News: Sydney School Leads Efforts to Revive Lost Aboriginal Language

April 11, 2009 — lingoproz

Found on VOA News.com on 11 April 2009
By Phil Mercer

A project at school in Sydney is leading efforts to revive an extinct Aboriginal language that was lost after European colonization. Chifley College is teaching Dharug to not only its indigenous students but others from Africa and the Pacific Islands as well as non-indigenous Australians.

The sounds of a lost language echo across a packed classroom in suburban Sydney as secondary school students help to revive an ancient part of Australia’s indigenous culture.

Dharug was one of the dominant Aboriginal dialects in the Sydney region when British settlers arrived in 1788 but became extinct under the weight of colonization.

Students at Chifley College’s Dunheved campus are taught by Richard Green, who is on a mission to rekindle an ancient language.

“We’ve already reclaimed it, that’s why there is so much interest. People are already speaking it. They speak our language from here, so when you walk in the school of a morning you hear ‘warami’- hello, good to see you,” he said.

“But we’ve got some young boys here that are absolutely brilliant. No matter what I say, they say it with correct pronunciation. You know, they sit in class the whole lesson. They are changing their attitudes,” he continued.

About a fifth of the students here are Aborigines, who remain Australia’s most disadvantaged group. The language classes are open to non-indigenous pupils, giving them a greater understanding of their country’s rich history and culture.

Steven Dargin says the language classes give him more insight into his Aboriginal community.

“It’s good especially for the blackfellas. You get to talk about your own culture and all that. Learn more stuff, speak it out of school,” he said.

Dharug is firmly embedded in the school’s curriculum and Joyce Berry, the deputy principal, says the aim is to create a vibrant, living language.

“We are reclaiming the language. And with Richard’s help and with the elders’ help, they are reclaiming and actually going through the process of writing down the language for probably the first time it’s ever been written down. If this can work, it is something a school in western Sydney has been able to achieve with the support, so if we can do that it is going to be such a wonderful thing, not just for the school but for the Dharug community,” she said.

Other indigenous dialects in Australia have been revived but the process may require what experts describe as “language engineering” – the borrowing of phrases and words or the coining of new vocabulary.

John Hobson, a lecturer in indigenous dialects at Sydney University, says they can be hard to learn.

“For the benefit of English speakers, I often compare Aboriginal languages to something somewhere between Japanese and Latin, which, you know, surprises them because the, kind of, gut approach is to go for something primitive and simplistic, which are they definitely not. They are very complex languages,” he said.

When European settlers arrived in Australia, there were about 270 different Aboriginal languages. Today, only about 60 are spoken on a daily basis. Of these, roughly half a dozen are considered to be strong and are being passed from adults to their children.

Community leaders say these ancient dialects go to the heart of indigenous pride and identity.

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Book: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

April 7, 2009 — lingoproz

Found on Amazon.com

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler

Paperback: 640 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial (June 27, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0060935723
ISBN-13: 978-0060935726

Product Description

Nicholas Ostler’s Empires of the Word is the first history of the world’s great tongues, gloriously celebrating the wonder of words that binds communities together and makes possible both the living of a common history and the telling of it. From the uncanny resilience of Chinese through twenty centuries of invasions to the engaging self-regard of Greek and to the struggles that gave birth to the languages of modern Europe, these epic achievements and more are brilliantly explored, as are the fascinating failures of once “universal” languages. A splendid, authoritative, and remarkable work, it demonstrates how the language history of the world eloquently reveals the real character of our planet’s diverse peoples and prepares us for a linguistic future full of surprises.

About the Author

A scholar with a working knowledge of twenty-six languages, Nicholas Ostler has degrees from Oxford University in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics, and a Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT, where he studied under Noam Chomsky. He lives in Bath, England.

From Publishers Weekly
Ostler’s ambitious and accessible book is not a technical linguistic study—i.e., it’s not concerned with language structure—but about the “growth, development and collapse of language communities” and their cultures. Chairman of the Foundation of Endangered Languages, Ostler’s as fascinated by extinction as he is by survival. He thus traces the fortunes of Sumerian, Akkadian and Aramaic in the flux of ancient Middle Eastern military empires. Ancient Egyptian’s three millennia of stability compares with the longevity of similarly pictographic Chinese—and provides a cautionary example: even a populous, well-defined linguistic community can vanish. In all cases, Ostler stresses the role of culture, commerce and conquest in the rise and fall of languages, whether Spanish, Portuguese and French in the Americas or Dutch in Asia and Africa. The rise of English to global status, Ostler argues, owes much to the economic prestige of the Industrial Revolution, but its future as a lingua franca may falter on demographic trends, such as booming birth rates in China. This stimulating book is a history of the world as seen through the spread and demise of languages. Maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Caesar led his legions into battle for the glory of Rome–and the immortality of Greek. In the curious spread of Greek through Roman conquest, Ostler recounts one of the many fascinating episodes in the complex history of languages. The resources of the cultural historian complement those of the comparative linguist in this capacious work, which sets the parameters for a new field of scholarship: “language dynamics.” By peering over Ostler’s shoulder into this new field, readers learn how languages ancient and modern (Sumerian and Egyptian; Spanish and English) spread and how they dwindle. The raw force of armies counts, of course, in determining language fortunes but for far less than the historically naive might suppose: military might failed to translate into lasting linguistic conquest for the Mongols, Turks, or Russians. Surprisingly, trade likewise proves weak in spreading a language–as the Phoenician and Dutch experiences both show. In contrast, immigration and fertility powerfully affect the fate of languages, as illustrated by the parallel histories of Egyptian and Chinese. Ostler explores the ways modern technologies of travel and communication shape language fortunes, but he also highlights the power of ancient faiths–Christian and Moslem, Buddhist and Hindu–to anchor language traditions against rapid change. Of particular interest will be Ostler’s provocative conjectures about a future in which Mandarin or Arabic take the lead or in which English fractures into several tongues. Few books bring more intellectual excitement to the study of language. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
‘Delicious! Few books on language answer the questions that people actually ask linguists, such as why some languages are spoken by millions and others by just a few hundred. Ostler’s book shows how certain lucky languages joined humankind in its spread across the world, many off them eventually vanishing without a trace, and one of them – guess which? – currently ruling the planet.’ – John McWhorter, author of THE POWER OF BABEL: THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LANGUAGE

A dense but enlightening account of how the world’s written languages were born, how they spread and changed, how some weakened and died, how others thrived. This heavy, sturdy text rests on a foundation of scholarship and erudition so broad and deep that it will elicit gasps of admiration from professional linguists and assorted logophiles, though its very complexity and comprehensiveness may overwhelm general readers. Even the epigraphs-and there are myriads-are demanding, even daunting. British scholar Ostler (chair of the Foundation for Endangered Languages) notes that there are as many as 7,000 language communities in the world, but many have relatively few speakers, and many have no written form. He proceeds to relate a history of the world as a linguist would see it. Accordingly, although the encounter, say, between Cortes and the Aztecs has interest for military and cultural historians, Ostler views it, as well, as a clash between languages, both of which had long traditions. He proceeds to look at languages in the Middle East (Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramaic, Phoenician, Arabic, Persian, etc.), then turns to consider Egyptian and Chinese and attributes their stability, in part, to high population density. He discusses Sanskrit (a “luxuriant” language with its “blending of sexual and mystical imagery”), then Greek, Celtic, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese and many, many others. His style is to raise questions and then answer them. Why didn’t Dutch linger in Indonesia? How did French become a prestige language? Why haven’t Russian and German and Japanese spread more than they have? How did English, with its multiple parents, spread so rapidly and pervasively? How did it standardize? What are the most dominant languages today? Why do people learn some languages more easily than others? What are the forces that might weaken the current hegemony of English around the world? Always challenging, always instructive-at times, even startling or revolutionary. The issues and concerns and discoveries here merit far wider attention than this sometimes turgid text will attract. (maps and charts throughout) (Kirkus Reviews) –This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
“True scholarship. A marvelous book, learned and instructive.” (National Review )

“A story of dramatic reversals and puzzling paradoxes. A rich… text with many piercing observations and startling comparisons.” (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

“Revolutionary… Executed with a giddying depth of scholarship, yet the detail is never too thick to swamp the general reader.” (Boston magazine )

“[A] monumental new book… Ostler furnishes many fresh insights, useful historical anecdotes and charming linguistic oddities.” (Chicago Tribune )

“A work of immense erudition.” (Christian Science Monitor )

“Covers more rambunctious territory than any other single volume I’m aware of…A wonderful ear for the project’s poetry.” (John Leonard, Harper’s Magazine )

“Enlightening . . . Always challenging, always instructive–at times, even startling or revolutionary.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Delicious! Ostler’s book shows how certain lucky languages joined humankind in its spread across the world.” (John McWhorter )

“[A] wide-ranging history of the world’s languages… [Ostler] brilliantly raises questions and supplies answers or theories.” (Washington Post )

“What an extraordinary odyssey the author of this superb work embarked upon.” (Literary Review )


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I can’t speak Hokkien, so I’m learning Swahili

March 22, 2009 — lingoproz

Found on Asia One Electric News on 22 March 2009

By Ng Tze Yong

HABARI za asubuhi, babu, wariye?

Before you hit ‘send’ on a complaint e-mail, be assured that’s not a keyboard error.

It’s Swahili for: ‘Good morning, ah kong, eat already or not?’

If you’re still in school, picture the day you become an ‘ah kong’ (grandfather in Chinese).

When your grandkids come bouncing along to visit you as you lounge in your wheelchair, what language will they use?

It may be English or Mandarin or, who knows, perhaps Swahili.

That’s right. Swahili – one of Africa’s mother tongues.

Economies can rise and fall in a single generation. For all we know, business or cultural opportunities might spring up in Africa.

It’s got people (almost a billion of them). It’s got resources (it’s where those blood diamonds came from). So, despite its current woes, let’s not rule out Africa in the 22nd century.

If this comes to pass, we’ll probably embrace Swahili because Singaporeans know very well that for a small country to survive and thrive in an ever-changing world, we must go with the linguistic flow.

So say ‘jambo’ (hello in Swahili).

(It’s actually easier than Mandarin!)

Appreciating language as culture

Together with the pragmatic learners of language (those who embrace its utilitarian value), hopefully there will also be those who seek out new languages out of a broad appreciation of different cultures.

All languages have stories to tell. And many are going extinct.

As a French academic noted, ‘half of the 6,000 or so languages in the world today are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people and a quarter by less than 1,000. Only a score are spoken by hundreds of millions of people.’

So, many cultures will disappear without leaving any trace as languages die. At least 30,000 have already vanished.

‘Languages usually have a relatively short life span as well as a very high death rate. Only a few, including Basque, Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Persian, Sanskrit and Tamil, have lasted more than 2,000 years,’ says Mr Ranka Bjeljac-Babic, from the University of Poitiers.

So, how would I feel if my grandkids come up to me spouting a new language?

I’d feel what my own ah kong feels now – resignation, that his own grandson can’t speak Hokkien to save his life.

But just as he tries to keep up with the times – the one and only English word he knows is ‘good’ – I’ll try too.

‘Nzuri,’ I’ll say.

Good that the young are reaching out to other languages and cultures.

Good that the stories embedded in languages are being kept alive.

But not so good if our own stories wither away due to the neglect of the languages we grew up with.

If only we could all learn three or more languages. But unfortunately for most people, the human brain is not wired to learn so many.

Now, what’s the word for ‘pity’ in Swahili?

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News: The Vatican relaunches website with new Chinese language section

March 20, 2009 — lingoproz

Found on 3News.co.nz on 20 March 2009

The Vatican re-launched its website Thursday, opening up its online teachings to a wider variety of Asian worshippers by adding a new section in Chinese.

The Vatican’s website, www.vatican.va, already contained Italian, English, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Latin sections.

The new section, which features both traditional and simplified Chinese characters, was welcomed by Chinese Catholics who said the move would allow the church to connect more directly with its worshippers.

Church authorities have accused Beijing in the past of blocking the faithful’s access to the pope’s messages in the same way that Chinese authorities occasionally block foreign news sites.

Ties between the Vatican and China’s communist government are long strained.

Beijing objects to the Vatican’s tradition of having the pope name his own bishops, calling it interference in China.

Beijing appoints bishops for the state-sanctioned Catholic church.

Still, many of the country’s estimated 12 million Catholics worship in congregations outside the state-approved church, with bishops loyal to the pope.

However Catholics in both Europe and Asia were quick to play down the friction on Thursday.

Father Roberto Giannatelli, Professor at the Mass Media Faculty of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome, said he believed the website’s regulators would be mindful of “the legitimate needs of the Chinese government and will do their best to avoid misunderstandings”.
APTN
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Why a language called Papiamentu might be the best solution to the world’s language problem

March 18, 2009 — lingoproz

Found on Page F30 – a blog by 데이빛 aka Mithridates

Many aren’t aware of this, but the world has a language problem: the problem is that there is no universal second language through which everybody can communicate. It’s true that basic English will do fine for most airports and a lot of major cities in the world, but this is communication at its most basic level (“one coffee…and big size please”), and not even communication at this level is guaranteed.

Using interpreters costs the police in Suffolk £20,000 a month, translation costs the EU around a billion euros per year, and English hegemony isn’t even guaranteed considering the growing strength of languages like Chinese and Spanish, plus French (French? Really? Yes – the number of French speakers in Africa is expected to increase to 600 million in 2050. French isn’t going anywhere). Even Turkish is strengthening its position in Europe and throughout Central Asia.

Add all this together and you can see that the world is heading for a bit of a linguistic deadlock. One of the problems with the current situation is simply that the most prominent languages in the world are often extremely hard to learn for others – English orthography is a mess, French is only slightly better but has grammatical gender and weird verb conjugation, Spanish has excellent orthography but requires a lot of work on memorizing verb conjugation, Chinese…well, Chinese is written in Chinese.

One solution proposed to this problem is a constructed language, created to be easy for anyone to learn, and thus we have languages like Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Lingua Franca Nova, Occidental, Novial, and so on. Though I and a lot of people like me do support this idea, the world on the whole doesn’t seem to like constructed languages. The reasons for this are twofold: 1) they come across as being too artificial, and 2) they have very few speakers and thus almost no economic clout. It’s hard to say whether any constructed languages will ever succeed.

Luckily, there may be another solution, and it’s a language called Papiamentu. Papiamentu is spoken right here:

(plus a few other islands nearby)

This small corner of the world is part of the Netherlands Antilles, an overseas territory of the Netherlands where Papiamentu was born. Papiamentu is a creole, with vocabulary mostly from Portuguese and Spanish, with about another quarter of its vocabulary from Dutch and a few other words from various languages. And because it’s a creole that means it has an extremely simplified grammar in addition to the large comprehensibility at first sight.

Let’s compare the verb conjugation of Papiamentu with Spanish. First the Spanish verb comprar, to buy:

Presente
yo compro
tú compras
él compra
nosotros compramos
vosotros compráis
ellos compran		 Pretérito perfecto compuesto
yo he comprado
tú has comprado
él ha comprado
nosotros hemos comprado
vosotros habéis comprado
ellos han comprado

Pretérito imperfecto
yo compraba
tú comprabas
él compraba
nosotros comprábamos
vosotros comprabais
ellos compraban
Pretérito pluscuamperfecto
yo había comprado
tú habías comprado
él había comprado
nosotros habíamos comprado
vosotros habíais comprado
ellos habían comprado

Pretérito perfecto simple
yo compré
tú compraste
él compró
nosotros compramos
vosotros comprasteis
ellos compraron
Pretérito anterior
yo hube comprado
tú hubiste comprado
él hubo comprado
nosotros hubimos comprado
vosotros hubisteis comprado
ellos hubieron comprado

Futuro
yo compraré
tú comprarás
él comprará
nosotros compraremos
vosotros compraréis
ellos comprarán
Futuro perfecto
yo habré comprado
tú habrás comprado
él habrá comprado
nosotros habremos comprado
vosotros habréis comprado
ellos habrán comprado

And now the same verb (kumpra) in Papiamentu:

Present Continuous
mi ta kumpra
bo ta kumpra
e ta kumpra
nos ta kumpra
boso ta kumpra
nan ta kumpra		 Future
mi lo kumpra
bo lo kumpra
e lo kumpra
nos lo kumpra
boso lo kumpra
nan lo kumpra
Past
mi a kumpra
bo a kumpra
el a kumpra
nos a kumpra
boso a kumpra
nan a kumpra		 Past Continuous
mi tabata kumpra
bo tabata kumpra
e tabata kumpra
nos tabata kumpra
boso tabata kumpra
nan tabata kumpra

(the area on conjugation in Papiamentu is less complete than the one for Spanish, but even this small portion shows you how easy it is – conjugation is carried out by simply using an auxiliary in front of the main verb)

In addition to that you now don’t have to worry about grammatical gender anymore. In short, Papiamentu is the language you wish you had learned in school instead of Spanish or French. It’s not only easy to learn but because its vocabulary comes from prominent European languages it provides a benefit to students who intend to go on to other languages afterwards.

Okay then, what about neutrality? One of the common arguments given for a constructed language is that it provides a neutral playing field in that everyone is using the language as a second language, so those using it as a mother tongue will not be given an unfair advantage. This is true to a certain extent, however:

1) The definition of neutrality is always a pretty vague one. Does a language get to be considered neutral simply because nobody speaks it as a first language, or does the vocabulary itself have to be derived from languages around the world? If a language derives too much of its vocabulary from one source is it then not neutral? Neutrality is good to a certain extent, but focusing too much on the perfect neutral language is an impossible task. In reality, more neutral is about as good as we can hope to get.
2) Certainly Papiamentu would given an unfair advantage to the people that speak it as a mother tongue…but these people live on a few islands close to South America and number only about 300,000, hardly the same thing as giving an advantage to the hundreds of millions of people that speak other languages like English, French or Spanish.

Finally, how complete a language is Papiamentu? Can you do everything you can do with other languages using Papiamentu? The answer is yes. Here are some examples of Papiamentu being used in practice.

Here it is being used to give a code of ethics to journalists: (see source)

Here it is being used to give information on a drug bust: (see source)

Here it is being used to discuss languages in education: (see source)

And here it is sung: (see source)

So yes, Papiamentu is as complete and functional as any other language. You’ll also notice that if you speak a fair amount of Spanish or Portuguese (and French/Italian/Latin etc. to a certain extent) that this language is already pretty easy to understand at first sight.

There are of course other creole languages in existence, and most of them are fairly easy to learn in comparison with other languages that are usually studied in school. None of these, however, have the advantages that Papiamentu has:

- Tok Pisin and Bislama (Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu) are spoken in a very isolated part of the world, and the countries in which they are spoken are still largely undeveloped
- Haiti speaks a creole as well, but once again the country is unstable and undeveloped
- Mauritius speaks a French-based creole, but isn’t all that interested in promoting it as a written language
- Seychelles does a better job at promoting their French-based creole than Mauritius but it’s once again quite isolated and the population there is quite low

Whereas Papiamentu is spoken in a stable and well-developed part of the world, is technically a part of the Netherlands which is an EU member, and it’s also quite close to both North and South America. It also has a larger amount of non-Romance vocabulary and thus represents a more varied swath of population than other creoles do.

Okay, so Papiamentu is a pretty good candidate for a universal second language, but how could this be accomplished in practice? That’s hard to say. At the moment since it’s not even considered to be a candidate for a universal second language the best way to get the ball rolling would probably be to conduct studies on the use of the language as a bridge in between English and Spanish speakers in the United States. A few studies showing how easy it is for people with different linguistic backgrounds to learn the language to communicate would probably be the best way to get people thinking about this language’s potential as an interlinguistic tool…or you could just write about it on your blog and see whether that gets people interested in the idea.

Posted in Essays + Blog Posts. Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 6 Comments »
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