) Language Program."
19. "The Use of Linguistic Archives."
20. "Mutsun language Foundation."
21. Taff, p.42.
22. Buszard-Welcher, p.42.
23. "Language Death," p. 142.
24. Id.
25. Ash, p. 34.
26. Pinker, p.33.
27. Goodfellow, p.213.
28. Vakhtin, p.317.
29. Fishman, p.81.
Can the Web save my language? The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice
- Laura Buszard-Welcher
Buszard-Welcher, Laura. "Can the Web save my language?" The Green Book of
Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Academic Press, 2001.
Language Death. Cambridge
- David Crystal
Crystal, David. Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language?" Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Center for Excellence in Education
- Joshua Fishman
Fishman, Joshua. "What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language?"
Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Center for Excellence in
Education, Northern Arizona University, 1996.
Status of Native American Language Endangerment Stabilizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University Center for Excellence in Education
- Michael Krauss
Krauss, Michael. "Status of Native American Language Endangerment" Stabilizing
Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University Center for
Excellence in Education, 1996.
Indigenous Nations Journal Vol. 6, No. 1