{"id":3734,"date":"2008-09-23T09:29:46","date_gmt":"2008-09-23T09:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/09\/heard-on-the-radio\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:49:19","slug":"heard-on-the-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2008\/09\/heard-on-the-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Heard on the radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Along with the use of mobile phones for fieldwork <\/a> and dictionaries<\/a> (noting that the latter wouldn’t work (yet) in Africa due to the lack of 3G phones that could run the required software), another information and communication technology that has applications in endangered languages research and language support is radio. In Australia the Central Australia Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA<\/a>) has been in operation since the1970’s and is well known for its promotion of central Australian Aboriginal languages.
\nI have recently heard of two other more grass roots instances of community radio stations broadcasting in indigenous languages. At a workshop on “Engagement and Activism in Endangered Languages Research”<\/a>, Maurizio Gnerre of Universita Orientale in Naples spoke about the use of radio in two Latin American communities, as his abstract states:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

The Shuar (Upper Amazon, Ecuador, 55,000 people) established one of
\nthe earliest indigenous radio services in the Americas in the late 1960s. That radio service played an outstandingly important role in Shuar political, cultural, educational and linguistic awareness. During the last decade, the neighbouring Achuar (a cultural-linguistic minority, compared to the Shuar) also started to operate their own radio station, aiming mostly to counteract the overwhelming Shuar influence on their own culture and language. Another much more recent case is that of the Huave (Southern Mexico) radio service in San Mateo (9,000 speakers), which has been active for a few years only. This has been enough to trigger a new shared attitude of linguistic creativity and, possibly, even recent demands for language revitalization <\/strong>in other Huave pueblos, where local linguistic varieties are obsolescent. In both the Shuar and the Huave cases, radio broadcasting has stimulated new forms of linguistic creativity. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Today I was speaking to Carlos Chirinos, manager of the SOAS student radio station OpenAir<\/a> who has been involved with a project in Congo-Brazzaville:<\/p>\n

\n

Radio Biso na Biso<\/i> is the first community radio station to broadcast in the 15 indigenous languages spoken in the FSC-certified concessions of Congolaise Industrielle des Bois<\/i> in Northern Congo-Brazzaville. In addition to celebrating their unique cultures, oral traditions and musical styles, the radio station gives local indigenous people a platform to discuss and learn about the issues they face in the context of industrial forestry operations, and about the need for the company to obtain their free, prior and informed consent to operations in their traditional forest areas.<\/p>\n

\nBiso na Biso<\/i> is recruiting journalists from each indigenous group in the concession to produce programmes in local languages that speak to peoples concerns and interests. This YouTube video<\/a> shows one of these journalists, the Baka<\/a> Paul Aboyo, alias Mandero, journaliste internationale, making one of his first programmes for Biso na Biso<\/i>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One of the languages that the station will broadcast in has just 200 speakers. Carlos has been to Congo-Brazzaville twice to help set up the radio station (see photos here<\/a>) and is writing his dissertation on the use of radio to support communication for indigenous peoples. He also mentioned today that through a grant, hundreds of wind-up radios have been distributed to the Baka and other groups so that they can access the FM radio broadcasts. (Carlos has also been very supportive of our work in the Endangered Languages Project<\/a>, especially helping to put up podcasts<\/a> of Meet an Endangered Language<\/a> that were created as part of our Endangered Languages Week 2008<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Along with the use of mobile phones for fieldwork and dictionaries (noting that the latter wouldn’t work (yet) in Africa due to the lack of 3G phones that could run the required software), another information and communication technology that has applications in endangered languages research and language support is radio. In Australia the Central Australia … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4513,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3734\/revisions\/4513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}