Endangered Languages and Cultures

Sacred Earth Network – Endangered Languages Program

5 February 201124 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

[passed on from the Foundation for Endangered Languages] Media release: Sacred Earth Network, a non-profit organization located in Petersham, Massachusetts, is continuing its Endangered Languages Program after its successful launch in 2008. Endangered Languages Program aims to support preservation and revival of those indigenous languages which are threatened with extinction and which are vital to … Read more

ESL in Indigenous Australian contexts

5 February 201116 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

Way back when (actually 20-21 February), I went to the National Symposium on Assessing English as a Second/Additional Language or Dialect in the Australian Context. Jill Wigglesworth and I gave a talk on some of the problems we see with the NAPLAN testing of second language learners of English, in particular Indigenous children living in remote communities where they mostly only hear standard English at school or on the telly. There were plenty of bloggable moments and discussion, but life got in the way of actual blogging.
Now, thanks to Adriano Truscott, I’ve got the link to the handouts and powerpoints of the presentations. Here they are.
And here [.pdf] also are the recommendations that people concerned with Indigenous education made.

Report – First International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation – Nick Thieberger

5 February 20113 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Nick Thieberger] The 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC) was held in Honolulu from March 12-14th this year. With a theme of “supporting small languages together” the emphasis was on collaborations, between linguists and speakers, and between linguistics and other disciplines. Over 300 people attended the conference with over 150 presentations … Read more

Birds that tell people things: bird posters in four Central Australian Aboriginal languages

5 February 20113 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

[Thanks to Myf Turpin for passing this information on] In many cultures birds indicate ecological events and can be harbingers of bad news through their role in mythology. Birds can signal where water can be found, the presence of game or other food, seasonal events or danger. This series of posters features birds that are … Read more

Workshop on non-linguistic aspects of fieldwork – Sheena Van Der Mark

5 February 20112 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Sheena Van Der Mark, La Trobe University] A workshop about bringing non-linguistic aspects of fieldwork out of lunchtime conversations and into a more public domain is being proposed for the upcoming Australian Linguistics Society Conference at La Trobe University. This is the abstract for the workshop as it currently stands: The experiences we have … Read more

ELAP students fieldtrip

5 February 20111 April 2009 by admin

The Endangered Languages Academic Programme at SOAS is experimenting this year with including hands-on in situ fieldwork as part of our MA in Language Documentation and Description.

A group of MA students is currently carrying out two weeks of fieldwork in Guernsey with Dr Julia Sallabank, Research Fellow in Language Support and Revitalisation, who has been doing research on Dgèrnésiais (the locally preferred spelling, more commonly spelled Guernésiais) for many years. The students are documenting contemporary language use and making digital audio and video recordings of narrative and conversations, putting into practice the knowledge and skills they have been acquiring in their MA coursework, especially the half-units Field Methods and Technology and Language Documentation. Dgèrnésiais is the nearest autochthonous endangered language to SOAS and is estimated by Jan Marquis, the Guernsey Language Support Officer, to have around 1,000 speakers (just 2% of the population), with the bulk of them aged over 60. The trip is timed to coincide with the annual Guernsey Eisteddfod which includes poetry and speaking competitions.

Three recent events

5 February 201129 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

The first few weeks of semester have been a game of snakes and ladders, and I’ve tumbled down some very long snakes. So it’s good to report on a few ladders.
First was the Kioloa Australian Languages Workshop, of which more below.
Then there was the launch of Gayarragi Winangali, an electronic version of the Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay Yuwaalayaay Dictionary at the Koori Centre, University of Sydney. It’s a wonderful resource which features a lot of data, a lot of sound, and a lot of ways of accessing the data. (Not to be compared with the expensively produced Multilocus Indigenous language CDs, most of which are depressingly data-light…).
And finally, ANU ePress have republished The Land is a map, a collection of papers on place-names in Australian Indigenous speech communities. (Bizarrely and sadly, they had to scan the book because their predecessor, Pandanus Press, wasn’t into digital archiving).

The language of instruction – an ESL expert’s opinion

5 February 201113 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

[From an ESL expert working in the public service outside the NT]
I have heard a great deal about how bilingual programs in the NT have once again been targeted for demolition- personally, I think this is completely and utterly wrong. I would hasten to add, however, that I think that the language situation for Indigenous students in classrooms throughout much of Australia is also generally totally undesirable – ie, not just because bilingual school programs are being stopped/limited…
In my opinion, the best-case scenario for any children who are learning new information/concepts/knowledges is that they understand the language in which this new material is being presented to them. Students’ “strongest language” – the language variety in which they are understanding the world, thinking deeply, communicating fluently etc – is what I would recommend as the most effective language of instruction… I support the NT bilingual school programs because they have been utilising students’ “strongest language” for teaching junior school information/concepts/knowledges including literacy. Students have been gradually introduced to English literacy in a structured way, bridging from pre-existing first language literacy skills into second language (English) literacy.

Djiniyini Gondarra

5 February 201110 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

In the chaos of starting first semester, three excellent events have passed unnoticed in this blog (but not in my thoughts): Tony Woodbury’s Master class and workshop on speech play and verbal art T (February 13 2009) at ANU, National symposium on assessing English as a second/other language in the Australian context (20-21 February 2009) at UNSW, and the State Round of OzCLO, the High School Computational and Linguistic Olympiads at the University of Sydney (starring Wemba-Wemba, Pitjantjatjara and a brilliant problem on Japanese braille).
What must be passed on, however, is this message from the Reverend Dr Djiniyini Gondarra. Longterm readers of the blog will remember his appalled and very moving reaction to the heavyhandedness of the Intervention in the Northern Territory in 2007. Things have not improved.

Report on EL Week 2009

5 February 20112 March 2009 by admin

Endangered Languages Week 2009 has come and (just) gone, ending on Saturday with the second day of the workshop on Ideology and Beliefs on endangered languages. It was a fun, if exhausting week (made even more exhausting by having to teach our regular classes this year as it took place during term time), marked by having lots of visitors from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Canada, as well as more local visitors from throughout Europe and the UK. The nice thing was that quite a number of people came to London for the whole week to participate in the various events.