Introduction
Across the world, minority languages have been under pressure from regional, national, or global languages as these larger tongues became associated with greater social, cultural, economic, and political opportunities compared to local languages. This was particularly true during the period of European colonization and has accelerated in the last seventy years with the rise of independent nations from the colonies, and the spread of national and global languages through government, education, workplaces, service contexts, media, and the Internet. As a consequence, and because of negative attitudes towards them, minority languages have become endangered as they are no longer learned by children.
One response by linguistic researchers to these threats to minority languages has been the development of a way of researching languages and their use that has come to be called ‘language documentation’. In this chapter, I explore what documentation is, whether and how the outcomes of documentation can be used for revitalization (which aims to increase the domains and numbers of speakers of threatened languages), and some of the limitations and challenges of working with language documentation materials. I end by discussing some possible opportunities for documentation to be more creatively used both for and with revitalization.Footnote 1
What Is Language Documentation?
In about 1995, a new approach to studying languages around the world was developed that has come to be known as ‘language documentation’ or ‘documentary linguistics’. This approach aims to create audio-visual samples of language use and performances, ranging from everyday conversations to narratives (story telling) to more ritualized activities such as prayers, ceremonies, and recitations. The idea is to create an organized collection (called a ‘corpus’) of examples of the use of the language in their social and cultural contexts. The outputs from language documentation are intended to be a multipurpose record that could give an idea of how a language is actually employed in a range of contexts and situations by a range of speakers (e.g. male, female, old, young). These records could then be used by both current and future speakers and learners as resources to support the minority language, e.g. in mother-tongue education, or to increase its social status, and for learning or re-learning the language, and thereby revitalize it (I discuss the relationship between documentation and revitalization in more detail below). To this end, language documenters emphasize that a copy of the corpus should be placed in an archive, along with relevant metadata (information about the information in the corpus) such as the names and ages of speakers, where the recordings were made, who collected them etc. Later I discuss what I mean by archiving and some of the challenges it entails.
Just like researchers who create nature documentaries, language documenters frequently work as a team and emphasize the importance of making high-quality audio and video recordings in their environmental, social, and cultural contexts, ideally in the locations where the people who speak the language live. This typically involves fieldwork and participant observation, where speakers are recorded using the language in their daily life, with their informed consent and following proper ethical consultation. Such work is best carried out by a documentation team which ideally includes local researchers and/or assistants who can contribute their knowledge and skills to the documentation and its local impact. In the process, the documentary team will learn about the structures and organization of the languages used in the community and how they function, especially the different domains that different languages or ways of speaking are employed in. They can also study the attitudes and beliefs that people have towards the various languages they know, and how they are used. There may also be interviews with speakers, asking them to translate from their languages into a language of wider communication (a lingua franca) or vice versa, or checking words and sentence constructions (grammar), or the social and cultural significance of different ways of speaking. The corpus would typically contain transcriptions of the audio-visual recordings (which sometimes involves creating a script or writing system for unwritten languages), and translations into a language of wider communication so that it can be accessed by people who do not speak the languages being documented. In addition, explanatory notes or information about words, grammatical structures, and uses may be included in the corpus, along with information about the records in the corpus, called metadata (who is speaking, when, where, why, etc.). This is needed for records in the corpus to be findable, and for the audio-visual collection to be maximally useful, especially for language learners or those who partially speak the language or do not know it at all.
Language documentation can be distinguished from language description, which is the study of the structure of languages, looking at their pronunciation (phonology), word structure (morphology), sentence structure (syntax), and how meaning is expressed (semantics and pragmatics). In language description researchers aim to identify the significant parts of languages and how they work together in a structured way, typically producing grammatical descriptions (or grammars) that explain how the language is organized. Language description also often involves cross-linguistic comparisons to identify properties that are rare, unusual, or common among the languages of the world. Language descriptions can be based on a language documentation corpus, but they do not have to be. They can be produced by studying words and meanings in isolation, especially where the description is based on the author’s own language and their own intuitions about how it is structured. Note that description and documentation are different but related activities: Language documentation must include a certain amount of language description in order to create the transcriptions and translations and other metadata that are an essential component of the corpus, linked to the audio-visual recordings. Without description, documentation is difficult, if not impossible, to access and use. I discuss the relationship between documentation, description, and revitalization further below.
For some languages, there may be audio or video recordings, written records, and descriptions that date from some time ago. They may have been collected by explorers, colonists, missionaries, or interested amateurs who lived in or passed through the region and learnt something of the language. We can refer to these as ‘legacy materials’, a term that can also be used for written or audio-visual materials that were collected by other people and passed on to another (typically later) research team, including those working on revitalization or language support. These legacy materials present particular challenges if we wish to include them in the documentary corpus and/or use them for description and revitalization – I discuss these challenges later.
The Relationship between Documentation and Revitalization
Language documenters often say that one of their goals in creating their corpus is to make it available for use in language revitalization. However language documentation corpuses may not be ideal or even useful for the purposes of language revitalization.Footnote 2 There are several reasons for this:
(1) The records in the corpus may focus on interesting or unusual linguistic features rather than how conversations are organized in the particular community (how we begin, end, or change and interrupt a conversation varies from language to language), how to use language to get people to do things, what is appropriate to say or not say in what situation, how to agree, disagree, or argue with someone, and how to be a functioning speaker of the language;
(2) Conversations, narratives, and interviews may focus on the past, looking back nostalgically to the ‘good old days’ before social, cultural, and linguistic shifts began to take place, often highlighting the childhood or early adulthood of the current oldest generations of speakers. This may be accompanied by negative evaluations by those speakers of the changes that have taken place, with a sense of ‘loss’ or ‘corruption’ of older ways of speaking and thinking. Such materials and attitudes can be off-putting for children and young learners, and those who wish to see a positive image for the future of the languages;
(3) The linguistic analyses created by language documenters, including transcriptions and grammatical annotations, may be produced in orthographies or languages unknown to the community and using specialized terminology which is not easily understandable to non-linguists;
(4) The language practices included in a corpus may not match the perceptions or preferences of teachers and language activists, especially when there is evidence of language shift in the form of language switching, borrowing or mixing, and variation and change. Revitalizers may prefer purism when creating learning materials, rather than using the documentary resources. There can be tensions between teaching ways of speaking or structures based on the usage of traditional native speakers (usually ‘elders’) documented in the corpus versus those of younger or ‘new’ speakers, especially for languages where there is no established standard form;
(5) Because researchers often aim to capture usage by ‘the best speakers’, the resulting recordings may be difficult to use for revitalization because they are heavily biased towards older people who speak fast, mumble, slur, or elide their utterances, or even have speech impediments (including lack of teeth) or are hard of hearing. Fluent speakers may also rely heavily on background knowledge or history of the people and places involved that might not be clear or obvious from the conversation or story. Such material can be difficult for learners, especially at an early stage, to understand, process, or model;
(6) Documenters rarely record speech directed towards children and language learners so the corpus may tell us nothing about how to speak to them. Missing may be such things as lullabies, children’s games or rhymes, jokes, or simple exchanges or routines that would be useful for an early or intermediate learner to acquire;
(7) The conversations or narratives in the corpus may include topics such as secret or sacred practices, death, or sexual relationships, swearing or impolite expressions, or gossip, which are not appropriate for language learners, especially children.
For these reasons, materials in a documentary corpus might be useful for revitalization, but they must be approached with care, and the attitudes and reactions of speakers and learners of all types need to be taken into account. It is often a difficult balancing act to use documentary and descriptive materials for revitalization purposes, and in some cases it may be that documentary corpuses or descriptive grammars and dictionaries are of very little use for language learning and revitalization. Later I suggest some ways that documenters can make their current and future work more useful for these purposes.
Working with Legacy Materials
In some situations, especially for areas that were colonized in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, there may be few or no contemporary speakers of the languages, and the main resources available for revitalization are written wordlists, texts, translations, or old recordings (on tapes or cassettes) collected by explorers, missionaries, or settlers. Sometimes we find notes and letters written by speakers themselves who were writing in their own languages to express their thoughts and feelings, to communicate with colonial or missionary authorities about legal, cultural, educational, and economic matters, or to preserve threatened knowledge, like stories or vocabulary. This is true in areas such as eastern Australia, the north-east coast of the USA, Mexico, or southern South Africa. Occasionally we may also find written records or audio-visual recordings made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by professional linguists that have been preserved (sometimes after the person has died) in private collections or libraries and archives. We can refer to all of this as ‘legacy material’, and for some communities, such as the Kaurna people of Adelaide, Australia,Footnote 3 it has proven to be extremely valuable and a major source for language revitalization and re-learning (see Capsule 1.4 on reading historical texts in Nahuatl). Legacy materials may present opportunities for being adapted for use in revitalization, and may be a great source of information about languages and social and cultural practices that are only dimly remembered or have gone out of use. They can be a source of idioms, metaphors, and sayings that are no longer known, as a result of the impact of the dominant languages. They can also provide valuable insights into how languages can adapt to changing circumstances to create new words or expressions (called ‘neologisms’). For example, in missionary Bible translations for Diyari, spoken in South Australia, we find the verb dakarna, which originally meant ‘to stab with a pointed instrument’ (like a spear or stone knife), was extended by the missionaries to mean ‘to write’ (with a pen or pencil). This might be further extended to mean ‘to type on a keyboard’ (of a computer or mobile device) since we now use our fingers as pointed instruments to do this.
However legacy texts and recordings can also present special challenges, and must be approached carefully. It may require specialist help from librarians, technicians, historians, or linguists to make sense of the legacy materials and to make them maximally useful, for the following reasons:
(1) Ethical and political issues – often it is unclear how the legacy materials were collected and whether the collectors had permission to distribute them to others or were given instructions about how they could be used. If the collector is alive we can ask about this, but frequently this may not be possible. Sometimes there are living descendants of the collector and/or the people whose languages and cultures are recorded (including particular individuals if their names are known from the sources) and there may be complex issues about ownership of and rights to the knowledge and intellectual property contained in them. This needs to be discussed properly and openly when approaching older records, and may require legal advice in difficult situations;
(2) Form and content issues – the legacy materials may be written in an obsolete or obscure writing system, or spelled in an inconsistent or inaccurate way that does not properly represent the pronunciation, structure, or use of the language. If there are translations, they may be unclear, incomplete, or wrong. Sometimes we may need to do detective work, cross-checking different sources to ascertain what particular forms or meanings are intended, or to compare them to information about neighbouring and/or related languages to search for clues. In some instances, it may not be possible to decide, and a given spelling, translation, or expression has to remain ambiguous or unknown. Old sound and video recordings (on tapes or cassettes) may be affected by wear-and-tear (including mould or tape degradation, or stretching) and it can be difficult nowadays to find equipment that will play them so that they can be copied and digitized. It is best to seek professional advice from librarians, archivists, or media specialists (including radio and television organizations) before taking on the task of using such recordings for revitalization. Also, old digital files (on floppy disks or other storage devices) may need to be converted if the fonts and software used to create them are now obsolete. In the worst case, some old computer files may simply be unreadable and hence unusable;
(3) Context issues – for legacy materials that include stories or songs, we may not have information about who the audience is intended to be, or on what occasions they can be told or sung (e.g. is it a story for children or a sacred myth only to be shared with older people, or perhaps only with men? Is it a ribald song not meant for young people?). A community’s social, cultural, or religious beliefs may also have changed over time so that certain older materials are no longer considered appropriate for public performances, especially for younger people or those outside a given group. Sometimes collectors can make remarks or comments in the materials, or use words and expressions that were common at the time of writing or recording but would now be considered to be inappropriate, racist, or sexist (and perhaps were never intended for public consumption anyway). There may also be references to people, places, or things that are obscure, or only known to certain individuals or groups. This means we need to take care when thinking about how such materials might be employed in revitalization, and seek advice from relevant knowledge holders if possible.
In summary, legacy materials can be very valuable sources of information about languages and cultures for use in revitalization and recovery of knowledge and practices, but they need to be approached circumspectly and used appropriately. It is advisable to seek professional advice and training when necessary.
Working with Archives
An archive is a trusted repository set-up to collect and preserve historical materials of a certain type. Archives can be analogue (collecting physical objects like letters, notes, books, photographs, or video and audio tapes) or digital (collecting computer files of various types, including photographs or scans of physical objects), or a mixture of both. All archives have a collection policy that sets out the types of things they are interested in. For material on languages and cultures, there are several types, which differ in their resources, staffing, coverage, and interests:
(1) National archives like the British Library, British Museum, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, National Archives of Australia etc.;
(2) Regional archives like the Alaska Native Language Centre (ANLA), Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), California Language Archive, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) etc.;
(3) Local archives like those of the boroughs of London, the Dialekt-, ortnamns och folkminnesarkivet i Umeå Department of Dialectology, Onomastics and Folklore Research in Umeå, Sweden, etc.;
(4) Professional institution archives like the American Philosophical Society, Royal Anthropological Institute, or collections that are housed within university libraries.
Individuals may have personal collections of materials or objects they have amassed over many years, but we do not normally consider these to be an archive as they do not usually have an explicit collection policy, a publicly accessible catalogue, or institutional backing for long-term preservation and sustainability. There is a useful listing of digital language archives that collect documentary and descriptive materials for endangered languages on the website of the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN).Footnote 4
Archives can be important sources of information on languages and cultures (both tangible and intangible cultural heritage) that can be valuable for language revitalization, though it often takes some work and efforts to track down and identify what materials are held where.Footnote 5 Above I have identified issues and challenges with making use of legacy materials that may be stored in an archive, but in addition to these there can be particular matters relating to using archives themselves, especially digital language archives:
(1) Archives will have a usage and access policy that sets out who may use the materials in the archive (everyone, or certain types of people only), and how they may be used (read or listen to only, copy but not distribute to others, or freely copy and distribute). Sometimes it is necessary to pay for access (e.g. to receive a digital copy of a document or recording). In some archives, especially wholly digital ones, access may require permission from the person or group who deposited the corpus, folder, or individual file that the user is interested in;
(2) The archive may contain materials on a language you are interested in but list it under a name which is not the one used in the community (it may even be an outdated or insulting term dating back to colonial times or legacy materials). You may need to try various spellings of the language name when searching in the archive catalogue listing;
(3) The archive catalogue may be complicated or difficult to use, even if it is available online, and might be only accessible in a language that is not widely known to the speech community. For example, most DELAMAN archives mentioned above have catalogues in English only. AILLA, which focuses on Latin America, does have its catalogue in Spanish and English, but not in Portuguese (for users in Brazil), or in any minority regional language, such as Guarani or Quechua, both of which have millions of speakers and active research and revitalization communities;
(4) Deposits in archives may be incomplete, or in the case of digital archives in particular, only partial or inconsistent. It is frequently the case that researchers working on minority languages deposit their corpuses incrementally as their documentation and description project progresses, which can result in audio-visual recordings with incomplete or no transcriptions and translations, different versions of a given file, inconsistencies in representation as the researchers learn more about the language forms, meanings, and contexts over time, or change their mind about how words should be spelled or what things mean;
(5) Access to digital archive materials may require particular computer software, and training on its installation and how to use it for the purposes the user is interested in. For example, documenters frequently employ a software tool called ELANFootnote 6 to link their audio-visual recordings to their transcriptions and translations, and occasionally to the metadata and linguistic description. It is a powerful and complex tool that is difficult to use and requires individual instruction to learn, but without it the archival materials may be unusable;
(6) There may be some metadata about the deposit (information about the information within it); however, this is frequently limited or incomplete, especially in providing contextual background about why and how particular recordings, transcriptions, or translations were made, and how they relate to other material in the corpus (e.g. is a given song connected to a certain myth story? Are different stories about a character part of a larger story cycle or stages in a life history? Is a particular file the researcher’s reanalysis of another file, perhaps from a different researcher?). Metadata can also be inaccurate, especially if the project was done in a limited time, with people or places mis-identified, personal names misspelled or wrongly assigned, and so on. Sometimes these gaps and inconsistencies can be resolved by checking with the depositor (if they are still alive), or community members, or individuals who have relevant knowledge (such as an assistant who worked on a project, or a family member who knows the history of fieldwork or the people who participated).
For these reasons, it is important to discuss your needs and plans with the staff who run the archive, and seek their professional advice or training about the collection and the materials that make it up, as well as the ways it might be used for revitalization. In the USA, there is a national series of training workshops for this purpose called Breath of Life that involves University of California Berkeley and the Smithsonian Institution.Footnote 7 You may also need to interact and negotiate with the depositors or the people recorded in the particular materials you are interested in, or their descendants.
Documentation for Revitalization
We have seen above that the relationships between language documentation, language description, and language revitalization are complex, and need to be approached with care and attention, seeking advice and training where required. Sometimes language activists and communities can become disappointed when they find that a given document, recording, or digital corpus is difficult to use or not particularly useful for their needs. In this section, I provide some suggestions about how current and future language documentation could be made more valuable for revitalization purposes, without necessarily detracting from the other goals that the documenters may have. I suggest that:Footnote 8
(1) A wide range of members of the community, including those living outside the original location, should be encouraged to participate in the documentation, description, and revitalization planning and activities, rather than focusing on a limited number of older or ‘best’ speakers on the one hand, while considering outsiders to be ‘experts’ or ‘specialists’ on the other hand. Community members, activists, students, and enthusiasts can get involved in various ways which may lead to an increase in their language skills and practices, create stronger links with other speakers and elders in particular, and promote local language revitalization activities and changes in language attitudes. Such engagement can also lead to the creation and development of local community-based and community-driven language and culture archives, and often contributes to improving the quality of the resulting documentation (better translations, more culturally appropriate situations, a wider range of social activities recorded, etc.). Documentation and revitalization projects that include training, e.g. through grassroots workshops, can spread knowledge and skills more broadly, improve capacity building for community members, and increase their awareness of their own knowledge, skills, and agency;
(2) The range of speakers documented should include younger generations and those who may be less fluent in the heritage language. This will result in documentation of how non-traditional speakers use the full linguistic resources at their disposal, including the neighbouring or majority languages, which may involve borrowing or mixing. For some older speakers this kind of language use may be negatively evaluated, but for revitalization it is important to document how younger speakers and learners are actually speaking, and to determine what other sorts of language and expressions can be taught to them;
(3) The range of contexts documented should include non-traditional and contemporary interactional events, activities, and locations, such as community meetings, medical centres, places of employment, Internet and social media, and interactive games. This will generate examples of language use that learners, especially children, can engage with and put to actual use in their own daily lives;
(4) The kinds of interactions that are documented in the corpus should be expanded to include everyday, but often overlooked, aspects such as greetings, farewells, fillers, and discourse markers (like the equivalents of ‘umm’, ‘aah’, ‘mmm’, ‘well then’, ‘go on’, etc.), how to start, stop, continue, and change a conversation, as well as how to make an apology, tell a joke, express one’s disagreement, disappointment, or anger, and so on. These kinds of elements, which may be short and easy to remember, can be very useful for language learners, especially when they have more passive than active language ability (i.e. they can understand but have less ability to speak). An appropriately placed word or phrase like these can keep an interaction in the language going, or give a language teacher an indication that the learner is following, and thereby provide further opportunities for practice and learning;
(5) Researchers should document family language such as that between parents or grandparents and children as this can be useful for re-establishing transmission of the language between generations. This could include lullabies, songs, riddles, or other culturally appropriate language use, but also affective terms like the equivalents of ‘grandma’, ‘honey’, ‘sweetie’ etc., as well as terms of respect used to elders;
(6) Attention should be paid to short, fixed, or formulaic expressions that learners can productively use on a range of occasions. These might be things like the culturally appropriate equivalents of ‘excuse me’, ‘sorry’, ‘can I take that?’ or idioms, sayings and metaphors like ‘pass away’, ‘take the bull by the horns’, ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’ and so on. For more advanced learners, the formulaic or ritualized speech used within meetings or on ceremonial occasions can be very useful, both in terms of active proficiency in the language but also for acquiring culturally relevant knowledge (in Australia routines and short speeches like ‘welcome to country’ expressed in local Aboriginal languages at the beginning of a significant event are among those highly valued in language revitalization);
(7) The metadata associated with recordings could indicate that they might be particularly useful in certain ways for different kinds of language revitalization activities, such as ‘this is a good example of apologizing for intermediate level’. This could also include indications of potentials for adaptation in language learning, e.g. particularly clear recordings of individual words in a certain cultural domain that could be used for a quiz or puzzle;
(8) Contextual information that is notated for audio-visual recordings and provided with archival deposits should be as wide and detailed as possible, so that users now and in the future will be more easily able to make sense of how and why particular recordings were made, processed, analysed, and used. This kind of metadocumentation (documentation of the documentation), e.g. ‘this is a traditional story often told by grandmothers to children at bed time’, is extremely useful for language revitalizers (as well as subsequent researchers of all types). However it is frequently omitted as scholars and students concentrate their energies on recording, transcribing, and translating the examples of language features or use that they are particularly interested in, e.g. only the sentences containing a particular kind of grammatical structure. There is a balance to be struck between the work of documentation and metadocumentation, but more attention to the latter can have important and valuable consequences into the future for everyone.
If some or all of these ideas can be adopted and adapted in language documentation and description, then the people, contexts, and ways of speaking that are incorporated in the corpus can be made more relevant and useful for language revitalization.
Documentation of Revitalization
Individuals and communities engaged in language revitalization should be encouraged to document the processes, decision-making, events, successes, and failures of their work so that they and others can learn from them. Such documentation can also provide valuable resources for and feed back into ongoing curriculum design, materials development, testing, and evaluation. Language revitalizers can adopt the methods, practices, and tools of language documenters and make high-quality audio-visual records of learners’ knowledge and use of language and cultural phenomena, and accompany them with transcriptions, translations, notes, metadata, and metadocumentation, using the documenters’ software and data models where appropriate. In doing so revitalizers can contribute to the development and sustainability of efforts to increase the current and future domains of use and/or the numbers of speakers of the threatened languages they are concerned with. Some specific recommendationsFootnote 9 for activities that could be documented in this way include asking learners, either individually or in groups, to speak about their experiences in intergenerational activities, in families, in schools, or in other contexts. They could report what the older generation talked about, explain the situations, or describe what they saw or heard. By documenting these kinds of intergenerational activities as well as the ways that learners use the languages available to them after engaging in such activities, revitalizers should be able to identify psychological or interactional factors involved in successful or unsuccessful transmission of the language. This new understanding can then be used in further language planning and development, and can help to foster the vitality of the threatened languages.
13.1 Technical Questions in Language Documentation
Most of our attestations of languages that are no longer transmitted intergenerationally or orally only exist in written form. The earliest audio recording that we can listen to nowadays is the so-called phonautogram of Au clair de la lune created on 9 April 1860 by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. Since 1877, when Edison recorded Mary Had a Little Lamb, people have been able to record and play back sounds. The usefulness of recording equipment for documenting endangered languages was understood very quickly, and so the Passamaquoddy people living in Maine and Canada can now listen to the recordings of their language made in 1890 by Jesse Walter Fewkes. This documentation was done using technologies no longer used: wax cylinders.
Technological advances of the last few decades have transformed the language documentation processes. People are no longer likely to struggle with wax cylinders and less likely to have to deal with cassette tapes. A huge proportion of the human population has a cellphone. Most cellphones, and probably all smartphones, have some sort of an audio recording functionality. While most of them don’t yet compare to the professional quality that can be achieved using specialized digital recording devices with good quality microphones, they are more useful because they are readily at hand.
Before starting the documentation, it is a good idea to check the cellphone and especially its recording capabilities, the placement of the internal microphone (this should be considered the last resort – to be used only if there is no way of obtaining an external one), and possibilities of upgrading it. Simple and relatively cheap upgrade possibilities include buying an external microphone with a mini-jack or another appropriate connector (as more and more smartphones are moving towards USB Type-C and Lightning ports), or installing a dedicated recording application (as opposed to the one that comes preinstalled on the phone).
No matter whether one is recording on a phone or professional equipment, one quickly encounters the issue of file formats. In general, it is better to record in lossless formats (like .wav and .flac) as in this way more data is preserved and can serve for more purposes. The alternative (lossy) format is most often .mp3, which has two main advantages:
It consumes significantly less storage space: this might be important if there isn’t likely to be more space on the recording device and no possibility to copy the files anywhere else soon.
The second advantage of .mp3 is that one can be sure that everyone with a modern computer or cellphone is able to listen to it. The other popular format (.wav) is relatively old and can also be played back on many devices, but the files tend to become huge once the recording gets longer and might thus cause memory (RAM) problems when played.
The newer lossless format (.flac) creates smaller files, but many older devices lack the capability to play them back at all.
It is quite easy to convert a recording from a lossless format (especially .wav but also .flac) to a lossy format (.mp3) but not the other way around.
However, .mp3 also has disadvantages. One needs to keep in mind that converting .wav to .mp3 means losing sound quality and sometimes information. In the process of compressing the recording, some information gets lost and cannot be recovered. For some revitalization purposes .mp3 files are adequate because they are smaller and easier to share via the internet, but if we want high-quality, multipurpose recordings (e.g. to analyse the sounds of a language), high-definition formats are necessary. So it is recommended to record in .wav if you have the option, and convert to .mp3 if required.Footnote 10
In the end, the decision about the format is not as impactful as the quality of the recording. There are a few things that need to be kept in mind to ensure better quality. The first is to make sure that the device is actually in good condition (fully charged, with backup batteries or external powerbanks, and a well-functioning microphone). The choice of an appropriate microphone is also very important – depending on the context it might be a stereo or mono microphone of different configurations, eg. omnidirectional, cardioid, or hypercardioid. However it is good to remember the wise words of Chase Jarvis: ‘the best camera is the one that’s with you’ as here the same principle applies to microphones. If you cannot afford the perfect or even recommended microphone for the occasion, it is better to record with the device you have than to forgo recording altogether. The second is to try to eliminate background noises: maybe ask to close a window to a busy street or make sure the recorded person doesn’t have other commitments (like pre-arranged calls). If you can do it without causing discomfort to the person being recorded, consider bringing the microphone as close to them as is reasonable. The closer it will be, the better the recording quality.
Ideally the recording should be monitored through earbuds or headphones to make sure that you are actually recording what you think you are, and that the recording level is not too high nor too low. However, it is best to check first with the person being recorded if they are OK with this as it could create the impression of paying more attention to the technology than to themselves. You may want to do some practice recordings and let them listen back via earbuds or headphones to help understand the value of monitoring,
Similar concerns apply to video recording, but one also needs to think about image quality. This means choosing the best resolution (1080p is probably the best choice, with 4K being problematic to play back) as well as framing the subject, paying attention to lighting (avoiding over-exposure and underexposure), and making sure the video is stable for example by using a tripod (if possible) and by avoiding zooming.
Framing means creating compositions which are visually pleasing and appropriate to the subject (for example a wide angle for performances and rituals, and a closer one for personal interviews). It is always better to record video in landscape (horizontal), not portrait mode.
Avoiding over-exposure and underexposure is necessary because cameras try to balance the light and dark in what they are recording, so a poorly lit person on a bright background will be only a dark silhouette. If you have more time and space to set the stage for the recording, you can use a reflector, or a white sheet, out of shot to light a dark subject.
Making sure that the video is stable is easier in some cases and more difficult in others. When recording indoors one can often put the camera on a piece of furniture, which is a fast and simple option. However, it is not without disadvantages as things on furniture can fall off, or pick up noise from the furniture itself. It is not so easy outdoors and one might often want to use a tripod. These can sometimes be heavy, expensive, and unwieldy, however there are inexpensive lighter alternatives like GorillaPods, and many fold up to convenient sizes. A selfie stick can often double as a tripod (especially for a cellphone). If the video is recorded in motion (while walking, dancing, etc.), it might be a good idea to invest in a pocket gimbal, which can stabilize it.
When recording a movie resist the temptation to zoom in and out. Once you set the focus, leave it, and do not change it. In general, it is better to put the camera a good distance from the subject. This doesn’t mean that movies will only include wide shots: high resolution video can later be cropped digitally to create closer frames, so an edited finished product can include both wide framing and close ups.
Because of the need to place the camera away from the subject you might run into the problem of reduced audio recording quality – after all the microphone should be as close as possible to the people speaking, which stands in opposition to the need to place the camera away from the subject. Moreover, inbuilt camera microphones do not measure up to the standards of external microphones. Once again, it is a good idea to use an external microphone whenever it is possible. You can also record audio separately on a recorder or cellphone using a microphone near the people speaking. This can be combined with the video later to replace any poor audio from the camera itself.
Taking all the above points into consideration, it is often better to have someone else to help with recording. This isn’t so crucial in the case of audio, which often only requires starting the recording device and periodically checking if it still works. However, when a second person helps you with an audio recording, they can also monitor it using ear buds or headphones and thus ensure that not only it is working but also that the level is correct. Video requires devoting more attention to filming, so it is easy to become distracted from the topic of conversation, which might be offensive to the person who is being recorded and waste their time. Therefore, the help of another person or two with the camera, lighting, and recording might be very useful. Younger members of the community may be interested in getting involved in your project and can be trained to help with these things.
Documentary materials are in general very valuable, and safeguarding is important. This is done most effectively through multiple backups – copies of data created to protect it from accidental destruction. The golden rule is 3:2:1 ‒ always keeping three backups. Two of those backups should use different media or ways of storing (for example having 2 hard drives and a flash drive or a CD/DVD). Each way of storing data has its problems and thus your files should be properly stored and periodically checked, e.g. by recovering sample backup files and making sure they work properly. Hard drives (HDDs) can lose data if they are demagnetized. Disks (CDs and DVDs) require an optical drive and special software, and can fail over time. Even the newest solid-state drives (SSDs) can suddenly fail unaccountably. This is precisely why we recommend storing in at least 2 different ways and checking them periodically – to reduce the likelihood of all backups failing at once, and to restore any missing ones.
At least one backup should be kept separately from the others – in a different place (a different room, or even better, building) or in the cloud (on a dedicated Internet server). ‘Free’ cloud storage (that is available without having to pay for it) is available from many providers (like Google, Microsoft – OneDrive, Dropbox, mega, and many others) but using it always means that the data is uploaded to a corporation’s server, which might be an ethical problem for many people or a data privacy issue if the server is outside the user’s country, e.g. there are issues with the GDPR if cloud storage is in the USA. Still, these providers offer a lot of space without having to spend any money. However, no matter what kind of backup one chooses, it is important to do so. In general, it is recommended to do a backup at least every week, but when conducting fieldwork, it is best done whenever time permits – preferably every day.
You should also consider archiving important materials (audio, video, photos, text, computer files) to ensure long-term storage and availability. Archiving requires working with a trusted repository and involves selecting and editing the materials and describing them using metadata, e.g. who is in the recording, where it was made, what languages are being used. More information about archiving for endangered languages is available from www.delaman.org.
13.2 MILPA (Mexican Indigenous Language Promotion and Advocacy): A Community-Centered Linguistic Collaboration Supporting Indigenous Mexican Languages in California
In response to the social and linguistic challenges faced by Ventura County’s diasporic Indígena community (see Capsule 6.2), the Mixteco/Indígena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) has teamed up with linguists from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) to create programs that foster language maintenance, multiliteracy, social justice, and Indígena pride. We refer to these activities collectively as the Mexican Indigenous Language Promotion and Advocacy project (MILPA).
MILPA brings together methods from sociocultural linguistics and documentary linguistics to carry out a range of community-based activities, some of which we outline in this capsule:
(i) Tu’un Savi (Mixtec) literacy classes;
(ii) Collaborative documentation of multiple Mixtec varieties;
(iii) College-level courses on language, culture, and society offered to Indígena youth;
(iv) A community language survey that explores language use and attitudes;
(v) The creation of Indigenous language materials for community use.
Community members gain technical training while collaboratively documenting their particular language varieties in UCSB’s year-long graduate field methods course, and from there they go on to lead MILPA programs while advancing their own language-related goals (see Capsule 11.1).
In 2015, MICOP extended an invitation to UCSB linguists to help provide training to community members interested in becoming Indigenous language literacy instructors. The team launched the program Tu’un Savi: Aprendo a Leer y Escribir en mi Lengua (‘I Learn to Read and Write in my Language’). Ten Indigenous students, UCSB graduate students, and university teachers participated in an online training course offered by María Gloria Santos Hernández of INEA (the Mexican National Institute for the Education of Adults). Out of the ten students, Gabriel Mendoza and Griselda Reyes Basurto were chosen to lead the first such pilot Indigenous language literacy course outside of Mexico, focusing on the Mixtec variety spoken by the greatest number of Ventura County’s Indígena population: San Martín Peras Mixtec. Course outcomes included basic vocabulary documentation and analysis of the sound system, or phonology (including tone), to enable the development of a writing system (orthography) (see Chapter 14), and revision of the course materials to match the San Martín Peras variety.
In 2017, the team continued to offer the beginning literacy course and began offering biweekly workshops to document and develop writing systems for other Mixtec varieties. The team works collectively on shared online spreadsheets to compile a multivariety Mixtec–Spanish–English dictionary, sheets for each variety that organize words by tonal melodies, a comparative verb database, and literacy primers.
MILPA offers a yearly course on language, culture, and society for MICOP’s Tequio Indígena youth activist group as part of UCSB’s School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society program (SKILLS). This course is facilitated by UCSB graduate students and the Tequio Youth Coordinator, and high school and community college students earn college credit at California Lutheran University for their participation. Young people design and carry out ethnographic and linguistic research and community action projects that have resulted in the creation of a documentary film about Indígena youth identity, multilingual podcasts, poetry, online videos, and social media engagement written in Indigenous languages.
The first survey of Indigenous language use, language attitudes, and linguistic diversity among Ventura County’s Indígena population is being carried out by community leaders of the MILPA project with support from UCSB linguists. The survey explores community members’ and their families’ multilingual practices, linguistic challenges, and language attitudes, to better understand if and how Indigenous languages are being maintained, lost, or discriminated against in the community. In this way, we can get a clearer picture of language use and linguistic diversity among Ventura County’s Indígena population that can inform initiatives that foster language maintenance and justice.
The multivariety language documentation workshops, Tequio SKILLS courses, and UCSB field methods courses produce Indigenous language materials for expanding domains of language use and visibility in the community. Other examples of MILPA products include trilingual story books, coloring pages, card games, lotería (Bingo) games, vocabulary activities, and online language pedagogy activities that now have a Mixtec interface. Multimedia and multivariety materials foster language use and Indígena pride in the face of language shift and the challenges experienced by a diverse and marginalized community.
MILPA offers one model of community-based and multifaceted language maintenance and advocacy work. While designed to meet the various needs of this diverse and multilingual diasporic community, aspects of the project may be applicable for similar projects elsewhere.
13.3 Developing Innovative Models for Fieldwork and Linguistic Documentation: ENGHUM Experience in Hałcnów, Poland
Hałcnów, called Alzen in standard German and Alza in a local linguistic variety, was formerly a separate village. It now belongs to the city of Bielsko-Biała in southern Poland. Until the end of the World War II it was predominantly German; however, its inhabitants spoke Alznerish, a variety which is scarcely mutually intelligible with High German. Although most of the Halcnovians were not politically connected to Nazism, after the end of the war they suffered from severe persecution. The majority were either killed, banished to the Soviet Union, or resettled to Germany. The communist regime tried to erase all ‘signs of Germanness’ from public and private spaces. As a consequence, Alznerish also became invisible. When the political situation in Poland changed and post-war anti-German sentiment declined, most scholars supposed that it was too late to find any native speakers of the language. The fieldwork conducted in 2013 by the scholars from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań proved that they were wrong.
During the 2016 ENGHUM field school (see Capsule 12.2) in the nearby town of Wilamowice (where another endangered language is spoken – see Capsule 6.1), the major task of one of working groups was to document the linguistic and cultural heritage of Hałcnów. A multiethnic group consisting of seven people developed an innovative methodological approach to the problem. In the first phase of the fieldwork they focused on tracing the (hidden) elements of the linguistic landscape of Hałcnów. These actions were an attempt to discover material culture connected with Alznerish, but they also attempted to establish whether the German past of the village is now seen as an integral part of local heritage.
In the second part of the fieldwork the group was divided. While the first sub-group started to meet the native speakers and conducted unstructured conversations in Alznerish, German, and Polish, or some elicitation in Alznerish, the second group attempted to meet and talk to the most socially prominent people in Hałcnów: the priest, teachers, local historians, and activists. Except for the overt aim of this work – gaining knowledge on current ideologies and attitudes towards the language, asking about some other people who may know Alznerish, there was also another essential purpose for the fieldwork. In Poland researchers enjoy high respect in society. Moreover, as a result of the isolation of Poland in the communist period, foreigners from beyond the Iron Curtain are treated with esteem, especially outside big urban centres. Taking this into account, the interest of foreign scholars in Alznerish inevitably increased the prestige of the local linguistic variety. It was an indirect and non-intrusive way to change linguistic ideologies. The work of this group led to some unexpected discoveries. It appeared that local school students created a short glossary of the Polish variety used in Hałcnów, which is a testimony of emergence of a new linguistic community. What is of even greater importance, a previously unknown fluent speaker of Alznerish was identified. In addition, the fact that we were the first visitors ever to show interest in the villagers’ experiences meant that they felt able to share with us some previously unheard personal accounts of suffering in the post-war period.
In the third stage, the group acted together again. A meeting was organized of all Alznerish speakers. Strikingly, despite being neighbours, in some cases they did not know about one another’s skills in their mother tongue. Their joy from this discovery was noticeable. It has to be admitted that the scholars did not know Alznerish, but they could communicate in German or Polish. Very soon it turned out that using the latter language was more beneficial. When Halcnovians were asked questions in German, they replied in German, while the ‘distance’ between Polish and Alznerish was big enough to prevent constant code switching. The conversation concerned the pre-war time in the village and its ‘ethnography’. Currently, it is perhaps the only domain where Alznerish can be used. It was also interesting to find that the villagers could only use the past tense to talk about their experiences.
The last phase of research activities took place in Wilamowice. Halcnovians were asked to participate in an event summarizing the field school. They were treated as special guests and received an opportunity to speak publicly in their language. It was perhaps the first time after the end of the World War II, when Alznerish was not only used publicly without fear, but also attracted positive media attention.
The described pilot study is an innovative methodological proposal for short-term studies. It was focused on documentation of the language, networking of its users and either external or internal promotion of Alznerish. The combination of these three factors may give some hope that the effects of the study will be extended in time.
Introduction
Language communities and individual speakers of oral languages often express interest in the development of community orthographies, i.e. writing conventions for their ancestral languages. In this chapter, we review practical and ideological considerations in the writing of oral languages by asking some questions: ‘Who will write / read?’, ‘What will be written?’, ‘How will oral languages be reduced to writing?’ In our discussion, we focus on languages which have not been written before and where orthographies have been introduced only recently.
Purposes and Uses of Writing
Speakers of minority languages often accept discriminatory judgments from others about them and their languages, e.g. that their mother tongues are merely utterances without grammatical rules, which therefore cannot be written. The following example from the Khwe community in Namibia demonstrates the importance of writing in challenging these negative stereotypes. When community members wrote their language for the first time at a community workshop on the 15th of September 1996, Khwe became a written language. In a collaborative effort between Khwe speakers and linguists, an alphabet and other writing conventions were developed for their oral language. When writing his first Khwe words, David Soza Naudé, one of the workshop participants, who later became the key person in running community literacy workshops, stated with surprise and astonishment, ‘So we actually speak a real language’.
While reading and writing do not commonly play important roles in the daily life activities among the Khwe and other marginalized rural communities, establishing a community orthography might have an immense impact for them on a symbolic level. Although equating ‘real language’ with ‘written language’ reflects the widespread discriminatory judgments mentioned above, writing their language can boost their self-esteem and enhance their confidence and respect for their own language and culture (for more on attitudes and ideologies, see Chapter 8). For example, the Sandawe in Tanzania felt that their worth as a group increased after a Sandawe orthography was developed. Elisabeth Hunziker of SIL International recalls that for many years, ‘they had gotten used to being looked down upon by other ethnic groups of the country as being the ones whose language was impossible to pronounce, let alone write. Now with the alphabet, this was no longer the case’. Community members often desire written materials in their languages, which, once developed, are cherished and treasured. Books, booklets or even just small pamphlets are shared among community members and shown with pride to outsiders.
The practical use of community orthographies often begins with the production of sign boards with local place names that testify the ancestry of the land. These sign boards on the one hand may support community-based tourism, but on the other hand can also constitute arguments for claims for ancestral lands.
The publication of religious texts, such as hymns, prayers and the Bible, in as many languages as possible was for a long time at the core of Christian mission work in Africa, Latin America and Asia. With this aim in mind, missionaries wrote grammars and dictionaries of local languages. Many speakers of marginalized languages became literate by reading Christian texts, which still make up the bulk of publications in languages of many smaller-sized communities.
Another level in writing community languages is reached when they are used to take memos and to make notes at community meetings, to record decisions and detail agreements, etc. This is, for example, practised by the Juǀ’hoan community in Namibia. The advantage of using their own language in these official contexts is that the non-literate speakers, who often constitute the majority in many such communities, can also participate in and contribute to discussions concerning community affairs because the notes can be read back to them.
Writing oral languages can also serve as a means to document the community’s intellectual heritage, namely oral traditions relating to their history, rituals, environmental management, traditional economies, healing and spiritual well-being, etc. (see Figure 14.1). A critical take on reading and writing in hitherto oral languages emphasizes the importance of oral practices in many traditional societies. While oral traditions can be recorded in audio and video sessions and stored electronically, due to lack of basic infrastructure (access to electricity, Internet, etc.) in most rural areas, written documents are much easier to manage and access.
Figure 14.1 A Nahua boy reading an ancient creation story written in his variant. Chicontepec, Mexico.
Writing a language is essential for mother tongue-based multilingual education, and also for immersion education for language revitalization (see Chapter 15). This is particularly important, because literacy rates among speakers of threatened languages are often low and illiteracy is one of the crucial indicators to identify discrimination and marginalization. Children from such marginalized communities regularly perform poorly when their own languages are not used in the educational system.Footnote 1 Countless studies have demonstrated that children learn best in and through their mother tongues; despite this common knowledge, millions of children around the world are educated in languages other than their own. The plea for mother tongue-based multilingual education is an important argument for supporting the writing of oral languages. Government institutions, NGOs, as well as linguists may play supporting roles in communities’ attempts towards developing writing conventions, producing teaching and learning materials, fostering the use of the language and establishing language rights.
Finally, writing can play a crucial role in the survival of threatened languages. Where ancestral languages are no longer spoken in the family, children no longer acquire them naturally in their home environment. For this reason, ancestral languages are increasingly transmitted through formal and informal teaching. The design and production of teaching and learning materials for community languages are often considered central by language revival and revitalization movements. In these cases, the development and establishment of community orthographies are prerequisites, since these materials are mainly written, for example in booklets, readers, textbooks and dictionaries. When we work with last speakers of languages, learners don’t speak the languages fluently and often acquire new words through reading them. For this purpose, learning can be made easier if orthographies represent the speech sounds as closely as possible.
Designing Community Orthographies
Many linguists treat orthography development as a technical issue in which they identify the phoneme inventory and then aim at representing one distinctive speech sound with one character or symbol. Hangul, the alphabetic system used in writing Korean, represents the distinctive speech sounds of that language perfectly: words can be correctly pronounced simply by reading them, even by non-speakers. Most orthographies, however, especially those with long traditions, do not follow this principle. For example, the idiosyncratic nature of spelling is an obstacle in learning and writing English. Irregular spellings and pronunciation in English are the topic of many poems, including, for example, the classic English poem ‘The Chaos’, written by the Dutch traveller Gerard Nolst Trenité in 1920. It contains about 800 of the worst irregularities in English spelling and pronunciation, questioning for example why ‘done’ rhymes with ‘fun’ and not with ‘gone’. English is one of those languages in which the written forms of spoken words must be learned in addition to the oral pronunciation. Learning to speak English from written texts alone is therefore not possible. In Korean, on the other hand, it is possible to do so after having learnt the Korean alphabet, which in itself takes only a few hours.
Socio-political contexts and cultural traditions are often determining factors in the choice of specific orthography conventions, or even of different writing systems. Socio-political conditions affect all levels, namely the writing systems, orthographies or even the use of specific characters or symbols representing speech sounds.
Speakers of threatened languages commonly speak or even write other languages, which are more dominant than theirs. The orthographies and writing systems established for dominant languages are crucial in choosing writing conventions for a threatened language, especially when these dominant languages are used in literacy campaigns and formal education. There are often heated debates within communities between proponents of different orthographies, e.g. those who want to make it easier to switch to and from majority languages vs. those who want to use orthography to stress distinctiveness.
Religious affiliation has triggered the use of different orthographies for one and the same language, for example, when missionaries of different denominations introduced distinct writing conventions for Tumbuka in Malawi. Dialectal variation may also lead to different orthographies. For example, the Western Aranda people in central Australia want to distinguish themselves from the neighbouring Eastern Arrernte people through the spelling used in their language. For them, their own orthography is a key symbol of their distinct identity.
National governmental policies may demand the use of specific writing conventions, so cross-border languages may develop parallel writing systems in different countries. This led, for example, to different writing systems for Afar, a Cushitic language, in the three countries in which it is spoken: Afar is written in the Ethiopian script in Ethiopia, in the Roman alphabet in Eritrea, and in the Arabic script in Djibouti. Another example of state regulations on writing conventions is the enforcement of the use of Roman letters for the representation of click consonants by the government of Botswana. The orthography of Naro was developed according to this directive, whereas the orthographies of all related languages, including the well-established orthography of Khoekhoegowab, use the click symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet, which are easily acquired and used by community members, and which are used in all community orthographies of non-Bantu click languages in southern Africa (Figure 14.2).
Figure 14.2 Katrina Esau and Sheena Shah introduce the newly developed Nǀuu alphabet charts.
In the past, when starting to write an oral language, it was often the case that a ‘standard’ language was imposed, which ignored the regional, socioeconomic, gender and generational variation that is characteristic of spoken languages. Progress in information and documentation technologies makes it possible to represent different types of variation, and to produce materials, which reflect local ways of speaking as alternatives. Modern dictionaries and grammars are based on substantial collections of oral usage and might include ‘crowd sourcing’, i.e. the gathering of information from large numbers of people through the Internet. With this focus on spoken natural conversation, linguistic diversity and variation are recognized and respected. In such projects, speakers are instrumental in carrying out this research as well as in the processing and analysis of the language data.
Ownership and Management of Orthographies
Community orthographies can stimulate intense emotional reactions among communities, for example, related to who controls and has the authority over language standardization efforts, or even more fundamentally, who owns a language. Communities have different options to coordinate and manage language activities. Community language boards may manage the development and establishment of writing conventions. This, however, is often not a straightforward exercise due to intra-community disagreements about writing conventions that can arise. Communities are not monolithic and there might be disagreements about whether and how to write languages. For example, different generations may have different opinions on the use of digital technologies; while younger generations may favour the use of social media, online video, text messaging, podcasts and various other technologies, older generations may be opposed to this (but see Figure 14.3). Interventions through government policies, conflicting conventions of different religious traditions, etc., often add to the complexities of the task of establishing writing systems for oral languages. It is imperative, however, that language communities themselves head and direct these efforts to ensure that their own interests are respected.
Figure 14.3 A postcard written by a young student of Manx.
Summary
There is no single best way to establish literacy in previously unwritten languages of predominantly oral communities. Even though one can learn from the various previous and ongoing attempts to write languages, community settings and conditions differ substantially. The level of literacy among community members (also in languages other than their own), whether a closely related language is already written, or if national policies prescribe writing systems or alphabets, are among the core factors that need to be considered when developing community orthographies for previously unwritten languages.
The possible purposes for and the uses of written forms for oral languages are numerous. In most cases, the development and production of written teaching and learning materials are essential when intergenerational language transmission is interrupted and when languages are thus learned mainly in formal or informal teaching settings. Where archived recordings of past or living speakers exist, such as in Australia or Hawai’i, community members can also relearn and regain oral competence in dormant ancestral languages.
Introducing writing for oral languages often has a positive impact on the self-esteem of their speakers and contributes to the improvement of their well-being. Visualizing their languages in writing can be an important tool in the empowerment of marginalized communities. Furthermore, many rural communities in various parts of the world have very little or no access to electronic language resources (e.g. no electricity, no recording devices, no smartphones, etc.), making the use of audio or video clips in teaching efforts problematic. For that reason, in the foreseeable future, writing an oral language may still prove to be essential for the production of teaching materials, and literacy will remain the main tool for accessing knowledge and information (Figure 14.4).
Figure 14.4 An exercise book for (writing) the Lemko language (Робочий зошыт до лемківского языка), Barbara Duć/Варвара Дуць.
Most important for the development and establishment of writing for oral languages – besides communities being in control of all activities that aim at establishing community orthographies for their languages – is that community members wish to have their languages written.
14.1 Orthographies and Ideologies
Very often, language communities and activists want to make their language visible through developing a script, writing system, orthography, individual letters or type fonts. The choices involved in deciding the graphic layout make language ideologies tangible. Developing a written form (graphization) of a language (variety) not only involves the selection of an appropriate orthography, but also making decisions concerning cultural, religious, political and historical matters.
Ideological factors are therefore fundamental when considering how to write minority languages. However, it is always the community who should have the decisive voice when adopting script, writing system and orthography. Of course, there are often disagreements within a community on writing and/or orthography.
Many minorities use writing to symbolically mark their territory, using public signs to mark the names of settlements, municipalities or other places within the area of a dominant language. Sometimes the languages used in the signs are perceived as rival or competing against each other – occasionally this also applies to rival orthographies for the same ‘language’ (e.g. Provençal/Occitan orthographies in southern France, or ‘standard’ vs. ‘dialectal’ forms, e.g. in Italian Lombardy, Piedmont or Veneto). Place names may be written in two or more languages or writing systems, and it is quite common for a name in one language to be removed, altered or painted over as a visible sign of ethno-linguistic conflict, an example being a letter V in an Anglicized place-name in Wales replaced by an F.
Explanation of Terms
A script is a set of graphic signs (graphemes) for writing languages, which contains information about the basic level of language to which its signs correspond: words, syllables or phonemes.
A writing system is the implementation of a script (or sometimes elements of more than one script) to form a complete system for writing a particular language variety; a writing system can be standardized by means of an orthography, i.e. norms for spelling, diacritics (e.g. accents etc.) and punctuation, which are often arranged and published as spelling rules and orthographic dictionaries. These norms may be explicit or implicit: implicit norms often allow a greater degree of variation than explicit orthographic norms.
Fonts or typefaces are graphical variants, which can be distinguished within a script.
Traditionally, a script or graphic layout has been ideologically related to culture, and even more often with religion. Many people spontaneously associate the Cyrillic script with the Christian Eastern Orthodoxy, Arabic with Islamic tradition, Hebrew with Judaism, Devanagari with Hinduism and Chinese characters with the East Asian cultural sphere. For a long time, the Latin script was linked to the Western European tradition and Western Christianity. In regions of Europe where Protestant and Catholic traditions rivaled each other, the visible factor used to differentiate them was a type font: protestant writings adopted Blackletter or Gothic script, while Catholic publications used Antiqua typeface.
Throughout history, scripts have been designed specifically for individual languages – examples being the Georgian scripts (ქართული დამწერლობა): Asomtavruli, Nuskhuri, and Mkhedruli, the Armenian Հայերենի այբուբեն / Hayereni aybuben for Armenian, the Korean 한글 / Hangul, or the syllabaries ひらがな/ Hiragana and カタカナ/ Katakana for Japanese. These and other ‘national’ scripts became carriers and symbols of various ‘nation-state’ ideologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The same nation-state ideologies were also behind the adoption or imposition of dominant scripts as writing systems for minority languages (no matter whether they were linguistically related or not), e.g. in Georgia for Abkhazian, Ossetian, Svan, Megrelian, or in Japan for Ainu or Ryūkyūan.
The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי / Alefbet ‘Ivri ) has served as a marker of Jewishness, and as such has been applied to most of the Jewish languages spoken all over the world (Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, and many others). The same alphabet was originally adopted by the Karaims, a Turkic people of Judaic religious tradition. In the nineteenth/twentieth centuries, the Karaim communities in Lithuania and Poland decided to switch from Hebrew to Latin script in order to visually mark their separation from Jewish ethnicity. Later, Karaims under Soviet rule had to adopt a Russian Cyrillic-based orthography. Even some Yiddish speakers in the same period thought about switching from the Hebrew script to the Polish Latin-based writing system. From a contemporary educational perspective, it might be easier to learn using the same script as the dominant education system, although it can also encourage faster language shift. The majority of world’s languages have not been recorded in writing and there are fewer scripts and writing systems than language varieties in the world. Furthermore, many language communities have made changes to their orthographies or individual graphemes (e.g. Vietnamese and Turkish switching to Latin script).
Any language or language variety can be written with any writing system or script, although e.g. arguably syllabaries are more suitable for languages with Consonant+Vowel syllables. However, there are many factors involved in devising or adapting a writing system or orthography, and these must be considered in order for an orthography to be effective. The process is more complex than is commonly realized.
Here are some key factors to be taken into consideration when designing effective orthographies:
(1) Governmental, administrative and legal policies, obligations and restrictions, which must be considered when working on community-driven (bottom-up or grassroots) projects. For example, in Ghana all writing systems have to use the national orthographical conventions.Footnote 2
(2) Cultural or religious traditions, e.g. ease of access to earlier written materials such as pre-Conquest Central American manuscripts, visual appearance (i.e. symbolic meaning of individual graphemes), the values attached to a script or typeface (e.g. the close relationship between Arabic script and Islam).
(3) Linguistic factors, including sound-grapheme or meaning-grapheme correspondence (according to the script type), or how to decide where word breaks come.
(4) Educational and social factors, including literacy issues and ease of learning, access to the learning of additional language.
(5) Sociolinguistic aspects – including language ideologies, attitudes, how to choose the ‘standard’ variety and its applicability to other varieties of the language in question.
(6) Need and importance of written language documentation for the community.
Inventing a script is one way that a community can try to create a distinct identity. Sometimes creating and developing a uniquely new script is the most accepted way to develop and promote social literacy within a language community. One such case is the well-documented Indigenous script of N’ko in West Africa. The N’ko ‘social orthography’ has successfully competed against other older writing systems that have been better propagated in the colonial and national literacy education programs. N’ko’s popularity results from the script’s strong linguistic and cultural relevance to the Mande communities and their Indigenous knowledge.
Some minority language communities prefer to use a special font (such as the contemporary Basque Harri / Vasca or the historical Gaelic script for the Celtic languages), or a unique, recognizable type style (e.g. mixed-case oblique Irish vs. capital lettered English on road signs in the Republic of Ireland). In such cases, the graphic features of the script became symbolically relevant, acting as distinctive markers of the linguistic landscape. On the other hand, some members of the community might object to such ‘ethnic fonts’ as markers of folklorization or archaization.
If a language community uses the same script as the surrounding dominant language(s), individual graphemes (e.g. particular letters in alphabets) or even individual diacritic signs, i.e. additional graphic marks of letters, might become ideological carriers and visible indices of identity. Examples of the latter include, e.g.
the letters ë ė ȧ are, respectively, considered the most Kashubian, most Lithuanian, and most Wymysiöeryś (all three are minority/regional languages in Poland);
the letter q marks plurals in Võro (or Southern Estonian – an unrecognized regional language in Estonia), while Standard Estonian uses d for the same function;
the letter ō is used in some orthographies of Latgalian (a regional language in Latvia), but was officially outlawed by the Latvian language authorities for not corresponding to the general Latvian graphic tradition;
the letter ґ was used traditionally in Ukrainian orthography, but forbidden by the Soviet orthographic reforms in the 1930s, as ‘too much Western and too little Soviet’;
the letters q, w and x were forbidden by Turkish law since 1928, when Turkey changed its alphabet from an Arabic-based system to a Latin one. The change was intended to standardize Turkish spelling and improve literacy. However, the reform also had a political aim: assimilating Turkey’s minorities, chiefly the Kurds. For many years, any Kurdish person whose name contained a Q, W or X, for example, could not have those letters included on their official documents. In the 2000s, Kurdish language activists launched a ‘Q-X-W’ campaign, which led to the abolishment of the ban in 2013.
14.2 Writing Your Language: The Case of Wymysiöeryś
When I was ten I became aware of a big threat to my language, Wymysiöeryś, and so I wanted to protect it. The problem was, I did not know how to do it. Somebody told me that the more recordings and texts there are of a language the better. The first thing I did was to record my grandma and her friends speaking Wymysiöeryś. But I knew that my recordings should include more literary forms of the language. As a child I had no access to Biesik’s poetry. Florian Biesik (1850–1926) is a Wymysiöeryś poet who spent most of his life in Trieste. I knew the local songs and oral poetry, but there were very few texts which I could read, as all of them were written in various orthographies.
I had the good fortune to meet Józef Gara fum Tołer, who was the only person publishing poems in Wymysiöeryś at that time. He taught me how to use his orthography and he checked my poems for me. Another person who helped me with my first poems was Ingeborg Matzner-Danek: she translated some poems from the Bielitz-Bialaer variant of German into Wymysiöeryś.
The goal of these first texts that I wrote was language documentation. Of course, this documentation was the work of an eleven-year-old child and it was not like the documentation carried out by professionals. The most important part of the work was the inclusion of a variety of themes and grammatical forms, but I was afraid of inventing new words. Inventing new words is always a political or ideological decision: should it be a word taken from a foreign language like Polish, German, English, or maybe a new word created by myself? Those texts from when I was child are now sometimes used as teaching materials, but they are mostly kept ‘in the drawer’.
Then, there was a request for Wymysiöeryś texts from the local Dance Group ‘Wilamowice’: sometimes they needed a translation of a Polish song that they sung, sometimes I would tell them a poem or some greetings in rhyme for an important person and sometimes I would invent a new song for a special occasion. I often still do this.
Then I started writing some ‘bigger’ texts, including novels and poems. But I often heard people say: ‘Your language is not really a language. We Poles have a large and varied literature with many poets, such as Mickiewicz etc.’ I was angry about this, because the goal of these statements was to humiliate speakers of Wymysiöeryś. So I decided to change this and I wrote many poems and prose in different genres. When I was sixteen, one of the stories I wrote was called S’ława fum Wilhelm (‘The life of Wilhelm’). It recounted the genesis of Wymysoü-Wilamowice and was printed by the Association ‘Wilamowianie’. However, for me the most important texts are those that I wrote for the Dance Group because they are the texts that are most ‘alive’: they are sung by the Dance Group as ‘old Wymysiöeryś songs’ and nobody remembers that I am the author. The Christmas carols I translated from Polish to Wymysiöeryś are sung alongside their Polish equivalents by children going from house to house at Christmas time. For me it is beautiful that my texts, of whose quality I was so anxious, are now a part of the Vilamovian oral poetry collection. I also find it beautiful that, for Vilamovians, I am equal with tens of authors whose names are not known anymore, but whose texts have been sung for hundreds of years.
The second piece of luck I have had is that my students started writing their own texts. I must say, when I was being taught by Inga-Müm and Jüza-Feter, I never dreamt about having my own pupils in the future. As I wrote above, I was previously afraid of inventing new words which could be used for new things that I wanted to include in teaching materials that I created. Now, after the two successes that I have written about, I feel authorized to do so.
14.3 Indigenous Research, Methodology and Writing
The books and articles that have been written recently on the topic of Indigenous research and methodology have two things in common. First, they are written in dominant languages, such as English and Spanish, rather than in the Indigenous languages themselves. Second, they are largely theoretical; in other words, they talk about what Indigenous research and methodology should look like and what its political function should be, but they rarely actually do it. At the Instituto de docencia e investigación etnológica de Zacatecas (IDIEZ, see Capsule 8.5) we have been conducting curriculum development and research in the area of Nahuatl language and culture for the past seventeen years, and we have done it monolingually, in Nahuatl. We work on the premise that for research and methodology to be considered ‘Indigenous’, it should be performed from within the unique worldview and cognitive structures of each specific culture. And these can best be accessed, understood, developed and expressed through each culture’s language. Here are four examples of how we perform research at IDIEZ.
Example 1: During the course of writing Tlahtolxitlauhcayotl, Chicontepec, Veracruz, our monolingual dictionary of Modern Huastecan Nahuatl, we created a tremendous amount of neologisms for grammatical terminology. But we never simply translate terminology from European languages, as is common with the Mexican bilingual school system. We always begin with a concept, discuss it collectively in Nahuatl, and when we understand what we want to express, we use the morphological resources of Nahuatl to create a term. For example, we took the verb tocaxtia ‘to name something’ and turned it into a gerund tlatocaxtiliztli ‘the act of providing something with a name’. This is the neologism we use to express the concept of ‘noun’. Nahuatl nouns have subjects; rather than a simple label, they constitute a process for providing a subject with a name.
Example 2: At a conference in Chihuahua in 2016, a panel of native speakers of different Uto-Aztecan languages gave talks in Spanish about colour terminology in their culture. During the question and answer session, I explained that Modern Huastecan Nahuatl, also a Uto-Aztecan language, doesn’t employ the concept of colour; rather it uses ixnezcayotl ‘something’s surface appearance’, which includes colours, but also such things as stripes, polka dots, stains, and certain types of visible textures. The panel participants responded that their languages worked in the same ways, but they had just uncritically assumed that the Western concept of colour was universal.
Example 3: Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz wrote his master’s thesis in Nahuatl on the topic of corn, at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas in 2016. When we were discussing how to organize his work, I suggested a typical Western model with chapters on land, planting methods, tools and deities, etc. But Eduardo responded that as an Indigenous person this didn’t make sense to him at all. He proposed chapters on each one of the ceremonies that comprised the yearly agriculture cycle, with each chapter discussing the aspects of land, planting methods and tools, deities, etc., that it employed. He chose to focus on the interrelation of his topics, rather than to compartmentalize them.
During five hundred years of contact with Europe, Nahuas have never been purists: they have adopted foreign things that are useful and ignored those that are not. At IDIEZ we do not seek to discard all foreign ways of perception and principles of organization. Rather we conduct research to discover what in today’s Nahuatl culture is native and what is of foreign origin, so that native speakers can make informed decisions about how they wish to generate and organize knowledge and how they write about their culture in their own language.
Introduction
Teaching in a language revitalization context is not always about acquiring an Indigenous or heritage language as a second language; sometimes it is about awakening and strengthening the first language. Teachers of Indigenous languages come to teaching either as a speaker or as a second language learner. Our intention in writing this chapter is to present teaching methods and strategies that will strengthen both types of teachers – to give the reader a solid and meaningful understanding of how language learning theories can serve teaching Indigenous languages. We will then present various teaching methodologies and strategies that have come from these theories to show what they look like in the classroom, at home and in the community. The authors are Indigenous language teachers and learners in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and in Finland, implementing various teaching strategies in our communities, schools, and homes. Each of us has years of experience learning an Indigenous language, and we bring our insights in teaching language to this chapter.Footnote *
We begin the chapter with a broad overview of second language acquisition research from the last fifty years. Here Lindsay Marean links theories of second language acquisition and widely used methods of language teaching to the specific context of language revitalization. We then discuss, in a practical way, language learning theories and how they can better inform Indigenous language teaching choices. We introduce second language acquisition terminology that we then define in a real-world way and support with case studies. This will help the reader to become familiar with language learning situations and behaviors. Understanding these learning behaviors will help with teaching, creating lessons and materials, and language assessment.
We then ground this research in teaching experiences, using case studies from communities. The case studies we present are relevant to both first and second language teaching and learning situations.Footnote 1 Lindsay Marean discusses distance language study in Potawatomi, a Central Algonquian language of North America, and the use of Can-Do Statements from the National Council of State Supervisors for Languages – American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (NCSSFL-ACTFL) Benchmarks – in Pahka’anil in central California. Zalmai Zahir then discusses teaching and learning in language nests and reclaiming domains in the Lushootseed language from the Puget Sound region of Washington state. Next Pyuwa Bommelyn shares his experiences of teaching Tolowa Dee-ni’ from northern coastal California. He discusses two teaching methods: Accelerated Second Language Acquisition (ASLA) and reclaiming domains. Also included in this section is a sketch of learning Tolowa Dee-ni’ using the Master-Apprentice method, based on the experiences of Pyuwa’s father, Loren Me-lash-ne’ Bommelyn. Pigga Keskitalo then discusses how Sámi language and culture can meaningfully enhance education in the classroom, citing an example of a classroom modeled after a goahti – a traditional Sámi dwelling. Ruby Tuttle then looks at teaching language in a classroom at home as opposed to at school, and discusses homeschooling activities and strategies for elementary age learners in Tolowa Dee-ni’. Finally, Janne Underriner ends the chapter by sharing ways that teachers who have limited speaking fluency can teach lessons using rich language.
From Second Language Acquisition Theory to Indigenous Language Revitalization Teaching Practices
Second Language Acquisition Research
During the last fifty years, the study of how language is acquired has emerged and developed among those who are curious about human language and how our discoveries can be applied to language teaching and learning. Indigenous language activists often seek out applied linguists to guide their work. In turn, applied linguists seek out language practitioners to test their ideas and to gather information about the experiences and needs of language teachers and learners. However, Western science has a history of not valuing Indigenous ways of knowing. Indigenous people likewise are often distrustful of recommendations coming from colonizer institutions. In recent times, we have seen calls for a ‘productive symbiosis’ between the two perspectives, so that Western science and Indigenous ways of knowing can inform each other in mutually beneficial ways.Footnote 2
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stephen Pit CorderFootnote 3 and Larry SelinkerFootnote 4 observed that second language learners are not making one-off mistakes but are in fact fairly consistent in the sorts of errors they make during the development of their second language. Consequently, researchers started investigating how learners process the language that they are learning, and the role of cognition.Footnote 5 Researchers looked at the importance of language input,Footnote 6 or the language that learners are exposed to; and language output,Footnote 7 the language that learners are able to produce/use and its role in helping learners to notice errors that hinder their communication. They also studied language interaction,Footnote 8 or the way that speakers and listeners convey meaning even when their communication breaks down. This demonstrates the need for teachers to understand that making mistakes is part of learning and that it is the teacher’s role to create lessons that address natural learning errors.
If we look at the process of learning the past tense in English, we see that first learners want to use the rule ‘add -ed (/d, t/) on all verbs’: walk – walked; appear – appeared; is – ised; teach – teached; give – gived.Footnote 9 Learners need many opportunities to hear and make errors so they can learn that many of the most frequently used verbs in English do not in fact follow this rule. In teaching and designing curriculum then, we need to offer learners a rich language environment (and find ways to do this even if as a teacher you are not fluent in the language; examples of how follow). Teachers also need to provide sufficient time for learners to practise using language, so that they can progress their learning through interacting in the language.
input ➔ output ➔ interaction ➔ adjust error ➔ move toward proficiencyFootnote 10
In this new millennium, second language researchers have started paying more attention to the diversity of people who are learning and teaching languages and how their life experiences affect this process. This has been called the ‘social turn’ in language acquisition research. Researchers are looking at issues such as the relationship between second language knowledge and community membership, and how one’s sense of identity impacts one’s use of a language. This is new and complicated territory for researchers. However, these are exactly the sorts of issues that some Indigenous language activists navigate in communities that are recovering from historical trauma in a world that still favors settler colonialism. A teacher who creates a thriving language learning environment considers such relationships – integrating their knowledge of how learners acquire language with teaching practices that best serve their learners. At the same time, they reflect on how their own upbringing, traditional practices, language exposure, and language learning experiences can support learner identity and well-being.
Language Teaching and Learning Methods Overview
No single theory of second language acquisition fully accounts for all aspects of language learning, yet each new perspective fills in gaps that are unaddressed in previous theories. This growth is indicative of good scientific inquiry. No single ‘best practice’ exists in language teaching and learning methodology. Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses and the decision to employ an approach depends on the particular context, taking into account community history, needs, and desires. Some language activists seize on the first method that is presented to them (or the one that they found helped them to learn a language) and implement it without critical reflection and adaptation. However, it can be more effective to step back from a method and consider its theoretical assumptions and the context in which it was developed. From there, activists can identify which aspects of the model are well matched to their learners’ needs, as well as gaps that need to be addressed. It is necessary to emphasize that regardless of the path that led them to language teaching and learning, language activists have the greatest impact when they feel equal to the researchers and practitioners that they learn with and from. There are also practical challenges to teaching and learning a language with limited learning materials and limited opportunities to speak it. These are not necessarily accounted for by researchers, who typically work with large languages such as English.
Figure 15.1 A Manx picture dictionary.
Some Methods
In this section, we describe some popular, currently used methods for teaching and learning language.
Immersion is often seen as an ideal model for learning Indigenous languages. The simplest form of immersion is natural intergenerational language transmission. We simply grow up speaking the language of our caregivers as a first language. This is the form of language teaching and learning that Indigenous communities used prior to the disruptions caused by settler colonialism. Native communities have responded to the disruption of intergenerational transmission in a number of innovative ways. Language nests, pioneered by the Māori, involve immersing young children in a nurturing environment of Indigenous language and culture, often involving elders and knowledge bearers in children’s lives. Pyuwa Bommelyn (Case Study 4) shows ways to use language in a classroom-nest setting.
Immersion is a life-long process, extending beyond early childhood. Immersion schools continue or start the immersion process by educating children in their Indigenous languages. In some cases, children come to school already speaking their Indigenous language, and immersion schools help them to develop specialized and academic language use. In other cases, children’s first exposure to their Indigenous language is in school. For adults, several approaches have had good results. The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival pioneered the Master–Apprentice model, in which an adult (or teenage) language learner is paired with an older or more proficient speaker over a period of several years for intensive one-on-one immersion sessions.Footnote 11 The Nishnaabemwin Pane program, offered through Bay Mills Community College in Michigan, runs large-group adult immersion in a classroom-like setting. Proficient speakers tell stories and perform skits in a low-stress, language-rich program. Another promising direction is the emergence of language houses where dedicated adults choose to live in a space entirely dedicated to Indigenous language learning and use.Footnote 12 A related approach is Zalmai Zahir’sFootnote 13 method of creating language nests within the home through a process of reclaiming domains (see Case Study 3).
The Grammar-Translation method of language teaching has been around for millennia. Learners study texts written or spoken by proficient language speakers, they note key vocabulary and memorize it, and they observe language patterns, especially the ways that nouns and verbs behave. They also memorize charts of word forms to help translate from one language to another with accuracy. In grammar-translation classes, the original text is of great importance. Teachers and learners end up spending a lot of time talking about the text and the language in it, and less time speaking in the language or producing their own meaningful utterances.
On the other hand, direct and audio-lingual methods prioritize use of the target language at all times. Grammar is not directly taught. Instead learners listen to and pronounce sentence after sentence after sentence. In this way, they learn grammar rules through exposure and practice. Correct pronunciation is emphasized, and students ‘overlearn’, practicing learned phrases until they become automatic. Most language-learning apps that are marketed today (such as Rosetta and Berlitz) make use of the direct method. Similarly, many Indigenous language-learning apps are also based on these approaches. The Ulpan method, popular for teaching Celtic languages, is an example of the audio-lingual approach. The kinetic activities described in Case Study 6 are also inspired by these methods.
In the world of ‘foreign’ language teaching, especially in the United States and other Western countries, professional teachers are trained to focus on language proficiency through a communicative or proficiency-based approach. In this framework, students develop proficiency by engaging in tasks that simulate real-life use of language and by interacting with authentic materials in the target language. For example, students might study a French-language map of the subway system in Paris to figure out how to get from one place to another. They might converse with other students to find out how many pets they have and what their names are. Curriculum is often organized thematically, and it follows the principle of backwards design, in which curriculum is developed by first thinking about the proficiency goals and how to assess them, and then what sorts of activities directly prepare students to meet those goals. The ‘five step’ approach and pair activities mentioned in Case Study 6 are examples of a communicative approach.
Another popular trend among language teachers is radically input-based teaching. Lindsay uses this term to describe a collection of approachesFootnote 14 used by a growing number of teachers, which focus on making language completely comprehensible to students. Students are only expected to produce language voluntarily. Extensive reading to expose learners to more language is often important in this approach. These approaches are especially well suited for teachers who are themselves still learning the Indigenous language but who nevertheless want to expose their students to extensive language input, as described in Case Study 8.
Be Informed, Be Empowered
None of the above methods is perfect. There is no proven single best practice in language teaching and learning. Rather, there are good practices, and a good language teacher or program leader uses those that best fit the local context. Immersion can produce second language speakers who sound very similar to first language speakers and who are strong in their Indigenous identity. However, such programs are resource-intensive and rely on having teachers who are confident and proficient in their Indigenous language. Also, if the Indigenous language is not used outside of schools, that is, in the wider community and in learners’ homes, then language gains can disappear as quickly as they came once students leave school.
Grammar-Translation may give students insights into language patterns and the way that proficient users speak, and they make good use of the sort of text collections that language activists frequently find in archives. However, learners using this method are often unable to participate in basic conversations because they have not had any practice with interpersonal communication.
Direct methods can address community concerns about how one’s first language, which is typically a colonizing language, affects the learner’s second language use and becomes the new norm for the Indigenous language in future generations. However, their reliance on repetition and practice of provided language means that learners may not be able to express original thoughts in their own words and with their unique voices.
Proficiency-based approaches offer a broad framework that makes it easy for learners to see their progress, leading to greater retention in community language programs. However, these approaches have not been used much yet in Indigenous and endangered language contexts.
Heavily input-based approaches are especially good for adults who may have a number of emotional barriers around their Indigenous language, since they are not pressured to speak unless they want to. However, most adults’ language goals include the ability to produce language, which is not emphasized in these approaches.
In other words, every method has its own strengths and weaknesses. Language activists must consider their own desires, the desires and resources of their communities, and the traditional worldview and lifeways that frame their language revitalization efforts. In conclusion, theories and methods of second language acquisition can really inform the work of language revitalization and save us all time as we learn from those who have come before us. In doing so, we must be unafraid to question and challenge researchers and practitioners that we interact with. If you have chosen to be an activist for your heritage language, you have already navigated a complex universe of identity, loss, relationships, and rich cultural knowledge. Your lived experience is irreplaceable and should guide you as you decide how you will proceed with your language activism.
Figure 15.2 A Manx language class taught by Jonathan Ayres, Arbory School, Isle of Man.
Figure 15.3 Nahua children reading a pictorial dictionary. Chicontepec, Mexico.
Case Studies
We turn now to eight case studies to illustrate on-the-ground practices for first or second language teachers and learners of Indigenous languages.
Case Study 1 Lindsay Marean Potawatomi Distance Learning and Workshops
Lindsay Marean is a language activist,Footnote 15 who is both a learner of her community’s language, Potawatomi, and a linguist working for the Tübatulabal community in California. In addition to her experience working on documentation projects, such as a Potawatomi dictionary and corpus, she has also taught Spanish in public schools, supervised preservice language teachers, and worked to connect teachers with second language teaching and learning research projects at the Center for Applied Second Language Studies. She says that, as an Indigenous language activist, she has been lucky to meet and work with many other language activists.
Every Monday night, Lindsay meets online with some fellow Potawatomi people, and they use the grammar-translation method as they work through recordings of their elders speaking Potawatomi. They look up words in dictionaries or ask people who speak different regional varieties if they have heard certain words before. They study verb prefixes and suffixes, and puzzle over why certain discourse markers are used in different places. Lindsay explains, ‘We have these wonderful recordings, we have curious adults who are interested in how Potawatomi works, and I don’t have time to prepare any formal lessons. I recognize that we aren’t developing our conversational skills or learning to do things like pray before a meal when we dissect these texts, but we are developing a feel for how our first language speakers use our language, and we are gaining new insights into traditional Potawatomi ways of thinking as we listen, line-by-line, to our elders sharing with us what they thought merited being recorded in our language’.
In another case, Lindsay, who usually favors communicative approaches, chose to use a radically input-based approach two years ago at an event hosted by the Pokagon Band of Potawatomis. She rephrased an incident from Potawatomi history into simple sentences and presented them one at time, followed by a prescribed set of questions that first require with yes/no answers, then progress through either/or answers, and end with more open-ended who/what/where/when type questions (this sequence is called ‘circling’). By the end of the week quite a few people in the class could tell the entire anecdote in Potawatomi. Participants may not have learned how to express their own original thoughts during the lessons that week, but they reclaimed a little-known part of their history as part of an oral tradition that they now share.
Case Study 2 Lindsay Marean – Can-Do Statements in Pahka’anil
In her work as a Practical Linguist for the members of the Tübatulabal Tribe in California who are teaching their language, Pahka’anil, Lindsay uses a proficiency-based approach for tracking language growth. She and the teachers she works with are piloting the use of the NCSSFL-ACTFL Can-Do Statements,Footnote 16 a set of examples of what learners can be expected to do in their target language (for example, can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details), arranged by proficiency level (Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Superior, and Distinguished) and mode of communication (interpretive, presentational, and interpersonal). Language teachers collect evidence of their students’ language development and maintain language portfolios showcasing their growth. This is one very small piece of what these teachers do in their work to carry Pahka’anil on in future generations, and also one very small piece of what Lindsay does as their linguist. However, their experience so far is that using language portfolios aligned with the Can-Do Statements is helpful for guiding development of curriculum and for setting goals for ongoing growth as Pahka’anil users.
Case Study 3 Zalmai Zahir Lushootseed Language Nesting in the Home
Zalmai Zahir is of Sioux ancestry on his mother’s side and was raised by his mother and Puyallup step-father. It was from them that he learned the importance of language and culture. He began learning Lushootseed from his step-father at age eleven and began teaching it in 1989. He also studied and apprenticed with Lushootseed elder, scholar, and professor, Dr. Vi Hilbert. Using various teaching methods over the years with limited success, Zalmai developed a methodology that borrows from various approaches, including reclaiming domains and ‘language nesting’. He has turned portions of his home into a Lushootseed language nest by focusing on using language with specific activities, such as sweeping the floor, making breakfast, and washing the dishes. Zalmai is reclaiming these activities as Lushootseed domains within his home. He teaches and assists other learners and language programs on how to use this approach.
Over the past thirty plus years we have seen that learning language in ‘nests’, places where language is fostered and cared for as a parent cares for a child, places where learning is nurtured and respected, has proven to produce fluent speakers.Footnote 17 And, in particular, speakers of Indigenous languages who are using this model to revitalize their languages are finding it vital to language use as it requires learners to speak and converse on a regular basis. Zalmai defines two types of nests that exist for language revitalization – a nest for children, and a nest for language. ‘A “nest for children” is a physical location where the children are nested in the language. This is the primary accepted definition by language revitalizationists. A “nest for language” is a physical location where the language is nested, not the learners. It is not limited to the involvement of children, and it can occur in the home.’Footnote 18 Zalmai broadens the definition of a language nest to a ‘place in the home, or the whole home itself, where adult learners and speakers with or without children will use the language. This can facilitate the growth of language use to several hours per day, and it provides a means for language transmission to friends, family and children’. It allows for activities of daily living to be ‘reclaimed’ in the language of the home.
As we will see in other case studies, language nesting can occur in locations in and outside of the home. Wherever it occurs, the goal is to speak the Indigenous language every time one is in that space. The dominant language is not allowed to be spoken in language nests. When a physical space is created to specifically support language use, learners have to speak the language. Teachers then create learning materials for real-life activities and teaching occurs one activity at a time.
For example, choose a room where you want to use the language. If you live in a family or with friends, decide together which space you want to begin with. For example, if you eat together, cook together, and use the kitchen to socialize, consider beginning in the kitchen. Because the kitchen functions as a gathering space, it supports the extended learning of friends and family. Many domains can be reclaimed in the kitchen (we list a few below).
Activities to support learning in the kitchen:
(1) using the sink
(2) washing your hands
(3) cleaning the counter
(4) washing dishes
(5) putting away groceries
(6) making a sandwich
(7) making a cup of tea
(8) making coffee
(9) frying an egg
(10) boiling vegetables
Once you have an idea of the activities you want to reclaim, then the next step is to identify the language phrases you will need and to teach them. We suggest you begin with self-narration, saying aloud the words and phrases as you do each of the actions. This will help you decide if the phrases you chose are relevant to the activity, and it will help you to determine the ordering of the actions in the activity. Additionally, this process reinforces language learning by physically doing what you are learning. As a teacher you can see how these activities create a framework for learning and how they contribute to building your kitchen curriculum.
Here is an example script to try if you want to reclaim the domain of washing your hands.
(1) I turn on the water.
(2) (Now) I take the soap.
(3) I put it on my hands.
(4) I wash my hands.
(5) I rinse my hands.
(6) I turn off the water.
(7) I take the towel.
(8) I dry my hands.
Zalmai has found that if he is more prescriptive with the process, i.e. ‘Take this activity and post it in your bathroom. Do it each time you wash your hands, increasing your daily language use by five minutes per day’, learners have better success.
If you need help coming up with the phrases you want to teach, you can go to other speakers in your community. For communities who no longer have first speakers, you can look at documented language materials such as texts, grammars and dictionaries, or work with a linguist to gather words and phrases. These sentences will grow as your lesson plans develop.
Here is a visual learning tip:
Make labels writing the needed vocabulary and phrases on them.
– Write the names (nouns) of each object you want to learn
– Write the actions (verbs) you are wanting to learn
Post names and phrases in areas of your home (or other places) where activities will take place, so for this activity, in the kitchen.
– Use the labels to learn nouns.
– Use phrases to learn actions
Say the vocabulary and phrases aloud as you are doing the actions and teaching them. Record them on your phone and listen to them during the day. Ask your students to do the same in their homes. The key for all activities is using the language.
Case Study 4 Loren Me-lash-ne’ Bommelyn Master-Apprentice Language Learning Model
Loren Me’-lash-ne Bommelyn is Tolowa, Karuk, and Wintu and is a tradition bearer for the Tolowa tribe. He has dedicated himself to preserving traditional songs, language, and basketry. He is the foremost ceremonial leader of the tribe, and its most prolific basketweaver. Me’-lash-ne is an enrolled member of the federally recognized Tolowa Dee-ni’. His mother, Eunice Bommelyn, was a prominent first speaker of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language, an Athabaskan language spoken in coastal Northern California, at Crescent City and Smith River, and a cultural advocate. Me’-lash-ne is a fluent speaker of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language and taught for over thirty years as a Tolowa high-school language teacher in Crescent City, California.
From the time Me-lash-ne’ was a child he wanted to know everything there was about plants. It was his dream to be an ethno-botanist and horticulturist. Also, he was curious about his family’s language, Tolowa Dee-ni’, as his mother was a speaker. He would go with her to visit elders and family and listen to them as they spoke. He would practice and put to use the language he learned. His interest in plants and language was known in the community, and he would ask many questions of his elders on these visits.
One of the learning strategies Me-lash-ne’ used when walking to school, or to family and friends’ homes, or to anywhere really, was that when looking at an object, he would replace the English word for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ word, and over time he saw his environment through Tolowa Dee-ni’ eyes.
Me-lash-ne’ studied traditional dance and song with an elder and through these teachings he created his own songs in Tolowa Dee-ni’ to which dancers dance today. For everything Me-lash-ne’ wanted to learn and know about, he found an elder to teach him, to apprentice with. It was in this way that he learned Tolowa Dee-ni’, and now as a master himself, learners apprentice with him. The essence of this teaching/learning method is to immerse oneself with the language in an environment with an elder, relying on the environment and one’s curiosity to guide learning.Footnote 19
Case Study 5 Pyuwa Bommelyn Tolowa Dee-ni’ Programs and Teaching Strategies
Pyuwa Bommelyn is a Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation tribal member and a second language speaker of Tolowa Dee-ni’. He is the son of Loren Me-lash-ne’ and Lena Bommelyn, and grandson of Eunice Bommelyn. Me-lash-ne’ and Lena raised their three children in the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language, with Me-lash-ne’ speaking to his children, and now grandchildren, primarily in Tolowa Dee-ni’. Because of this, Pyuwa and his wife Ruby Tuttle are able to raise their three children in Tolowa Dee-ni’. Ruby teaches their children at home (homeschools) providing an education rich in language, culture, and academics.
In this section we share different teaching methods of Tolowa Dee-ni’ in early education, home, high school, and community language programs that serve three-year olds to seniors (60+ years).
Accelerated Second Language Acquisition
The Accelerated Second Language Acquisition (ASLA) approach, attributed to Dr. Stephen Greymorning (Neyooxet), is used in community and high-school classrooms.
ASLA teaching goals first target ‘imprinting’ nouns and verbs (the heart of the language), using concrete examples in the language. Once learners can use these with each other, they move onto the more abstract parts of the language, such as descriptors, adverbials, and classifiers, for example. Verbs are kept in the first and second person singular form most of the time to make learning more tangible.
Depending upon what class it is, Tolowa Dee-ni’ teachers make their own teaching materials (language learning skill sets) which they call ‘Indintivities’. Activities include Total Physical Response commands to support learners doing the motions they are learning, providing a kinesthetic input to learning. Once learners are familiar with the vocabulary, pair and group learning activities focus on using the vocabulary in specific domains. For example, in a lesson on Vine tea learners work on associated nouns, verbs of actions, and commands on plant identification: where the plant is located; when and how it is gathered and processed; why it is used; and its health benefits. This learning includes cultural knowledge about what one needs to know before picking the plant.
ASLA Learning in Domains – Reclaiming the Language of Place
As seen above with Vine tea, ASLA learning techniques can be used to reclaim domains and to bring language into daily life in specific spaces where it had not been used for some time. Here are some examples of developing language fluency within specific domains using ASLA strategies.
Classroom – In the classroom, young children learn to respond to and ask phrases like: come and sit at the circle; please set the table; would you like some milk?; time to brush teeth; I have to go to the bathroom; will you be my partner?; time to clean up.
Home – learners learn vocabulary related to cooking a meal, beginning with a scripted conversation until enough language is learned to be conversational.
Community – In the community, a cultural location can act as a domain – a particular place on the reservation tied to a traditional lifeway. An example for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ is the place where smelt fish are found. Fish are caught with a net and are then dried on the beach. Prior to learners fishing at the beach, teachers will teach vocabulary and phrases in the classroom. They will teach the cultural traditions of smelt fishing and drying so learners are better prepared to do the activities in the language. Once learners are at fish camp, this language will be used as they fish, prepare, and dry the fish.
High School – Teaching at the high school provides the most consistent learning environment. Students can take two years of daily Tolowa Dee-ni’ classes for credit at the local high school, Del Norte High School (DNHS), taught by Guylish Bommelyn. This structure provides a framework for successful learning in contrast to the weekly community classes that have varying levels of attendance and thus pose a challenge to consistent learning. At the beginning of the year, Guylish gives students a survey, asking them to identify their learning interests. From this he plans lessons in the domains that students suggest. Initial lessons taught using ASLA include nouns, adjectives, and verbs, including commands. Additionally, he uses games, and incorporates body movement to learn Tolowa Dee-ni’ verbs.
For example, ‘ice cream’ was identified as a domain that students wanted to learn. Guylish brings ice cream into the classroom using language to: (a) ask for ice cream, (b) explain how to get the ice cream out of the container; (c) give ice cream to classmates/each other; (d) describe the taste; and (e) discuss likes and dislikes. Language domains change throughout the year.
Pole fishing is another example. There are Tolowa Dee-ni’ words for fish, pole fishing, stream, and hook, but not words for bobber, weight, spool. Thus, new vocabulary is needed for these domains. So teachers look at how nouns are formed and come up with a new word based on this same pattern so that learners can use the language longer in the domain for longer. Then learners can talk about ‘catching a fish, reeling it in, and attaching a weight’; all the actions needed for pole fishing. Videos of this particular unit have been created, and lessons are posted on Instagram that are linked to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Language Program’s Facebook page and the Tribe’s website for tribal members to access when wanting to integrate language into their activities.
Language in the Home Program
The Tolowa Dee-Nation’s Language Program implemented a language in the home program over three years ago. Families are required to commit to learning Tolowa Dee-ni’ for at least one year. To begin with, a pre- and exit assessment on each family’s general attitude toward learning the language was created and used to design the year of Tolowa Dee-ni’ lessons, which provides a benchmark of what families learn in the year. The first part of the program engaged families in discussing their language learning attitudes. A Tolowa Dee-ni’ teacher goes to a home to talk about language barriers, asking, for example, ‘What are the barriers to family language learning; How does it make you feel learning language now?’
Families received a visit once a week from a Tolowa Dee-ni’ language teacher. Tolowa Dee‑ni’ materials were made for that home by the language teacher, and families were taught how to use the materials for meaningful language learning in their home. Each family had a language quota (how much Tolowa Dee-ni’ language they can/want to learn in a year). The Tolowa Dee-ni’ teacher and family members then talk about what is realistic for them and language learning techniques. The Māori language program philosophy and the questions the Māori use to learn language are used as a guide for family learning. The Language in the Home program has been successful for five families. An important aspect for the families is that they need to set their own goals and be responsible for their own learning. This is emphasized throughout the year.
Some Closing Remarks
The point of learning the language of many domains, and why the Tolowa Language Program emphasizes language use and creating new words, is that they want learners to use language on a daily basis. They support learners to use ‘everyday’ speech. What strategies are used to support this? Extending immersion times in the classroom; learning in domains; building up language so learners can stay in the language and use it for longer periods of time; working on language attitudes in the community because any negativity impedes language learning; and sharing the language to accommodate Tolowa sister language varieties to be inclusive of how all folks learned to say things.
Case Study 6 Ruby Tuttle Tolowa Dee-ni’ as the Language of Homeschooling
Ruby Tuttle (Yurok/Yuki/Maidu/Karuk) and Pyuwa Bommelyn began schooling their children at home (homeschooling) in the language of their family, Tolowa Dee-ni’, in 2013. Ruby and Pyuwa made the decision prior to the birth of their children that they would raise their children in Tolowa Dee-ni’. And as the children grew and decisions needed to be made about how they would be educated, it became apparent that if the children were to be speakers of Tolowa Dee-ni’, sending them to schools where English was the medium of educating was not an option. Schooling then extended the children’s Tolowa Dee-ni’ language and cultural foundation and identity to embrace academic learning in their home.
Homeschooling Teaching Strategies
The homeschooling space serves multiple functions. It is a language nest for early Tolowa Dee-ni’ learners and for adult learner-teachers, and it is a lab to pilot and test developing elementary Tolowa Dee-ni’ curriculum. Homeschooling demands that teachers are skilled in numerous language immersion methods, and in determining which strategy or activity to use in any given situation. One needs to be able to have a cache of lessons or activities that will engage students as their attention moves from one thing to the next. Ruby notes that she uses every method she knows about that promotes talking Tolowa Dee-ni’.
New vocabulary is introduced using ASLA language sets, then, to reinforce language use, Ruby uses immersion language teaching strategies. She reinforces learning with the 'five steps' where she introduces language to be learned, asks learners to listen as she says it, and then she asks learners to mimic her, putting off independent production until the end of the lesson. Ruby emphasizes that if you expect learners to speak too soon it sets up disappointment when they are unable to follow through.
Ruby and Pyuwa teach their children to be autonomous learners. One way is through using the Tolowa Dee-ni’ dictionary. Another way is using a word wall on which the children write a word in English that they want to know in Dee-ni’, and Ruby or Pyuwa add the Tolowa Dee-ni’ word next to it.
Teaching Activities
Ruby stresses learning through pair activities, where the children work together to find solutions to language ‘problems’, and through kinetic learning.
Kinetic Activities – Children Learn through Movement
taping a vocabulary word to a bowling pin. The children have to say the word on the pin as they roll the ball to knock the pin down;
beachball volley. Here the children throw a beachball (or other soft ball) back and forth to each other, saying the word taped to the ball. Two balls can be thrown at the same time, one ball with a noun taped to it and the other a verb;
an addition to volleying two balls after learning the words on each ball, is making a sentence using the two words.
Drawing – Ruby emphasizes that children need to take ownership of the language they are learning and, as a teacher, she needs to support them in that. She has had success with activities that allow children to create pictures and drawings with the language that they know.
The penny game – The Baldwin family created this game when their children were learning the Miami language. It positively reinforces language learning and use, and Ruby and Pyuwa have adapted it to learning Tolowa Dee-ni’. It goes like this: when you 'catch' someone using a Tolowa Dee-ni’ word, you give them a penny for using the word. It helps children recognize that what they are doing is a good thing and good things come from what they are learning. It also gets a little competitive and the children will inquire how to say new words so they can say them and add pennies to their jars.
Some Thoughts
Ruby stresses that being consistent in how one teaches and not giving up are two of the most important elements of teaching. The grind of creating curriculum and making sure you are meeting your own cultural standards as well as school standards can be demotivating, making you feel like you are not doing enough. Ruby reminds us that the biggest thing is to just keep going. When she feels she is losing motivation for teaching, she goes back to her own motivation goals for learning and teaching Tolowa Dee-ni’. She asks, ‘What is my motivation for doing this in the first place?’ And she answers, ‘Someone sacrificed for me to be here. Hearing the children using the language. Seeing them speaking to each other.’ Those are some of the personal motivations that keep her going.
In summary, you have to think about what motivates you from within. If your reasons for doing it are your own, if they come from within you, they will remotivate you to start again and continue the language work.
Case Study 7 Pigga KeskitaloRealizing Sámi Culturally Meaningful Education in the Classroom
Pigga Keskitalo is of Sámi origin, born in Finland in a small village in Nuorgam. She lived next to her grandmother’s farm, with extended family living nearby. She learned Sámi at home as both her parents were Sámi speaking. Ville Ásllat Piggá is her Sámi name according to her father’s father and means ‘daughter Piggá of Aslak of Ville’.
During her studies and her work in pre- and in-service teacher education, she has been interested in developing an Indigenous schooling system. Discussions with students and classroom teachers have focused on the need to organize teaching in a culturally meaningful way, and how to teach students so that they understand and can practice cultural traditions. An example of cultural traditions taught to primary school pupils includes smoking meat – here traditional knowledge is used to teach Sámi language concepts, and academic content about the physics of smoking meat.
We see that in ideal circumstances, successful teaching and Sámi learning are based on the values of the surrounding community,Footnote 20 which considers the elements of Sámi cultural well-being. Culturally sensitive teaching is achieved when Sámi education is grounded on the Sámi concepts of place, time, and knowledge.Footnote 21 In the old culture, the concept of time was sun-centered and bound to observing the nature. The Sámi conception of space is not bound to square feet, rather it is circular.Footnote 22 Sámi reindeer herding, like many other traditional livelihoods, is an example of how these concepts influence life, as herders function according to time-honored environmental practices that require ‘flexible’ thinking, meaning one’s ability to respond to one’s immediate environment.
Sámi Dwelling Place – Goahti
In teaching arrangements, the Sámi conception of space would lead to a wider place of learning than the classroom. Information that pupils need also exists outside the school walls. The traditional Sámi dwelling place goahti is one example. The inner organization of the goahti can be applied to classroom organization, creating a more traditional Sámi school setting. A goahti has several physical areas where various tasks take place, with different people carrying out each task. When applied in a classroom, for example, a teacher could set up various teaching areas with individual tasks for student learning. The classroom would be divided into ‘posts’ with various work tasks that could be cultural and academic in nature, thereby transforming the usual classroom organization into one that represented a goahti, both physically and culturally. Widening hyper-traditional approaches may include teachers, elders, and others introducing new vocabulary. Sámi immersive teaching methods include doing traditional activities while using the language, like fishing and preparing food. In addition, suburban challenges are included, like taking into account the challenges of Indigenous peoples in suburban areas.
Case Study 8 Janne Underriner – When Full Immersion Is Not an Option in the Classroom What Can You Do to Stay in the Language?
Janne Underriner is a teacher of Chinuk Wawa, an Indigenous creole language of the Pacific Northwest.
We have seen in this chapter examples from teachers using language-learning strategies that support speaking Indigenous language in various contexts. Their common goal is to have learners using the language in daily settings outside of the classroom; engaged in day-to-day communication in the Indigenous language. In the Pacific Northwest, where for most communities it is not possible to provide language-rich learning environments with first language speakers, teaching language can be as much about strengthening learner’s self-esteem and providing a heightened awareness of culture, place, and history as it is about teaching language. Teaching may focus more on learning vocabulary and phrases for situations of cultural relevance through stories and song; teaching words and phrases that are used in religious ceremonies or while gathering food; or learning how to count living things from nonliving things.
For many Pacific Northwest Indigenous language teachers, teaching within a traditional immersion model where learning occurs for a day or half-day in the Indigenous language is not realistic. As we saw earlier, immersion teaching requires a high degree of fluency; higher than many teachers in this area have, so teachers are working to incorporate immersion teaching into their classrooms by presenting limited topics in which they have the ability to teach in the language for short periods of time. In the Pacific Northwest, most language teachers are typically language learners, younger adults who have a strong commitment to their language. Their challenge is to keep at least a step ahead of their students, providing a language-rich classroom environment within their own level of proficiency. Hinton suggests that a teacher who is learning her own language while she is teaching it focus on learning various components of a lesson. If a teacher learns the lesson elements – not only the new and review material presented in the lesson but also greetings, classroom management vocabulary, and informal patter – she can have an immersion classroom.Footnote 23
The benefits of using immersion techniques for a shorter time are available to less than fully fluent teachers. In these situations, immersion teaching calls for a strategy of beginning with using the Indigenous language in five, ten, fifteen-minute intervals and increasing from there. Teachers can use specific activities to stretch what they do know, for example, counting from 1 to 10 could be a ten-minute activity that maintained student’s interest throughout with song, humor, and physical movements. Or teaching about spring foods (roots) can include a traditional story taught in the dominant language using the Indigenous words for roots, colors, season, and place names. Learners can then use the language that they have learned in the classroom at their community celebrations and when they are root digging in their traditional gathering places. This teaching strategy nurtures authentic language use in everyday communication and traditional practices, meaning that it has immediate application for learners in their community.
Some Concluding Words
Our goal in writing this chapter was to share teaching methods and strategies that support language use. The hands-on activities highlighted show how learning can be accessible and support language use in daily life. Our experience has shown us that these activities motivate learning, bridge classroom and home learning, and bring language use into the community. We hope you will try these activities and that they enrich your teaching, and that, ultimately, you will experience similar results. Please feel free to contact any one of us.
15.1 Ka Hoʻōla ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi I O Nā Kula: Hawaiian Language Revitalization through Schooling
Hawaiian revitalization efforts currently focus on Hawaiian-medium education as an effective framework to reverse the demise of the marginalized Indigenous Hawaiian language and cultural identity. Using the Native Hawaiian language as the medium of education began with the founding of the ʻAha Pūnana Leo in 1983, a nonprofit education organization that established its first preschools in 1984–1985 for children aged three to five. These schools continue until today and are conducted five days a week throughout the school year, from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM, where Hawaiian is the only language heard while education takes place. The ʻAha Pūnana Leo preschool children served as the impetus for the first HawaiʻiFootnote 24 Department of Education’s Hawaiian Language Immersion Program, started in 1987. Currently there are twenty-four Hawaiian immersion school sites in the Hawaiian Islands. In 2019 the Hawaiʻi public schools Hawaiian immersion program graduated its twentieth consecutive preschool (three to five years old) through twelfth grade high school (sixteen to seventeen years old), or P-12 Hawaiian immersion class since the first such Hawaiian immersion graduation cycle was achieved in 1999.
The term ‘Hawaiian immersion’ is now moving into ‘Hawaiian-medium’ education, where Hawaiʻi’s Indigenous language is more than just a ‘novel’ way of ‘immersing’ a child in a foreign language separate from a country’s mainstream language to conduct a child’s education. Hawaiian medium education utilizes the endangered, unconventional Native Hawaiian language totally as the language of instruction, interweaving the Indigenous Hawaiian cultural identity and rendering the Hawaiian language as the Hawaiian foundation to engage the world. This Hawaiian medium education philosophy establishes its own conventions of education, and in the case of Hawaiʻi, also achieving the educational standards of a mainstream English society.Footnote 25
Currently, the Hawaiian Language College, Ka Haka ʻUla O Keʻelikōlani, of the University of Hawaiʻi at the Hilo campus, serves as the major source for Hawaiian medium teacher certification and the College’s Hale Kuamoʻo Hawaiian Language Center develops Hawaiian medium curriculum resources for use in schools. The Hawaiian Language College offers a Bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian language as well as Master’s degrees in Hawaiian language and the state’s first Doctorate degree for the Revitalization of Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture. These graduate degrees represent the first graduate degrees to be offered in the USA for any Indigenous language. So as Hawaiʻi now witnesses the death of its very last native speakers and the success of its Hawaiian immersion and Hawaiian medium P-12 programs, it is imperative that the College of Hawaiian Language continues to generate highly fluent second language speakers of Hawaiian focused on Hawaiian medium tertiary education.
Since the establishment of the ʻAha Pūnana Leo in 1983 for Hawaiʻi’s first Hawaiian language-medium Pūnana Leo preschools, thirty-six years of advancement in Hawaiian language-medium preschool to twelfth grade education into the public school system has resulted in unprecedented outcomes for Hawaiʻi. A standard of 100 percent high school graduation and 80 percent college entry rate for Hawaiian medium education students has been attained. These positive outcomes have uplifted the confidence and pride of a colonized minority Native population and have instilled achievable goals for the survival of the Hawaiian language and culture in its own homeland. Perhaps more significant has been the creation of highly fluent second language speaking parents who are now raising the new generation of Hawaiian first language speakers from the home. This sets the stage for further developments in formal Hawaiian-medium education that will continue to reach into the economic, social, legal, and political structures of society to regain the Hawaiian language and cultural identity’s rightful place in its own Native land while moving into the wider world.
15.2 Kristang Language Revitalization in Singapore under the Kodrah Kristang Initiative, 2016–Present
Kristang is an endangered Portuguese creole, once spoken in various forms across Southeast Asia from the seventeenth century. Today, it is spoken mostly by older speakers in Melaka, Malaysia, where the language arose after the Portuguese conquest of the city in 1511, and Singapore, whose Kristang community (today known as Portuguese-Eurasians) developed in the early nineteenth century following the establishment of a British trading outpost in 1819. The dominance of the English language in colonial and then independent Singapore, together with the perception of Kristang as ‘patois Portuguese’, ensured that by the late twentieth century, knowledge of the language’s very existence in Singapore was almost forgotten, even by younger Portuguese-Eurasians. Intergenerational transmission most likely ceased by the late 1960s, and the language is not taught in schools, or used in media or publications. As a result, it was estimated that, in 2015, less than 100 speakers of Kristang remained in Singapore.
Kodrah Kristang (‘Awaken, Kristang’) is a youth-led grassroots revitalization movement that started in March 2016 with a free pilot class for adult learners in Kristang following a year of documentation in Singapore. This first class was a collaboration between an older speaker involved in documentation who wanted the language preserved, and a younger Kristang learner who led the documentation effort. Successive rounds of this class were then developed into a full structured 160-hour curriculum based on Communicative Language Teaching and Task-Based Language Teaching principles (for more details see below). A thirty-year revitalization plan for the language, developed in 2016 at the Institute on Collaborative Language Research (CoLang) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, also informed the development of the curriculum. This plan is divided into five phases: Prendeh (‘Learning’: 2016–2017), Abrasah (‘Embracing’: 2017–2018), Alkansah (‘Achieving’: 2018–2021), Kriseh (‘Increasing’: 2021–2035), and Subih (‘Elevating’: 2035–2045). Ultimately, the plan seeks to redevelop space for Kristang in the Singaporean home, whether Portuguese-Eurasian or otherwise, and invite, encourage, and sustain community ownership in the revitalization of the language.
The Kodrah Kristang initiative focuses on outreach and collaboration, building a broad base of contacts while maintaining a strong focus on attracting young people and ensuring that the effort is grassroots/community-oriented and low-cost. Kodrah’s youth-led core team is multiethnic, with only two out of five of the present team being of Portuguese-Eurasian descent. Classes are open to anyone of any ethnicity, not just Portuguese-Eurasians. This is due to the initiative’s urban context, the small size of the Portuguese-Eurasian community (about 0.4 percent of the population, or 16,000 individuals), and strong sensitivities in Singaporean society and the Singapore Eurasian community about language and race. The core team continues to work with remaining Kristang speakers to deliver lessons, with a (younger) core team member leading classes from the front and one or more Kristang speakers usually present among the students to provide feedback and support. Lessons are structured almost entirely around games and interactive activities to facilitate the growth of a new Kristang-speaking community founded on strong interpersonal relationships.
All classes and class-related materials are free, as the initiative has cultivated a system of reusable long-term capital and strong relationships with venue partners to reduce financial barriers to long-term sustainability. Broadly speaking, most class activities make use of common household items and games (e.g. poker cards, dice, rough paper) that cost little and can be reused as long-term capital. Slides are uploaded online so printing is left to the individual learner’s discretion. The team makes use of a small amount of funds accumulated from the Kristang Language Festival in 2017 (see below) and sales of Kristang dictionaries and games fund the printing of some worksheets and purchasing of long-term capital such as dice and cards. Meanwhile the current Core Team are all registered People’s Association (PA) trainers in Singapore, which allows them to run classes at any community center in Singapore for a very minimal fee.
As of May 2019, about 280 individuals, including 15 children of various ages, have completed the entry-level Kodrah 1A course and the associated ALKAS assessment, a diagnostic tool developed to determine learners’ progress after two modules. Thirty students from the pioneer group in July 2016 completed the first round of highest-level 4A and 4B courses in November 2018. Meanwhile wider public outreach has been extensive, with the initiative nominated for the prestigious Singapore President’s Volunteer and Philanthropy Award in 2017 and 2018, for demonstrating Kampong Spirit. Other initiatives include a pilot children’s class in July 2017 and the successful launch of the first Kristang Language Festival, held in May 2017 and attended by over 1,400 individuals. A number of Kodrah students have independently initiated projects of their own featuring Kristang, including a film (Nina Boboi), a graphic novel (Boka di Stori), a children’s book series, and a Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game (MMORPG). These are not part of the revitalization plan but have seen significant support from both the Eurasian community and wider Singaporean society; Nina Boboi featured on the online streaming service Toggle and the graphic novel Boka di Stori was funded by a Yale-NUS Futures of Our Pasts grant.
15.3 Teaching and Learning of Wymysiöeryś
As a child I was obsessed with thinking about what would happen if the native speakers of my language died out. When I was ten, the youngest of them were over seventy years old, so I realized that it would unfortunately come fast. Then I would be alone in Wilamowice as if in a fremd (foreign) place.
I knew that the only way to change this situation was to teach my friends. At that time, they would rather tease me than show an interest in learning Wymysiöeryś. As I was thinking about how to deal with it, I discovered that lessons in Wymysiöeryś were to be organized at the school, led by an old Vilamovian – Józef Gara fum Tołer. He taught a few children, but unfortunately, because of his age (he was about eighty), he could not do it for long. Then, after two years, the lessons stopped. It was the year 2006. I thought that may be the time spent teaching children, who do not learn much, could be better spent recording the last living native speakers and undertaking language documentation.
Then, in 2011, I decided to start teaching the language. I thought about focusing on documentation, but I realized that I did not want to feel guilty that I kept the new generation of speakers from knowing the old native speakers. The first group were children from the Dance Group ‘Wilamowice’, then came their friends and I had to organize a couple of groups at different levels. They did their homework with the Wymysiöeryś native speakers: they helped them with housework while speaking Wymysiöeryś together. The old people are often alone, so they were very happy to have guests who were young and interested in their language and in their life stories.
There were years when I had about twelve groups and I taught about twenty-four hours per week. In 2011 I was eighteen, so my workload included preparation for the secondary school exit exams and then university, where I also had many exams. My parents did not like that I would spend more time teaching than learning and I failed my university exams twice. For them and for some friends of mine it was a big tragedy and they could not understand why I kept teaching children and teens who would sometimes stop learning or not treat me well: what if nobody wanted to continue? But I knew that it was the price and the risk that we as Indigenous people take every day. That was not the only decision that I took in 2011. I was thinking every day that while there were many children here who stopped learning, there were also many academics who abandoned their activities in Wilamowice, because they felt dissatisfied with their effectiveness. For example, some people wanted to start projects, but then they realized that their work would remain unknown, or that there are too few native speakers, or that young people do not speak in the same way as before World War II, or that this town is too small for them and they cannot spend a couple of months here because of the lack of entertainment. So why should I believe more in scholars than in my pupils?
There were many moments when I was in doubt, but now, I see my students writing poems and songs, playing in theatrical performances in Wymysiöeryś, teaching other children, speaking Wymysiöeryś with each other, using it on Facebook and creating websites about Wymysiöeryś. I can confirm for people who are thinking about taking a similar decision, that I do not regret it. I remember all the moments of doubt, but I know that this is the price that we, as locals, have to pay and nobody can do it for us. We are grateful for help from the universities in Warsaw and Poznan in preparing teaching materials and negotiating with local authorities, but organizing things on an everyday basis, teaching and as looking for new students, are all up to us.
15.4 Immersive Łemko Ethnophilology
Łemko ethnophilology was a degree course at the Pedagogical University of Kraków between 2001 and 2017. This program was needed because the Lemko training had been available only at the level of primary and high school and there was not space to prepare Łemko teachers and Łemko intelligentsia. It was closed because of standardized majority criteria for university programs: The university authorities decided there were not enough participants, whereas the recruitment rules were not adjusted to the specific situation of an ethnic minority. It was the only higher education course in Poland designed to prepare students for using the Łemko language in the public spaces and domains where minority languages are used in Poland, i.e. teaching, journalism, cultural animation, social work, research.
Students learned through common creative activities. During group and individual work they created texts in Łemko. These are published in a special section of Łemko newspapers and include book reviews as well as reports about Łemko events. The students participated not only in classes but also in journalism and music workshops. They also took part in linguistic and cultural practices in various places where Łemkos live and learn. This means that the development of their Łemko training was also shaped by the local socio-political and cultural life of this minority community. Students also had teaching practice in schools where Łemko is taught and during summer camps for Łemko youth. The most important part of these activities was the emphasis on their social meaning and social utility. The positive, family-like emotions they felt while learning creatively in Łemko-language situations reinforced their language awareness and learning.
A very important achievement of this program was the originality of the teaching method, which meets the needs of members of minority language communities and cultures. The main feature of this method was full immersion from the very start. It was possible because the lecturers were native users of Łemko who uphold Łemko customs in their private and social lives. Those students who were brought up knowing the Łemko language and culture provided important support for new speakers. Their innate knowledge of the domains of language and culture had positive impact on all the students – including those who had never had any contact with Łemko before. Working in such a diverse group of people is most effective as it shapes immersion dynamically and creates a special communicative and emotional sensitivity. If there are no native speakers in the group (and it happens), contact with the broadest possible range of students and Łemko youth is needed. This should happen in an environment where cultural and linguistic patterns of behavior are continued. Such emerging relationships among students bring about good results in the domains of information and emotion (and this is a priority when it comes to minority languages) as they motivate learning through approval – like in family relations. Students who aren’t Łemkos are symbolically introduced into the family as they obtain their Łemko names and acquire the community language. This makes them feel special but also creates an obligation for them with regard to the language and its transmission. Students who are native speakers of Łemko are put in the position of teachers and supervisors. They also become aware of the mechanisms how the language is passed down in family environment along a number of contexts of its use and what is special about it. All this helps them have the confidence to use it in public spaces. The alumni of the Łemko ethnophilology course are among the most engaged revitalizers of the Łemko language and traditions (Figure 15.4.1).
Figure 15.4.1 A presentation of Łemko books by Olena Duć-Fajfer, the founder of the Łemko philology, and Petro Murianka, a Łemko poet, writer, and teacher.
15.5 Culture Place-Based Language Basketry Curriculum at the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community
Place-based learning has emerged in Indigenous communities as a promising approach for language learning, revitalization, and maintenance. Place-based education has links to communicative and culturally based approaches. With community at the center, students learn about core values, culture, their homelands, their people’s history, and current tribal affairs as they learn their language. Students become connected to what is essential to their tribal community and to the ways of their ancestors. It also links students with members of their larger, not just tribal, community who contribute to its diverseness, and in so doing it opens students’ awareness to elders, leaders, mentors, and peers they might not have encountered in a more teacher-centered classroom learning experience. ‘Diverseness’ means that students learn about people in their community; they learn about jobs and what people do; they learn about their government and the departments in their government. Students drive learning as much as teachers.
Place-based education supports recommendations of Indigenous educators for Indigenous students. Place-based education meets the call for the integration of the local and the inclusion of cultural knowledge in teaching, as well as increased involvement by the community. Incorporating culture into learning affords the opportunity for students to participate in traditional practices of the community today, linking the past to the present. In addition, culture place-based language learning builds identity and connection to surroundings. By design, it is collaborative and cultivates relationship building. It is experiential and so nurtures learners’ curiosity, builds cooperation among students, and strengthens problem-solving abilities.
A culture place-based learning approach positions curriculum and lessons in local events and places, and acknowledges that learning happens not only in formal educational settings but also outside of school in families and communities. This reinforces connections to one’s home, family, community, and world. Included components can be the cultural, historical, social, religious, and/or economic relevance of specific locations or regions.Footnote 26
Culture place-based learning supports communicative language use as students work together on projects to investigate and understand the world at large. Here, for example, they use learned skills to make observations, collect data, and interview community members to carry out a group learning task. At the end of a project they disseminate the result in presentations at school and to community groups. Cooperation and communication are essential throughout the process, and team members learn to respect each other’s views and contributions.
Since 2000, I have been a member of the curriculum team at the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community (CTGR) in Grand Ronde, Oregon in the United States. We have been writing culture place-based curriculum for their preschool, elementary, and high-school Chinuk Wawa immersion classroom where students three to ten and thirteen to seventeen years of age receive instruction. Our goal has been to create lessons that will promote learning, foster curiosity, and develop the connection to community. And they must be written and taught in ways that inspire learners to want to learn more.
Initially, a curriculum team (teachers, elders, curriculum writers, linguists, science, language arts teachers, community cultural specialists, parents) brainstorms ideas, and develops a topical curriculum web that provides interrelated themes, language needed, the sequence of what will be taught, and accompanying materials and resources (people as well as objects). Throughout, culture place-based objectives are incorporated into academic standards that meet school district requirements.
In developing culture place-based curriculum, we begin with:
(1) Curricular topic idea that comes from teachers, students, a member of the community, and parents, for example, ‘basketry’. From a topic,
(2) Thematic units are determined and created; one could be material resources for basket-making: cedar basketry, hazel basketry, juncus basketry (plant resources). Or a unit could center on basket types (function) – for root digging, storage, holding water, for cooking. Another unit can center on basketry patterns. After units are determined we develop
(3) Lessons and materials
Here are some other topic examples:
traditional lifeways (basketry, canoe making, digging roots) – each of these can be its own topic as seen above with basketry
animals (beaver, elk, deer, condor)
roots (celery, camas)
fish (salmon)
berries (huckleberry, salal)
acorns
canoes
land
An example of a place-based curriculum is the project Basketry: Place, Community, and Voices, a multidisciplinary, year-long unit. The project emerged from parent‒community Chinuk Wawa language curriculum meetings. For decades, adult basketry-making classes/workshops have occurred year-round in Grand Ronde. Now parents wanted their children to learn about basket-making and initiated that classes be taught in the schools. Specifically parents and teachers wanted students to:
understand that baskets are an important part of Grand Ronde culture
know that juncus and hazel are used in creating traditional baskets
identify different weaving materials in situ and in class
be able to talk about weaving processes in both Chinuk Wawa and English
weave different types of baskets with these materials.
Curricula meet Oregon State standards in math, science, social studies, history, art, and literary arts. Some examples of preschool – fifth-grade lessons include:
(1) Math – counting weavers; Geometric basket designs; Estimation; Even and odd numbers.
(2) Social Studies and History – Use of baskets and basket weavers past and present; Influence of outside communities.
(3) Stories and Literature – Hattie Hudson – a story of a past elder basket weaver.
(4) We Go Gather – a story about giving back to nature when taking from it.
(5) Science – Where, when, and how to harvest; Charring sticks for bark removal; Best management practices for guaranteeing future harvests; Processing materials; Qualities of good basketry materials; Experimenting with materials.
In workshops, specific basketry skills are targeted, so a year’s curriculum can be taught in four or five intensive workshops. In schools, the curriculum is year-long and follows the seasons and time of year when gathering, processing, and weaving are carried out traditionally. For example, hazel is collected in the spring when sap is running throughout the plant. This is climate dependent, so one year it could occur in March, another year could be earlier or later. Learners travel to areas in their community on the Reservation to gather it. They begin weaving in the late spring and summer (also in the fall and winter) after hazel sticks have been prepared. In the summer and early fall, they use hazel baskets to gather berries, and in the early spring in digging roots. Winter lessons include learning basketry stories as traditional stories are told after the first freeze, learning gathering and digging songs and prayers, and learning basketry patterns. Each season learners are taught how to identify hazel in its environment, and how to care for it.
In developing curricular products, we considered those that would benefit the school and the community in general. Thus materials that resulted from the project serve various learner groups. Materials were made by students, parent and family members, basket weavers in the community, teachers, and the curriculum team and include: a multidisciplinary, twenty lesson year-long unit on hazel and juncus basketry of the Grand Ronde people; story, material processing, and pictorial books; and workshop videos.
Summing up, we find that culture place-based curriculum engages youth and children in learning their language in culturally appropriate ways. It builds relationships among mentors and youth, and supports older children to be role models for younger children. We experienced first-hand that a strength of culture place-based curriculum is that it is collaborative and local. It supports the understanding of plant materials, and traditional uses and practices of basketry. This aids in developing better natural resource management practices on tribal, private, and national forest lands. The curriculum informs learners about the health of the environment and land.
We see that learners, young and older, from traditional and nontraditional homes, are more willing to participate in community events at their tribal gym, longhouse/plankhouse (places where ceremony is practiced), and on reservation land (gathering natural resources for weaving, for example) because the curriculum familiarizes learners with traditional and community practices – learning holds at its center the values and traditions (past and present) of its elders, families, learners, and community members. In this way culture place-based learning offers an opportunity for community centered learning that promotes learners’ well-being.
15.6 Sámi School Education and Cultural Environmentally Based Curriculum
In 1997, a separate Sámi School was established in Norway. It follows the principles of the Sámi curriculum in the district area of the Sámi language, emphasizing the importance of bilingualism and the improvement of the status of this Indigenous language after it became officially recognized in the Sámi administrative district in 1990.
Ideally, teaching should be sensitive to the cultural values of the surrounding community. The Sámi curriculum has been developed by working groups including Sámi representatives. This model is based on cultural sensitivity and multilingualism.
Culturally sensitive teaching goals are fulfilled when Sámi education is grounded in Sámi conceptions of place, time, and knowledge (as discussed in Case Study 7 in this chapter). In Sámi culture, the concept of space is circular. Time is sun-centered and bound to observing nature. As a result, teaching takes into account the Sámi understanding of time by organizing classes in a more flexible way and giving up the forty-five-minute scheduling typical for school culture. In addition, the eight Sámi seasons are respected by considering the livelihoods and seasonal work of the Sámi. Traditional local knowledge and linguistic concepts are also included in the learning process.
Learning centered around Sámi values guides students and helps them to understand the social connections of community, their surroundings and nature. Teaching also has to include learning about flora and fauna and should reveal the strong connections between people and nature. Sámi traditional knowledge is derived directly from the environment where people live: concrete working situations and cottages, lean-to shelters, and campfires function as venues for a type of scientific seminar, as discussions are held there and traditional knowledge spreads. Culture-based learning is achieved through storytelling, conversations, and direct participation in these activities, as well as recalled memories and experiences. When applied in the school context, it means that knowledge is a shared experience, which has at its foundation an ecological approach. Thus, education connects to every area of Sámi life, and promotes pupils’ well-being and their links to the environment and land. Building on the school educational context, community members, parents, and elders also help children to recognize and incorporate traditional upbringing practices and working methods (Figure 15.6.1).
Figure 15.6.1 A girl in a gákti (traditional Sámi dress).
Parents and pupils need to be at the center of learning. The starting point in developing a curriculum involves organizing practical ‘idea circles’ for parents and pupils to discuss what they expect, what they dream of, and what their values are. To make sure that interaction and cooperation between pupils and parents works well, teachers need to set aside their role as an authority of school knowledge. It is also important to incorporate meaningful rituals into the curriculum. For example, you can reflect on how you start your teaching in the morning, maybe including morning circles and storytelling, and other kinds of culturally meaningful rituals to engage students each day. Employing traditional storytelling will support content learning and increase students’ engagement in the learning process. You can also start your day by singing traditional music and songs, luohti, reading stories from books, and also presenting stories orally. Then the day can continue with tasks that pupils themselves plan, based on the week’s goals. According to the Sámi values, learning should include working outside as well as inside, with physical activities that are connected to the day’s learning goals.
Phenomenon-based curricular units can be organized around stories, for example, a chapter dealing with reindeer herding can include a story on drying meat in a lávvu (see Figure 15.6.2). We can also talk about drying fish or elk meat or smoking fish or meat. Students will learn traditional knowledge and Sámi values both through stories and more academic learning. For example, units can include:
Stories and language arts – students learn traditional stories and create their own storybooks. Digital education materials can be included.
Science – simple chemistry that is connected to traditional knowledge
– What happens to meat when it is dried?
– Does it weigh more or less when it dries?
– Does the color change?
– How is it dried?
– How and why is it stored?
– When is it eaten?
Ecology and natural resources
Art and Music
Social Studies and History
– History and present-day practices of reindeer herding
Food and cooking
Figure 15.6.2 Reindeer meat will be smoked in a lávvu (lean-to-shelter).
Where an endangered language is no longer being passed on in the family, activities focused on language learning should take the cultural contexts into account. Language learning should take an approach that integrates both content and language. Integrating content into language learning will support children without high levels of proficiency in the target language, providing them with concrete stimuli and practical situations that help them understand both the concepts and language.
15.7 ‘Use It, Don’t Lose It’ ᎲᏗᏍᎨᏍᏗ ᏤᏍᏗ, ᏣᏲᎱᏎᎸᎯ
In 2001–2003, I was an Intern at the Cherokee Immersion program inside a daycare on the Qualla Boundary in Cherokee North Carolina. It was there that I first learned the importance of immersion. I was placed in a classroom with three fluent speakers and seven babies around one to two years of age. My most fond recollection was running out ahead of the class on their group walks to let everyone in our path know that ‘we’ve got immersion babies coming, please speak only Cherokee to them, don’t use English’. To us, English was like a sickness that we didn’t want to expose our babies to. It was our effort to give them an environment of Cherokee Language and Culture only, and it was working.
Somewhere along the way of adding more classrooms, we began to stretch our speakers out too thin in order to accommodate the vast amount of interest the community had for wanting their children to be able to speak Cherokee. As years went on, the Immersion Academy administration, as well as the parents of the students, became concerned for their children’s inability to read English on the child’s grade level. This was the beginning of when English took over.
I can recall a pivotal moment that happened in 2014 as I was the Early Childhood Supervisor. When supervising the three-year-old room, I overheard the children saying things like, ‘Come down here and fight me’, ‘Oh no I fell off the cliff’, and ‘Hurry up or the dinosaur is going to eat you’. Simple sentences but in English. I started writing down what they were saying, and they were things that I didn’t know how to say in Cherokee. After a page and a half, I asked the second language learner teacher, who has been there for ten years if she could translate all these into Cherokee. After she read through it, she handed the paper back to me and said a few. It was then that I realized we needed to teach our teachers. We can’t teach what we don’t know.
I started an adult program like the one our brothers and sisters from Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma had. It was geared toward my early childhood staff, but failed because of the teachers not having enough time to work in their classrooms and spend enough time to learn the language.
In July 2018, I took on our first cohort of adult-language learners. We started out with something I call ‘Interview, Lexicon and Pre-test (ILP)’. The first day we gave the learners an interview or ‘hot-seat’ if you will. The learners would come in one at a time and sit in front of myself and the (7) speakers, where we would ask them random questions such as ‘What is your name’, ‘Where do you live’, ‘Where did you grow up,’ ‘How old are you’, ‘Do you have any kids’, ‘Who are your parents,’ ‘What is your clan’, etc. This was done to give us a baseline of where each learner was at with their language skills. Some learners were able to answer a few of the questions, and some were unable to answer even one. Every four to six months we would reinterview them, and they would show tremendous improvement. By the end of the first year they were all able to answer every single one of those same questions without hesitation.
Once the interviews were complete, I had each learner create a lexicon. They were asked to write down every word and phrase that they knew how to say in the Cherokee language. I believe that we as second language learners know how much we know and that we could effectively display what we know in the lexicon. Just like the interviews, after around four to six months the learners would add new words and phrases that they had learned to their lexicons. The new words and phrases were entered under a separate color so that we could see the growth that they had made.
Finally, a pretest was given. The test content was randomly selected lessons that we would eventually cover in the future. I would also administer the same test after the first year of learning in the program, and again at the end of the second year of the program.
Our classes would focus on our speakers, and our elders, and the great knowledge they have about the way our ancestors might have done things many years ago. For example, this past year we planted a garden. We got to harvest our flour corn, our beans, and our squash that we had grown all while still focusing on and using the language. I believe that hands-on learning is the best way to learn a language. We were able to take our classroom outside of the traditional classroom setting, but still making sure we would be able to stay in the language while taking trips outside. Our trips consisted of learning traditional medicines, wild foods, and stories from long ago. We would practice in the classroom before going out and doing it. We practiced on our pronunciations, the words we could use, and the techniques for proper planting or harvesting.
My experience with teaching adults has been amazing and rewarding. To see people come in and know nothing of the language, go to being able to have basic conversations in the language, and some even going back out into the community to teach some classes has made it all worthwhile. Creating more teachers and creating more speakers is what keeps our fire burning. Each year we will have a new cohort and each year from here on out we will be graduating students who can teach what they’ve learned and most importantly, we’re adding another language speaker into our community. They’re not fluent by any means, but they are not afraid to use what they know and learn as they grow. I am extremely proud of our group and their drive to learn our language. I will leave you with this. Language and culture doesn’t care about color or creed. Language and culture cares about who loves it and will take the time to learn it.
15.8 We Stand Strong in Our Knowledge: Learning Anishinaabemowin One Word Bundle at a Time
During the time when residential schools operated in Canada, the ancestral languages were beaten out of Indigenous children and speakers were shamed for using their mother tongues. Today, many Indigenous people feel embarrassed and dispossessed because they did not learn their language or because they don’t speak it perfectly. In spring 2018, our group of scholars and community practitioners set out to jumpstart Anishinaabemowin language revitalization at the University of Guelph – an institution, which at the time had practically no Indigenous language activity. We called our project ‘We stand strong in our knowledge’ because we wanted to offer the campus community members (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) opportunities to develop personal ‘language bundles’ – a collection of Anishinaabemowin words built around their own knowledge, identities, and stories. We also wanted to create spaces where the language learners could feel a sense of safety and belonging.
Our university is situated on the treaty lands and the territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit whose language is Anishinaabemowin. It is also located on a Dish with One Spoon territory that honors the agreement between the Anishinaabe, the Mississaugas, and the Haudenosaunee to share and protect this land. Yet, the buildings on our campus are named after educational philanthropists, university deans, and presidents with no reference to the Indigenous people who have been the stewards of this place for countless generations. And so, we decide to start our revitalization activities with a symbolic act of renaming several university buildings. In a unique walk around campus our group of students, faculty and staff members explored the names of familiar spaces with the help of an Anishinaabe language keeper Rene Meshake. Rene, who likes to call himself a funky Elder, has been working with Anishinaabemowin concepts most of his life, unpacking their meaning morpheme by morpheme through storytelling and art.
We start our walk at the University Centre – the main hub on campus with access to the food court, study spaces, and administration offices. The participants tell stories about vibrant community events, the feeling of excitement, and constant movement they associate with this place. Rene names it Odena (the heart lodge). He compares the youth arriving at the University Centre to new blood coming into the heart.
We then visit the science complex where students have their biology, physics, and chemistry labs. They talk about a sense of accomplishment and the joy that comes from learning about the diversity of life forms. Rene gifts us with another word – Mino bimaadiziwin (good life). He explains that Bimaadiz means ‘full of life, spirit, and soul’ and that’s exactly how we feel standing in the middle of a beautiful atrium filled with warm spring light.
We repeat the same activity in other places on campus and each time a new word bundle emerges, followed by stories and life lessons generously shared by Rene. Kino’amadiwigamig (a place of giving directions) describes the helpers’ room at the library where students support their peers in becoming better writers and communicators. As we enter the next building, often used for exams, the participants share stories of anxiety, but also of relief and newly built courage. Rene reciprocates with stories about times of great struggle in his personal life. We then decide on a name – Godjiewisiwin (a place of trial/testing).
The concept of Nanda wendjige (seeking sustenance from the earth) comes up when we visit a building with small classrooms where students typically use hallways to brainstorm and work on collective projects. This place makes us reflect on the ability to be creative and make use of the limited space and resources one has available. Rene connects this contemporary learning context with traditional land use, trapping, and hunting skills he learned back in his home territory. These activities honored the earth as people took only what was needed for their communities.
In a similar way, we only take away from this activity that which resonates with us. We finish our walk amazed at the abundance of stories captured by the word bundles and we feel enriched by the opportunity to look at our everyday experiences through the lens of Indigenous knowledge. We might not be speakers of Anishinaabemowin (yet), but we can weave the new words into the fabrics of our lives with gratitude for the meaningful relationships we created with each other and with the place where we work and learn.
Introduction
As has been discussed in the previous chapters, a great number of languages in the world have experienced a significant displacement in their national and regional contexts, particularly in the last two centuries. Displacement comes from a process that forces certain languages into a ‘minority’ status – which rather than being a mere reflection of their demographic stature or grammatical integrity is the result of political and economic marginalisation. For these reasons, minoritised or minorised languages in the world are associated with marginal populations and spaces. Speakers are also discouraged by the lack of education in minoritised languages, as well as the lack of recognition of their art forms, like literature, music, or performance, among others. This, in turn, dissuades people from using these languages in new intellectual or artistic productions.
Language activists in different parts of the world are confronting this situation by reclaiming forsaken linguistic art forms, like traditional storytelling, song and oratory performances, among others. They are also experimenting with new forms of literature, performance and poetry, song composition and music, and other cultural activities like radio production, TV series dubbing, news and social media publications, multimedia installations and advertising. These art forms are used as strategic ways to revitalise their minoritised languages. In this chapter, we will introduce a handful of examples from the Americas, Oceania and parts of Europe, which could provide some general principles and guidelines.
When discussing arts in minoritised languages, we must keep in mind that while most art forms are meant to be enjoyed without linguistic interference – think of dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, photography and graphic design – virtually all artistic endeavours rely, to a certain degree, on language to be made sense of. In what follows, we will focus on arts that rely more significantly on words, speech or discourse, for example, literature (written and oral) and song. We will also look at mixed arts which combine image and speech in creative ways. I will divide the chapter into literary arts, musical arts and mixed arts (cinema, video and TV) to examine the potential of these social and cultural strategies to resist and prevent language displacement.
Literature in Minoritised Languages
Literacy in minoritised or endangered languages is significantly low at present, due to historical marginalisation, political hostility, and a lack of trained educators and teaching resources. In some cases, this is the after-effect of the destruction and prohibition of previous traditions and forms of writing. One clear example of this was the systematic eradication of Mexica and Mixtec pictographic codices and Maya hieroglyphic books during the colonisation of Mexico and Guatemala. Many other minoritised languages do not have an agreed writing system (see Chapter 14). Consequently, reclaiming minoritised literatures and developing new literary traditions are necessarily tied to questions of literacy, standardisation, normalisation and publishing.
For writers and publishers of minoritised languages, the main challenge is to create a readership, particularly in contexts where speakers are not even literate in the dominant language. Global concerns about the loss of linguistic diversity have moved a few national governments (especially in parts of Western Europe and Latin America) to provide funds and infrastructure in order to address these disadvantages. However, money and publications are not the only resources that an endangered language needs.
Language activists are trying to redress the interruption of local, unwritten literary traditions by compiling examples of spoken art, like storytelling, recitation, ritual dialogue, chanting and other surviving oral traditions. A growing number of states now offer support to revitalisers. For example, the Mexican government has sponsored the publication of literature in Indigenous languages since the 1980s. These publications, although always in bilingual form (Spanish and Indigenous languages), represent an important shift in relation to the previous monolingual policies of the Mexican state. The Contemporary Indigenous Literature series initially consisted of cultural monographs, collections of folktales, songs and prayers, and community theatre scripts. Later series have included new narrative forms such as fiction stories and novels, poetry and playwriting. Although these series purportedly aim to revitalise Indigenous languages, several critics point out that these bilingual books end up being used more by literary scholars and linguists than by Indigenous speakers. Distribution is crucial since these books tend to circulate predominantly within government and higher education institutions and community libraries, but rarely in commercial bookshops. An even more pressing challenge is that Mexican Indigenous speakers are still rarely taught and even less encouraged to read in their own languages.
Mexico’s case shows that increasing publication of books in endangered languages is not enough; guaranteeing their circulation and access, and encouraging their consumption by speakers is also necessary. Promotion of literacy in minoritised languages is an enterprise that requires both institutional and grassroots support. Growing access to the Internet in minoritised language contexts might provide new opportunities to promote literacy, but this is yet to be determined.
Compilation of traditional oral literature has been deemed an important way to identify aesthetic principles which could support the development of new literary styles. A good example of this is the investigative and creative work of Ana Patricia Martínez Huchim in Yucatan, Mexico. She was one of the first Maya women to research Maya oral literature, working first with children and later with adults. In spite of not being a fluent speaker, Huchim became a prolific writer, drawing inspiration from community stories and turning them into new tales that followed the Maya storytelling canon. Her collections of stories feature acute social commentary, shedding light on forgotten historical events, as well as denouncing gender injustice in community life, in true literary form.
Play-writing and theatrical performance also offer significant opportunities to dynamise minoritised languages. This literary and performative hybrid art form integrates different skills and taps from different sources which makes it an even more effective way to reinsert endangered languages in the public sphere. Among its sources we could have story compilations, historical re-enactment, or creative writing. Preparation of theatrical performances involves speech training, rhythm awareness, dialogue practice, memorisation, recitation, and improvisation. Plays are social events that prompt conversation, analysis and, on occasion, even debate, all of which could invigorate threatened and minoritised languages. These secondary, meta-performative events are key to infusing endangered languages with new life. Because these art forms require group work and cooperation, they could also strengthen collective identity and help to associate the language with play and socialisation. This is not only the case with theatre but could also potentially be a part of dance.
This is how the Kaqchikel-speaking members of the Sotz’il Art Group in the Guatemalan highlands understand their artistic and political work, which mixes theatre and dance to recount mythic stories in a contemporary fashion. The Sotz’il Group has developed an investigative and experimental practice that reclaims ancient Maya literary and performance aesthetics. The group formed in 2002 on the initiative of Lisandro Guarcax and a group of Kaqchikel-speaking high-school students. Their work echoed traditional community performances. Indeed, traditional performers from the community supported them with learning about customs, instruments, props and cultural knowledge. Confronted by stereotypical and offensive portrayals of their ancient art and historical heroes in schools and other public institutions, Sotz’il members have sought inspiration from representations of Maya musicians and dancers found in ancient books and paintings. They have used these images as a template to create new performances, copying postures, improvising movements, reinventing costumes, and writing dialogues for plays that deal with both the historical and the political challenges of today. Without strictly relying on text, Sotz’il’s recreations of theatre and dance creatively assemble myth, memory, and movement to reconnect young people with Kaqchikel culture and language. A more conventional literary outlet for Sotz’il’s experimentation has been the publication of artistic theory in their bilingual (Spanish–Kaqchikel) anthology Ka’i’ oxi’ tzij pa ruwi’ rupatän Samaj Ri Ajch’owen [Some words about the work of the Maya Artist], 2014.
A broad definition of literature in the context of minoritised languages should not only include playwriting, but also other forms of spoken art like singing and praying. The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, for example, defines literature as ‘the art of verbal expression’ (my emphasis). Following this, ‘literature’ would have to include public storytelling (including ‘call’ and ‘response’), civic rhetoric, ceremonial discourse, ritual song, religious or historical dances, carnival speech or jokes, political chants or slogans, everyday sayings and proverbs, all of which encapsulate specific aesthetic principles. One form of performative literature that has become a favoured strategy for language activists will be the focus of our next section.
Minoritised Sounds in Emerging New Languages
The strong connection between music and language is not a new discovery. It was during the twentieth century, however, that language activists started to use song composition and performance in a more conscious and political way. One example of this was the Nova Cançó (New Catalan Song) movement during the late 1950s under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. The Francoist regime had banned the use of regional Iberian languages, like Basque, Galician and Catalan, in public official spaces. Although singing in these languages was not strictly prohibited, song writers and singers, especially in the Catalan-speaking region, used this art form to highlight the imposed Castilian monolingualism in the music domain. Nova Cançó performers began translating and imitating French singer-songwriters (rather than employing traditional genres like havaneres or rumbas) but later developed their own distinctive style.
Translating popular hits is a strategy that continues to be followed by language activists. In 2015, Peruvian teenager Renata Flores Rivera became a social media sensation after posting a music video with a rendition of Michael Jackson’s ‘The Way You Make Me Feel’ in the Quechua language, which has gathered more than 1.7 million views to date. Copyright disputes seem to have been prevented by acknowledging clearly the original source of inspiration and avoiding associations with commercial interests.
Language revitalisers have also ‘invented’ new singing traditions and given birth to mixed performance genres (song and dance), as the Māori action song, waiata-ā-ringa, exemplifies. This waiata (song) genre is an innovation from the early twentieth century and was associated with the activism of the Young Māori Party. Āpirana Ngata, a prominent party activist, devoted himself to compiling and publishing traditional songs and oratory examples during this period. Waiata-ā-ringa combines Western melodies with the performing of culturally prescribed movements which convey Māori narratives. The combination of dance and singing, and the collective, playful and aesthetic nature of these performances have proven to be a popular strategy to promote and celebrate the Māori language, Te Reo, in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Singing in one’s own language may be a mundane activity for many, but it can easily become an act of resistance, especially when its social dynamics change. The Yucatec Maya language, maaya t’aan, was widely used as the de facto lingua franca during the early twentieth century. Yucatec Maya people have preserved different forms of literature, written in Latin characters since the sixteenth century. Yucatecan trova, a local romantic song style which emerged in the early twentieth century, was initially a bilingual genre, but as the Indigenous language of Yucatan was gradually displaced by Spanish, Maya song composition became infrequent. In the early twenty-first century, however, young Maya speakers have started using global music genres like hip hop, reggae and rock to sing in their own language. The number of Indigenous-language hip hop singers in Mexico and other Latin American countries has grown significantly in the last two decades.
Music and song can converge in unexpected ways to help gain new audiences for displaced or minoritised languages. Sometimes this happens through the dynamisation of aged traditions in new genres and with new music technology, where old verses are remastered and re-recorded by young artists and put back into circulation. A good example of this is the work of the Comcaac or Seri rock band Hamac Caziim (Sacred Fire) who, in the 1990s, sought and obtained authorisation from their tribal government in northern Mexico to recreate festive and ceremonial chants in heavy metal form. A true literary tradition, Seri songs have contributed to maintaining a sense of community for this relatively isolated people in the Mexican Sonora state. Traditional songs follow harmonies based on a pentatonic scale, employ an arcane language style and explore landscape inspired themes. Hamac Caziim’s experiment, which has become known as Seri Metal, was well received by Comcaac elders and, more importantly, by young people. Their work spearheaded the organisation of festivals and other public events to make the language more visible, a sort of Seri renaissance in the early twenty-first century.
Lyrical performance may not be a common practice in all language contexts. For example, few Tzutuhil, Kaqchikel or K’iche ‘proper’ songs are known around the Atitlan Lake of Guatemala. However, the poetic intonation and metaphoric figures maintained by aj q’ijab’ (daykeepers, or religious specialists), which reflect literary traditions that go back to Maya Classic inscriptions, are a source of inspiration for some young musicians in the region. Combining this poetic heritage with his fondness for hip hop, René Dionisio, aka ‘MC Tz’utu’, has emerged in the popular music scene as an effective revitaliser of Guatemalan Maya languages. MC Tz’utu’s compositions reclaim and make productive use of decidedly Indigenous aesthetic resources like alliteration (repetition), and the use of semantic pairings also known as ‘parallelisms’ (for example ‘our language, our clothes’, a pairing that evokes ‘cultural tradition’). Although repetition of catch phrases from Western hip hop seems to mirror the parallelism of Maya poetic forms, the lesser importance of rhyming in MC Tz’utu’s rapping provides his work with a distinct Indigenous aesthetic.
As we have seen in this section, song and literary traditions are employed in innovative ways by language and cultural promoters. An aspect which is definitely present but relatively downplayed in relation to revitalisation strategies is the way in which language is embodied and becomes present, not just in everyday life but, perhaps more significantly, in larger public spaces. I will touch briefly on this dimension in our next segment.
Embodying Language: Cinema, Video and TV
Audio-visual media has become the predominant form through which cultural and linguistic contents circulate nowadays. This is also true of music, especially since the 1990s, which saw the beginnings of the music video as the preferred self-marketing medium in North America and Western Europe. Collaboration between musicians and filmmakers has sometimes resulted in true masterpieces, with awards being offered annually worldwide to different aspects of music film production.
As with Hollywood musicals, the relation between song and cinema has also been strong in other, non-Western, contexts like the powerful film industry in South East Asia. Songs and movies always went hand in hand in this densely populated, multilingual part of the world. Today, hundreds of films are produced every year in Hindi (Bollywood), Tamil (Kollywood), Telugu (Tollywood), Kannada (Sandalwood), Bengali, Malayalam (Mollywood), Marathi and Bhojpuri. These represent only a handful of the 122 major, and more than 1,500 minor languages spoken in India. To deal with this hyper-diverse linguistic landscape, Indian cinema experimented in the 1930s with the production of trilingual or multilingual films. The approach consisted of shooting the same scene in three or more languages, to create different versions of the same story. With the development of film technology, dubbing became the preferred solution to deal with linguistic diversity in cinema, not just in India but in Western Europe, too. Here, the protection of national cultural industries instituted the dubbing of English-language films and TV programmes in the official language, a practice that has been maintained in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Germany, to name a few. This is also common in Latin America, both in Spanish and Portuguese. Dubbing in minority or Indigenous languages has, however, been historically less common. We will examine two significant examples of this later in the chapter.
With greater availability and affordability of video recording equipment, the production of film and television in endangered languages is today seen as a good way of capitalising on the ubiquity and popularity of this medium. The number of video productions in minoritised languages is, however, still insignificant in comparison with the number of movies and programs released in English, Hindi, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese and Yoruba. While the quantity of films in minoritised languages might not be significant, occasionally their cultural and political impact can prove more decisive.
This is the case of the film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, released in 2002 and directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk. This movie is one of many videos released by Igloolik Isuma Productions, a loose association and production company which began making films in the 1990s in the Nunavut territory of Canada. Early productions by Isuma (‘To Think’) attempted to capture the daily lives and struggles of Inuit people, and often employed a voice-over narration in Inuktitut language. Atanarjuat was Isuma’s first full-length feature and the first ever fiction film in Inuktitut. The story was based on the legend of the fast runner, the title character, and takes place in a time before contact with White settlers. Paul Apak Angilirq was the one who thought about compiling the different versions of the traditional story and turning it into an approximately three-hour long movie. The relevance of Atarnajuat is clear to see: it was voted the best Canadian movie of all time by a poll of experts at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2015. The critical recognition and commercial success of this work has inspired other First Nations directors to create more material in their own languages. The production company has also created an online platform called Isuma.tv that aims to ‘honour oral languages’ and that currently hosts video content in more than eighty Indigenous languages.
A similar experience in South America, although without the same critical reception by the international film circuits, is the project ‘Video in the Villages’ (VIV). It was founded by a non-indigenous Brazilian, Vincent Carelli, in 1986, a time of political effervescence and instability in the region. Since then the project has provided financial and technical support to several Amazonian Indigenous people to create their own media in their own languages. VIV productions cover various political, spiritual and territorial aspects of the lives of approximately forty Indigenous peoples. Patricia Ferreira (Mbya-Guarani), Ariel Duarte Ortega (Mbya-Guarani) and Divino Tserewahú (Xavante) are some of the most prolific and talented Indigenous filmmakers to have emerged from this collaborative project. VIV productions travel from village to village by boat, retelling mythical and historical events, inviting the reinterpretation of Indigenous identities and galvanising the political energy of different peoples to defend their territories and ways of life.
As with Indigenous literature, one of the most important challenges of Isuma and VIV is the distribution of film materials. Although the Internet has facilitated access to their video production, consumption remains limited to movie connoisseurs, cultural activists and academics. Social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo offer the possibility of increasing their audiences. However, a lot still needs to happen for Indigenous films to have the power to make young people interested in learning real, endangered languages instead of made-up ones from global franchises, like Klingon (Star Trek), Elvish (Lord of the Rings) or Dothraki (Game of Thrones).
Before this can happen, perhaps the second-best thing may be what Diné or Navajo language activists decided to do in New Mexico. In 2013, the Navajo Nation Museum and Lucasfilm Ltd teamed up to dub Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in the Diné language. The project was thirteen years in the making, the brainchild of Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo museum. Searching for ways to preserve Diné, he first asked his wife Jennifer to help him translate ten pages of the movie script. He decided to use this film given its popularity among members of his reservation and because it is still considered one of the best films of all times. In addition to raising enough funds to pay for translators, dubbing actors in Diné and recording studios, time was one of the main challenges. The Diné dubbed version of the Episode IV was released on DVD as a limited edition the same year and can now be ordered online. The second full feature to be dubbed in Diné was the animated children’s film Finding Nemo, which was also made available as a DVD in 2016.
In 2013, two young Paraguayans, Pablo Javier and Víctor Fabián Báez, from Santa Rosa, Misiones, became a sensation on the Internet when they started posting homemade ‘parodies’ in the form of Guaraní dubbed video clips of popular TV programs, like the Mexican comedy program El Chavo del 8, and Japanese animated series ‘Pokemon’ and ‘Dragon Ball Z’. They began their dubbing with the most basic technology: a microphone, and hacking software. What inspired them was not a preoccupation for the preservation of the language (Guaraní is the most spoken Indigenous language in the Americas with an estimated eight million speakers, and the only Indigenous official language of the Mercosur trade region) but the thrill of hearing their mother language spoken in a global TV series. Despite the social media success they achieved, this did not result in a more professional and extensive project. They have nonetheless continued posting their ‘parodies’ on YouTube, hoping to monetise the thousands of clicks they get for their work.
The Art of Revitalising Languages
From the presentation of the previous cases (which are but a tiny sample of the myriad efforts that exist worldwide), some general principles and guidelines for working with arts, music and other cultural activities can be sketched.
Displacement and loss are strongly linked to the stigmatisation and lack of visibility of languages. To counteract these processes, language activists could:
(a) Reclaim forsaken written, performative and verbal art forms; a strategy that has the double effect of restoring forgotten or censured aesthetic traditions while, at the same time, strengthening the sense of worth in cultural and linguistic communities.
(b) Adapt traditional genres (chants, storytelling or dance), renew their artistic repertoire and/or create hybrid aesthetic forms for younger or new audiences.
(c) Use current technologies and social media to reach new audiences, inspire the younger generation, and increase the presence of their linguistic and cultural identities in the national and global scenes.
(d) Take advantage of the success, influence and familiarity that certain artistic products enjoy, like songs, films or TV series, and use these as templates and inspiration for linguistic and cultural reinterpretation. Although reinventing their own narratives and experiences through new media is a good base for revitalisation, not everything has to be created from scratch.
There are significant challenges to implementing these strategies. Some of the more apparent obstacles are presented here:
Audience creation: the low numbers of literate people in minoritised languages usually means that written publications and textual media only circulate in reduced social spaces. Language activists sometimes combine oral and written forms of communication, like radio programs and online podcasts, where those who are literate read out new poetry and narrative to those who have not been taught. The creation of audiences for other forms of art, like song and cinema, is also important given the disproportionate competition of cultural products in dominant languages and the stigmatisation of minoritised languages art forms.
Audience reach (circulation): in addition to the need to create new audiences, circulation is another important obstacle to deal with. While literature, music and films in dominant languages have well established marketplaces, minoritised language productions struggle to have even a symbolic presence in mass media. Radio stations won’t program their music, commercial cinema theatres won’t list their movies, and big TV channels won’t broadcast their videos. Endangered language cultural productions, like their speakers, are kept in the margins, in small government-sponsored music or art film festivals, or in specialised circuits of enlightened cultural consumers. The challenge here is not just to put minoritised languages in global circulation platforms (anyone can have a YouTube channel) but to do so in a way that creates a cultural shift and new attitudes towards them. A few globally watched TV series, and even big Hollywood productions, have signalled a new appreciation for linguistic diversity, but perhaps only for their self-interest. This is exemplified by the inclusion of dialogues in Scottish Gaelic in the series Outlander, or by the full-length feature Apocalypto, entirely in Yucatec Maya (which presented, on the other hand, historical and cultural distortions that were the topic of a heated debate in Mexico and Guatemala). But, while it seems that Netflix does not have a problem offering worldwide Klingon subtitling for the new Star Trek series (Discovery), it seems unlikely that it will similarly offer subtitles in Nahuatl, Quechua or Guarani to its subscribers in the Americas anytime soon.
In spite of these limitations, the success stories reported here seem to have benefitted from a core set of principles. The following are some of the more easily identifiable: a strong commitment to the language and culture, long-term grassroots collaboration and engagement, reflexive and extensive research, social inventiveness, technological curiosity and creativity, cultural audacity and experimentation in close dialogue with the keepers of tradition (so as to prevent community divisions), and strategic alliances with a wide range of stakeholders, including governments and cultural industries, to highlight but a few.
We are still a long way from being able to solve the seemingly unstoppable loss of linguistic diversity in the world with a handful of steps and recipes. But, as some of these examples have shown, even the smallest of actions can contribute to the increase in the presence and dynamism of minoritised and endangered languages.
16.1 Art, Music and Cultural Activities in the Revitalisation of Wymysiöeryś
The revitalisation of Wymysiöeryś wouldn’t be so advanced today if we hadn’t taken up the task of revitalising not only the culture, but also the inhabitants of Wilamowice. We started this when we were only teenagers, together with Tymoteusz Król. Back in the 1990s, a person who encountered our town would only be presented with colourful costumes and old cottages – just the view that journalists would use when they wanted to show the last speakers of Wymysiöeryś. The regional ensembles of dance and singing presented only the costume and folklore.
I began my personal engagement with language revitalisation as an adventure with the regional ensemble as a young child. Back then I had no clue how complicated the problem of revitalising Wymysiöeryś culture was. Having joined the children’s ensemble ‘Cepelia-Fil’ I still didn’t feel engaged in Wilamowice itself. Nobody could explain to me the phonetically transcribed lyrics of songs (luckily, even back then I spoke with Tymoteusz and my great-grandmother in Wymysiöeryś). Nobody made that sure the costumes people wore reflected faithfully a specific local dress code – even though it is an important marker of identity.
Luckily, in 2007, Tymoteusz and I both joined the Song and Dance Ensemble ‘Wilamowice’. It might seem that the actions of such ensembles are folkloric in nature and destined only for the stage, i.e. that they form a mixture of ‘the nicest looking’, most pleasing elements of culture for the audience, yet are completely deprived of deeper reflection. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The ensemble was founded in 1948, only three years after the Wymysiöeryś language and culture had been banned by local officials collaborating with the communist authorities. For many years it functioned as a ‘time capsule’ as members collected costumes, their names and meanings, old songs and poems, and – above all – embraced the eldest inhabitants of the town who passed on their knowledge to the younger members and also their language, when they had the courage to do so. Thanks to the ensemble we could reach a greater number of inhabitants.
Through the ensemble we got engaged with the activities of the Association ‘Wilamowianie’, a NGO that has enabled us to start a more conscious revitalisation program. In the framework provided by the Association we have organised many cultural events which were strongly oriented towards promoting Wymysiöeryś in the community and changing linguistic attitudes, which still view Wymysiöeryś as ‘something negative’ (see Chapter 7). We tried to keep every meeting relaxed – some topics weren’t at all connected with revitalisation. However, we have always tried to ‘smuggle in’ Wymysiöeryś themes – like during a family fair which included a movie created by our youths about the ‘Pierzowiec’ (feather plucking) tradition. We attempted to make our activities more attractive by including excursions, meetings and workshops that could reach the biggest possible number of inhabitants.
Thanks to our collaboration with the Faculty of ‘Artes Liberales’ of the University of Warsaw, we organised several international events which made the community members aware of the huge external interest in the revitalisation efforts taking place in Wilamowice. Showing the inhabitants how much their cultural heritage is appreciated in academia made it more important to them too. We have also understood the need to ‘de-folklorise’ our activities, while keeping respect for traditions. Thus, Wymysiöeryś also became a medium for modern culture. In 2014, a theatre group was formed, called ‘Ufa fisa’, literally ‘On the feet’ (referring to a metaphor of making Wymysiöeryś culture able to stand again on its own feet). The actions of this group allowed more people to engage in cultural revitalisation and to learn the language, including those people who simply wouldn’t like to or couldn’t attend regular classes. Moreover, the exclusive use of Wymysiöeryś on stage fosters the creation of new intergenerational bonds: to understand the plot, spectators have to ask the eldest speakers and the teenagers who have learned the language and this makes them feel empowered. Staging our performances both in the town and neighbouring villages as well as in the Polish Theatre in Warsaw (see Figures 16.1.1 and 16.1.2) is an additional way of raising the prestige of the language and the awareness of its value as an important asset, both locally and more widely.
Figure 16.1.1 Performance in Wymysiöeryś, Uf jer wełt, Polish Theatre in Warsaw.
Figure 16.1.2 Performance in Wymysiöeryś, Ymertihła, Polish Theatre in Warsaw.
The next step was the creation of a band comprised of the members of the Majerski (fum Biöetuł) family (see Figure 16.1.3). They perform covers of modern songs translated by us and our students, thus proving to the skeptics that Wymysiöeryś is not only suited to old local songs. The new songs are real earworms – even those who don’t learn Wymysiöeryś sing them. We also make sure that Wymysiöeryś is always present in the local landscape – not only on various information boards but also during events that are not directly related to revitalisation itself, such as during street fairs and festivals where we promote Wymysiöeryś using merchandise such as t-shirts, bags, badges, mugs and banners.
Figure 16.1.3 Concert in Wymysiöeryś, the Majerski family.
Luckily, the last few years have proved that the effort put into the revitalisation of language, culture and community members has been fruitful. Language attitudes have changed. Many activities initiated by us now have a life of their own – the inhabitants introduce Wymysiöeryś into their environment and the youth organise their own initiatives, like the first Wymysiöeryś Day or location-based games in Wymysiöeryś. This makes us enormously happy.
16.2 Fest-noz and Revitalisation of the Breton Language
The Breton language, one of languages of Brittany, France, is an endangered language with about 200,000 speakers, mainly from the oldest generation. There are also a few dozens of thousands of new speakers. One of the most significant Breton cultural activities is a fest-noz (plural festoù-noz), the ‘night festival’ during which people get together, dance (not only) traditional Breton dances, enjoy themselves, and create a unique community connected by participation in Breton culture and – in some cases – by the use of Breton language. Nowadays these events are held throughout Brittany at all times of the year, in every possible location, with participants of all generations. They reaffirm that Breton culture is still alive. The music at a fest-noz is usually performed live, in most cases in Breton, although the range of possible accompaniments is broad. The most typical is the kan an discan (‘call and response’) song style, which involves singing without instrumental accompaniment by two or three individuals, whose voices overlap distinctively. The bagpipe-bombard, a traditional woodwind instrument pairing, also appears, playing a similar type of music. Yet very often there are whole bands on stage with ‘modern’ instruments.
The type of music, the place of performance and the participants differ according to when and by whom the fest-noz is organised. The functions of fest-noz have changed, just like the function of the Breton language. When daily life in the Breton language was concentrated in the rural areas in Lower and Central Brittany, traditional dances and festivities were related to the agricultural year: fest-noz developed from celebrations after collective community work was completed. These customs could not have survived the changes that took place in Brittany during the 1920s and 1930s: the appearance of new technologies moved the Bretons towards French culture and France’s conscious centralist policies targeted minority cultures and languages. These policies ridiculed and humiliated Bretons and their language. During the first half of the twentieth century, the Bretons abandoned their language and traditional dances.
The revival of the Breton language and fest-noz started in the 1970s. Speaking and singing in Breton came to be regarded as a moral duty of young people whose parents had rejected it. The struggle for a Breton way of life became part of the social movement of the 1970s. It was when young people began contesting official culture and expressing their revolt in a festive, musical way. The concept of fest-noz as a rural festival became widely accepted and it perfectly matched the social attitudes of young Breton activists who were searching for their roots. As a result, fest-noz provided a link between the worlds of the ‘young’ and the ‘old’, between ‘modernity’ and ‘authenticity’. Fest-noz events were no longer seen as pure entertainment or even a manifestation of pro-Breton attitudes; they became a way of life. The 1970s were successful in bringing forward the question of the Breton language as an important element of Breton culture, as well as re-evaluating Breton identity. Breton music, literature, theatre, and audiovisual arts bloomed. In 1977, the first Diwan community-run immersion school was formed. Since Diwan schools received no subsidies, money required to run them was collected during fest-noz organised by school collectives, activists and friends. After that period fest-noz lost some impetus. The late 1990s saw the arrival of a new style of fest-noz, closely linked to the Bretons’ fast-changing lifestyles and matching the progressing urbanisation as well as the advent of new, digital media. There are now Cyber Fest Noz events with several dozens of dancers live-streamed and transmitted through the Internet and accessible all around the world. The format is appealing to young people and makes participation in a minority culture attractive. Over time, fest-noz became an integral part of Breton culture. It did change style and function, but it has always been connected with Breton identity. It has also been a tool for Breton language revitalisation as many young people open themselves to the Breton language thanks to participation in these events. With its festival character, it is easily accessible to people; it allows those who want to use Breton to meet and develop closer relationships; it is also a place where most Breton activist movements and ideas come into life.
16.3 Modern Music Genres for Language Revitalisation
The arts, and musical production in particular, are becoming ever more central domains in grassroots efforts for language revitalisation in Latin America. Modern music genres such as rock, reggae, rap among others have been appropriated by Indigenous youths all over the continent. In Mexico, for instance, a growing number of bands are using Indigenous languages as a vehicle for artistic expression: Sak Tzevul (rock in Tzotzil), La Sexta Vocal (ska in Zoque) or El Rapero de Tlapa (rap in Mixtec) are examples of cultural activism among youths who look to expand their languages into new domains of use. Rappers from other Latin American countries, such as B’alam Ajpu in Guatemala, Luanko and the band Wechekeke ñi trawun in Chile, or Liberato Kani in Peru (to name but a few), are some outstanding examples of artists who have an already extensive career singing in Indigenous languages (Tzutujil, Mapudungun and Quechua, respectively). In the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, hip hop as a cultural movement has become particularly prominent, and a sizeable number of Mayan rappers use now Yucatec Maya in their performances. If we consider the number of online views of songs such as Ki’imak in wóol by Tihorappers Crew (over 450,000 views in two years on YouTube) and the overwhelmingly positive comments to performances in Indigenous languages, the impact that these songs can have in changing negative attitudes towards Indigenous languages is noteworthy.
Some central aspects of rap make it a particularly productive genre for language revitalisation purposes. On the one hand, the central place that verbal fluency and creativity play in rapping aligns with Indigenous cultures that often favour oral ways of cultural expression, and, on the other, the local adaptation and recreation of hip hop as a global popular movement associated with modernity and ‘coolness’. As is well known, one of the ideological pillars of contempt for Indigenous languages is the alleged inability of these languages to express modernity and their unjustified association with cultural backwardness. Lastly, hip hop performances may incorporate a political element and provide a platform for the expression of marginalised voices. Some highly politicised Mapuche rappers, for instance, use hip hop as a platform for broader social struggles that include demands for language rights and political recognition.
Several video clips of Indigenous rappers are available on YouTube; try searching for the groups mentioned. Their music can also be found on other online platforms such as Soundcloud, Hulkshare and even Spotify.
16.4 The Jersey Song Project
Most people understand that songs can be a great way to help learn a language and perhaps remember some important phrases or patterns, but in fact the value of music for language revitalisation goes much deeper than that. Music is of course one of the most powerful ways to keep a language alive in our hearts and imaginations, and music can be profoundly connected to identity. Through music we can create inspiring and memorable collective experiences that can really help boost the status and public image of a language. When used in a culturally sensitive way, music can be a very versatile and useful tool in the linguistic toolbox.
One successful example of this from my own experience is The Jersey Song Project (which I have to say is an idea I stole from some friends in Guernsey!). The small British island of Jersey, in the Channel Islands, is home to the endangered language Jèrriais (a local version of Norman). As a local musician and activist I’ve been finding out how music can help in the revitalisation process. The central concept of The Jersey Song Project was to facilitate and curate collaborative songwriting between local musicians (who didn’t speak much Jèrriais, if any) and Jèrriais speakers, towards a final performance of songs that could be on any theme and in any genre, but would include at least one word of Jèrriais in the lyrics. Over the course of a few months in 2018, I advertised the project and organised for twelve local bands and solo artists to work with Jèrriais speakers and come up with something for the final gig. This took place at a professional performance venue as part of a local festival in the autumn.
The project was a real success, not just in terms of the final gig going well, but for the deeper connections that the musicians and audience made with the language, and also for the excellent publicity the whole project generated over those few months. I’d highly recommend running a similar project wherever there is enough of a local music scene for it to be appropriate (like I said – I stole the idea, so please do steal it from me).
Just a few practical pointers … I’d say there are three main ways of getting the collaborations going:
(1) The ideal way: musicians could meet up with native speakers and write something entirely new together (you’d need to organise this carefully to make it go as well as possible).
(2) Musicians could set an existing endangered language text (e.g. a poem) to music, with the support of native speakers or teachers.
(3) Musicians could work with native speakers/teachers to translate some of their own lyrics of a non-endangered language song they’ve already written.
Cover versions are OK, and the right song could be very popular, but you might run into copyright issues; and anyway, participants will probably engage more deeply if they use their own songs. Also, I’d say allow plenty of time for the process to unfold and try to make as much of a public ‘splash’ as you can with whatever you might do for the final performance, or recording, or both! Finally if you do run your own version of this, please get in touch as I’d love to hear all about it … Bouonne chance m’s anmîns! [Good luck my friends!]
16.5 One Song, Many Voices: Revitalising Ainu through Music
The Ainu are an Indigenous group native to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the island of Sakhalin and the Kurils. Their language is critically endangered, although there are ongoing efforts to improve its profile, and increase the take-up of the language. Those of Ainu descent are also electing to become more visible, both within Japan, and as part of the global Indigenous community. One of the ways that some Ainu are demonstrating and transmitting their cultural and linguistic identity is through music.
Traditional Ainu music relies on singing, rekuhara (throat singing), mukkuri (mouth harp), and in the Sakhalin tradition, the tonkori (a plucked string instrument). Upopo (domestic work songs) tend to be simple in structure, with many songs sung in rounds. Yukar (sung epics) are formed of a short repetitive melody, and a sakehe (refrain) unique to each yukar. Contemporary Ainu music draws on many of these elements, but there is still diversity in how the music is expressed, although the use of the Ainu language, in titles or lyrics, remains the defining element.
Artists such as Oki Kano and ToyToy demonstrate the breadth of contemporary approaches to Ainu Music, but it is perhaps the group Marewrew who are most prominently weaving discussions about the language, and audience interaction with the language into their performances.
Marewrew is a group comprised of four female singers of Ainu heritage, who originally formed in 2002 to work with Oki Kano, the most well-known Ainu musician in Japan, and who later began performing as an independent ensemble. They perform upopo, some of which they have learned directly from family members, either acapella (unaccompanied singing) or accompanied by clapping or the mukkuri. All their material is performed in the Ainu language, and during performances they wear traditional clothing, and sometimes recreate the facial tattooing that Ainu women wore traditionally. Their music is based on simple foundations, repeated rhythmic and vocal patterns, and the use of nonsense syllables; but it is hypnotic and compelling. As a listener, understanding of the language is an additional benefit but not a crucial requirement for enjoyment. However, Marewrew enjoy enabling their listeners to interact more with the music, and actively encourage participation and understanding of the songs’ contexts.
Marewrew not only explain the meanings of songs, they also teach a number of songs during their sets, creating a shared space where the audience become active participants in a performance that uses the Ainu language. These ‘educational segments’ are almost delivered as mini-workshops, inviting further questions and queries from their audience. At a 2018 concert in east Tokyo that I attended (see Figure 16.5.1), this collaborative approach went even further, with a number of audience members not only knowing some of the songs performed, but offering translations of Ainu terms if one of the singers was unsure of the most accurate Japanese term. From singer to audience and back again, a teaching and expansion of vocabulary and context: everyone present engaged in learning and disseminating Ainu. Leaving a concert, or coming to the end of recording, may of course be the end of the process: we generally listen to enjoy music, not to learn. However, the potential is there for a listener to seek out more recordings, to want to understand, to actively experience more, and part of that experience can be learning more of the language. Hearing Ainu music for the first time as an undergraduate in the early 2000s certainly set me on that path, that just over fifteen years later, sees me researching the impact of Ainu language music on the language and actively learning Ainu myself.
Figure 16.5.1 Concert poster
Thus, a single song, Umeko Ando singing Saranpe as it happens, was enough to make me want to move from being a passive admirer of Ainu music and the Ainu language, to becoming an active participant: to learn and disseminate, not merely appreciate.
16.6 The Language Revitalization, Maintenance and Development Project
The Language Revitalization, Maintenance and Development Project (PRMDLC) in Mexico has been active for over three decades. Based on the idea of direct collaboration between speakers and researchers, the PRMDLC runs collaborative workshops to encourage a high level of participation. The PRMDLC starts from the recovery of peoples’ own language and culture, producing oral and image-based culturally appropriate materials, recreating them in prestigious media such as a TV screen, where Indigenous children rarely see their languages. Therefore the basic goal of the PRMDLC is to establish a (re)vitalising corpus; among others, a collection of printed, audio-visual and multimedia materials in Indigenous languages, produced and consumed by speakers themselves, while at the same time aiming to impact a broader audience (see Figures 16.6.1 and 16.6.2).
Figure 16.6.1 Los sueños del tlacuache.
Figure 16.6.2 ‘Carrusel’. Los sueños del tlacuache.
The PRMDLC holds revitalisation workshops aimed at encouraging and/or reinforcing permanent revitalisation through self-developed activities such as language games and music, from the bottom-up. Speakers are credited as the first and principal (multi)authors of multimedia products, including local tales as The Mermaid and the Opossum, riddles and tongue twisters, books, documentary films, games, and different musical genres (for example rap, rock, jarocho music). Participation of speakers is highly valued and incentivised, dignifying their languages and cultures. For instance, we have worked, among others, with a native artist and two Maya-speaking linguists and one anthropologist, leaders of the Maya team. They have seen their work published and available at major bookstores around the country and beyond, as well as included in multimedia products (Maya riddles, tongue twisters, tales) circulating on the Internet and even on public television. They are committed to disseminate the products within their own communities – their primary audience.
The PRMDLC workshops are organised as follows. Participants are summoned in events such as local patron saint festivities. These festivals are favourable occasions for bringing together many people, including migrants who have moved to big cities or even the USA, and visitors from several other local towns. Children attend workshops with their siblings, parents or grandparents, promoting links between generations. Children are invited to watch an animated movie: after showing the riddle(s) or the Mermaid/Opossum movie(s), the floor is thrown open to participation. Local champions leading the workshops invite the audience to repeat a tongue twister, or ask if someone knows another similar version of the stories, opening up the possibility of children’s spontaneous participation and even other emergent dynamics. Participants can express themselves freely. In principle there is no time limit (most sessions last from two to five hours). This allows for a relaxed atmosphere, unlike typical school dynamics. For example, animated riddles are shown, a genre that engages audience participation. This motivates strong participation by children, who suggest diverse, not conceived as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’ answers to the riddles (for instance the reply to the Nahuatl riddle Maaske mas tikwaalantok pero tikpiipiitsos (‘No matter how angry you are, you are going to kiss it anyhow’) can vary, ranging from a bottle to an aatekoomatl, ‘drinking water gourd’, or even other possible emergent answers. Riddles, tales, and tongue twisters are bastions of linguistic and cultural retention. Riddles, for example, are a powerful genre that calls on interaction and verbal play, not to mention tongue twisters that are culturally powerful language games stimulating interaction and cultural continuity.
In this way the PRMDLC develops a method of indirect revitalisation. This means that participation is open to spontaneous, not forced participation, in ‘natural’, cultural sensitive ways. It stimulates intergenerational transmission of the endangered language. In this sense, it is up to children whether or not to participate. It is very different from formalised ways of participation typical of school contexts that work as inhibitors of Indigenous knowledge and tongues, and therefore favour assimilation.
A Principled Approach
Working with technology in any kind of language setting is imperative in today’s world. The number of potential technological tools that are available to help us work more efficiently and effectively as language revitalizers, teachers, materials developers, language documenters, language advocates, administrators, and learners is quite impressive, even overwhelming. This chapter will attempt to weave together some of the main considerations that many of us encounter when dealing with technology in our day-to-day professional activities. We will look at the set of skills necessary for working with technology, talk about how to get started when incorporating technology, cover some of the domains of technology use, discuss the creation of materials, and finally look at special considerations when working with technology in language revitalization. But before we begin, let’s start by discussing a principled approach for incorporating new technology into the language learning environment.
Principles, Not Tools
Perhaps it is best to start with a counter example, one that too many technology consumers and language teachers use as a default strategy when incorporating new technology. It goes something like this: I found this great new app online for my phone/tablet/computer; it can do this amazing thing; now I want to see how I can find a way to use it in my upcoming lesson next week.
This approach can be called ‘app driven’ or ‘tool driven’. An app-driven approach prioritizes technology while moving learning needs into the background. Although in some cases this approach may lead to a successful use of technology for learning, more often than not it is gimmicky and has limited pedagogical success. You might say it is putting the cart before the horse: a solution looking for a problem.
A more sound approach would reverse the roles of learning and technology, and place the learning in the foreground, something that might be called a ‘needs-based’ approach. To give a real-life example, Rosanne, an Ichishkíin language teacher who is not very confident in using technology, had just introduced a unit on using conversations at the breakfast table. She would like her learners to create, practice, and then record a dialogue so she can listen to their speech and give feedback on their pronunciation and vocabulary use, but she is not sure how best to go about this. Once the need has been identified, the search for the best technology solution can begin. So, in looking for an audio recording option, from talking with other people, Roseanne is considering: (1) the free recording program Audacity, with students uploading a file to a shared folder online such as One drive, Dropbox, or Google Drive; (2) an online recording program called Vocaroo that learners can use to record, save, and send audio files to the teacher; or (3) a preloaded app on the students’ cell phones (there are numerous apps for Android or iPhone, such as Voice Recorder or Voice Memos that come preinstalled) so that they can send the teacher their audio file in an email or text from their phone.
Now that the options have been identified, Roseanne can decide which one works best for her learning context, weighing the pros and cons of each potential tool. From the three options above, perhaps the students have access to only one class computer, which would rule out option one. Vocaroo for phones requires a download and a little training, and Roseanne decides that there isn’t enough time for that in her already busy curriculum, so option two is ruled out. All of Roseanne’s students have cell phones that already have audio recording apps, so after considering various factors Roseanne feels option three is the best choice. By using this needs-based approach, Roseanne is more likely to find the best tool for her particular purpose and context.
To take another example, Paulo, a language program manager and someone generally skilled in using technology, wants to build a short, online course for people interested in learning Tolowa-Dee-Ni’. He wants to have many audio files of common phrases included in the website and has a very modest budget, but he is not sure which is the best website builder to use. Now that he has defined his need he looks for a solution. One option he is considering is Google Sites. He knows it is free, easy to use and that he can invite people to view the website so he can control who is able to use it. However, it would require maintaining the user permissions list of people as well as adding and deleting people. He has heard about Wix and thinks their websites look particularly nice and easy to build, but the free plan uses a ‘wix’ domain name; he could try the starter plan at roughly US $4.00 per month, but it still contains ads on the site, which he doesn’t want. He also considers WordPress. The only cost he can see is for hosting, which also runs at about US $4.00 per month, but he thinks he might be able to host the site on his department server. He can password protect the website with a single password, thus avoiding maintaining a user list. While some people complain that WordPress is not powerful, it can easily host audio with a player, which is the main technical goal he has for this website. After weighing the advantages and disadvantages, he chooses WordPress for his project.
A Necessary Skill Set
So what does a language revitalizer need to be able to do in order to complete her job effectively in today’s technology-dependent world? Is there a set of basic standards or a specified skill set for those working with endangered languages? For English language teachers, for example, a set of standards have been developed by Healey and her colleagues at TESOL, most of which are also applicable to language revitalization. Some of the standards for teachers they have identified include:
(1) knowledge of various essential tools and how to use them;
(3) incorporation of technology into assessment such as feedback and record keeping; and
(4) use of technology to improve opportunities for communication and collaboration.
Each of these areas will be discussed separately.
Knowledge of Various Essential Tools
Neither Roseanne nor Paulo were experts in all technological areas; no one can be. Yet, is there an ideal skill set that would help them perform their jobs better? A definitive list of essential tools is difficult to specify because of the wide variety of tasks that a language revitalizer is required to perform. Yet any list would likely include the following as a start: word processing programs (e.g. Word, Google Docs, or Open Office); presentation programs (Powerpoint, Keynote, or Prezi); spreadsheet programs (Excel, Open Office Calc, or Google Sheets); video and audio playback programs (Quicktime, Windows Media Player, or Vlc); and search engines (Chrome, Firefox, or Safari). Language workers should ideally feel comfortable using these programs and in creating language materials and classroom supplements. They should also feel confident in training learners to use such programs or in troubleshooting students’ issues.
To someone new to technology, like Roseanne, a list of skills and tools like the above could feel daunting. More important than being ‘good at X’ program or expertly knowing specific tools, however, is the ability to feel comfortable with technology generally. Feeling comfortable with trying out and adapting to new technology will go a long way as tools are in a constant state of change. For example, software developers often add new features, change the location of menus and options, or even remove features altogether after updates. Not only are existing tools in flux, but new tools keep being developed while old tools become obsolete or unsupported. One example of this constant change is MS Word. Since its release in 1989 Word has undergone at least fourteen different major versions, with additional minor versions released in-between. While ten years ago you may have been an expert at version 12.0 of Word, many features have changed with the latest release.
While it would be ideal to have language revitalization workers competent in all essential technological skills and confident in their abilities to troubleshoot and help others, the reality is that the ‘World of Apps’ and related necessary skills are vast (see Figure 17.1). One way to handle this daunting task is to start small with current needs, and then build out into what some have called ‘islands of competence’. That is, someone desiring to increase their skill set can begin with what they already know, or start with a small area that is most in need, learning only a few new things at a time. Over time, they can slowly build their skills and expand their knowledge into new or related areas (see Figures 17.2 and 17.3). In Roseanne’s case, she originally knew very little about digital audio, but has now learned a bit after her experience of getting her students to make recordings on their phones, so she has built a small island of competence. The next time she does a similar activity she might even build further on her skills and have students do some basic editing of their audio files. In Paulo’s case, he already had many islands of competence, but he ventured out into a new one, learning how to use WordPress and adding a new island to his skill set.
Figure 17.1 The Wide World of Apps. A possible sea of uncharted ‘Apps’ relevant to language revitalization workers. Developing expertise in all areas is daunting, perhaps even an impossible task
Figure 17.2 Islands of Competence. Rather than feel overwhelmed by the vast number of areas that need to be learned, users can start small, building ‘islands of competence’ in a few specific skill sets
Figure 17.3 Expanding Islands of Competence. Over time, a user can expand their islands of competence, forming larger islands, chains of islands or even turning islands into entire continents
Integrating Technology into Teaching
Integrating technology into your work or class means intimately knowing your curriculum, your students, and your own teaching style. Although increasingly younger learners are more comfortable with technology, often they are unaware of how to use technology for language learning. While many of today’s students may be adept at using technology generally, their use often falls into very specific areas that are not language-learning related; a skilled language revitalization worker will know how to use technology specifically to foster language learning, and know how to share that knowledge.
When integrating technology into language teaching, it is important to be aware of the curriculum, learning goals, and objectives. For example, if the objective is to have students talk about what they did yesterday in the past tense in the language, this will dictate what types of tools the teacher would consider. In addition, teachers should know whether the equipment and space available is suitable for the goals of the lesson or class. A class based project, for example, that included audio would likely necessitate instructing the students in how to make the audio recordings. The quality of these recordings would be greatly improved by having access to headphones to limit the ambient noise of the other students making recordings at the same time. In turn, this might influence the type of recording technology chosen. Additionally, a teacher leading a lesson that incorporates technology would want to be sure that she is comfortable enough with the software so that she could troubleshoot or work around any problems encountered. This usually means testing out the technology before the class; even if the teacher is familiar with the tool, testing can work out kinks and help to successfully integrate the technology into the lesson. As an added resource, in many cases the teacher can call upon her technologically savvy students to help those that are having trouble.
Assessment
A final way to use technology is during assessments. Assessments can be formative or summative, and technology can be used to enhance assessment and feedback for any of the four common skills: listening, speaking, reading, or writing. In addition, there are numerous ways to create interactive tasks, activities, and quizzes, which can be used to assess learning and will be discussed later in this chapter. Finally computers offer a way to keep track of attendance and grades, sometimes through the use of a Learning Management System (e.g. Canvas www.canvaslms.com/), or grading software (e.g. Thinkwave www.thinkwave.com/), or, when these are not available, in teacher created spreadsheets (e.g. Excel or Google Sheets).
Evaluating Potential Technology
Before selecting a particular technological tool it is useful to go through an intentional evaluation process. Listing your priorities or relevant issues is a good place to start and requires knowledge of the strengths and the constraints of your particular context.
There are two types of issues that you might find on your list: general issues and context-specific issues. General issues that are likely to be important in nearly all language contexts include cost, ease of use, powerfulness of the tool, and availability. Specific items unique to your context might include ease of use, appropriateness to the age of users, appropriateness to the culture of users, and compatibility of fonts to the orthography of your language.
Free and Open Source Tools
Nearly all language revitalization contexts operate on a tight budget. Free tools, or tools with free versions, are most likely to be valuable in such situations. Luckily there are numerous suitable resources to consider, though one may need to be a bit creative in adapting the tool to the local context. Also, caution should be taken when evaluating ‘free’ apps; they may limit the length of time you can use it, stop you using it after a set number of times, contain watermarking or advertising on the product, or other deal-breaking problems.
To take one example, MS Word is standard for most computers, but costs money. Free and open source alternatives to Word include WPS Office Free, Libre Office, and Google Docs among others. Specific adaptations, such as installing fonts from a source like ‘Language Geek,’ may be required to get your word processor to work for your language. In another example, while some computers may include built-in audio editors as part of a bundle, Audacity is a free, open source audio editor that has some surprisingly powerful features. To export your files as smaller MP3 files, an extension (LAME encoder) may need to be installed as an adaption.
Iterative Process of Incorporating Technology
Incorporating technology into your work should be seen as an ongoing process; rather than finding a definitive, immediate solution, incorporating technology is better viewed as something that happens over time. In most cases, a proposed technology solution has some glitches, tradeoffs, or downsides, or it doesn’t work as smoothly as we want it to. Sometimes these issues are severe enough that we search for another tool entirely. More often glitches mean that we need to ‘tweak’ the tool, the way we introduce it to learners, or the support we give to users.
To do this, it can be beneficial to look at incorporating technology as an iterative process. After introducing a new technology, take some time to stop and reflect. Jot down a few notes about what worked, what didn’t work, and how it might work better in the future. The next time you use the technology, make any necessary adjustments and afterward reflect again. Don’t be afraid to keep an eye out for new technology that might do the job better. Finding the right tool for the right job, and knowing the right way to use it, takes time.
Safety, Privacy, and Ownership
A final consideration when using technology, particularly in language revitalization contexts, is safety, privacy, and ownership concerns. For those working with children, special care needs to be taken to protect them from some of the seedier sides of the Internet. For example, while many social media tools such as Facebook can be a useful learning and communication tool, extra precautions should be taken when using them with children. Sometimes it is better to use an education specific tool, such as Edmodo. Drafting a set of general guidelines and policies for social media use is something many language departments and schools have done. An example policy could include: making all student communications public; separating professional from personal accounts; using official or school district equipment for communication; and refraining from posting any personal information about students.Footnote 1
Issues around ownership and control of data and information have historically affected Indigenous and minority communities disproportionately. When using proprietary software, for example, care needs to be taken that ownership of the material remains with the community, and that producers of information can control distribution and who is able to view the products. For example, iBooks Author is a program that can easily create professional looking eBooks, but there are some limitations. Since it is a proprietary program, the fine print states that books created with iBooks Author cannot be sold except through iTunes. This is not a problem if a community wishes to give away books through its own method of distribution (email, website, jumpdrive), but in some cases it might not be what a community wants to do with the content they have developed.
Domains of Technology Use
In this next section, we will consider both where technology will be used, and what types of language it can support.
Technology within the Classroom
Decisions about what technology to use in the classroom are largely limited by availability and what we have access to. For example, whether we have access to classroom computers, computer labs, laptops, tablets, smartboards, and cell phones will shape what options we have and the choices we make. Classroom teachers, again, should take care that they are using the technology with a clear language purpose in mind.
In some settings, the ‘classroom’ is nontraditional, sometimes even without walls. Many communities in the USA have an annual culture or language camp, where groups of community members gather, sometimes far away from ‘the grid,’ which affects what kinds of technology can be used there. In one case, a community that was holding their camp in the mountains at a traditional gathering spot wanted to have access to audio and interactive activities. The community had access to a set of tablets, so an eBook was developed and preloaded onto these. When the children at the camp went to the language tent, they were able to interact with this multimedia material without any Internet connection. At night, the language camp leaders simply had to remember to charge the batteries.
Technology outside the Classroom
Learning Management Systems (LMSs) offer many options for extending the learning beyond the classroom. However the big ones, such as Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle, are typically tied to schools or departments that have significant budgets and, in the case of Moodle, technology support services. There are free versions of the larger LMSs: For example, Blackboard has Coursesites, and Canvas has Free For Teachers, both of which are stripped down versions of the full systems. Another option for smaller budgets are LMSs that are free and self-contained, such as Google Classroom, ANVILL, or Obaverse. ANVILL, for example, is designed specifically for emphasis on spoken language, is free to teachers and students, and allows administrators to add students and guests as needed.
As in the case of Paolo, discussed earlier in this chapter, website development can be an important way to host or share information about language with a community. Several free sources have already been mentioned (Google Sites, Wix, WordPress), but numerous alternatives exist, with new ones popping up constantly. In choosing a website editor, factors that Paolo took into consideration were cost (is it free or, if not, does it fit my budget), ease of use (how long will it take to be proficient), and powerfulness (can it do what I want it to do). In addition, stability of the platform – whether it will be around in a few years and whether the free option will change if the business model changes – should be a top consideration. Other types of communication platforms, such as blogs (EduBlogs, Tumblr) or discussion forms (phpBB, MyBB), can also be valuable communication tools.
As well as extending learning time for individuals, technology outside the classroom has the potential to include whole families in the language revitalization process. When possible, learners can include siblings, parents, grandparents, or even extended relatives into language assignments or projects. In one example of intergenerational learning, High School students were tasked with building audio materials about common phrases in the language, to be hosted on SoundCloud. The students tapped into the knowledge of older family members to help with vocabulary and pronunciation, and they helped teach phrases to younger siblings who knew little of the language. In another example, one language revitalization learner/teacher carried around a dedicated audio recorder. When new phrases or words came up when interacting with fluent speakers in his family or in community gatherings, he asked to capture them on his recorder so that he could continue working on improving his own fluency. This could also be done easily on a phone.
Listening and Speaking
For many communities, the language is traditionally used for spoken communication. At the same time, if the language is highly endangered, there can be few opportunities to hear or speak the language. This is one problem that technology can easily help address. Technology can offer learners another purpose for using the language, and materials developed can be used to increase the profile of the language and people’s exposure to it. For recording and organizing audio files there are several options, including Vocaroo, Padlet, and VoiceThread. Padlet, for example, can be used for group pages where students record an audio or video file on a specific topic and then ask other learners to listen and respond to it. Individual Padlet pages can also be used for solo work, such as keeping audio journals.
Animation is another option that sometimes drives up learners’ motivation. Volki, SockPuppets, and GoAnimate all offer easy platforms for building animations that audio can be layered onto. Volki, for example, allows learners to create an avatar and then record the spoken language, so that the avatar appears to be doing the talking. Learners can create an avatar that represents and speaks for them, or they can create animal avatars, and work on the language the animal might be using. SockPuppets allows users to create up to four characters that can interact in a language, and it can be quite fun for younger learners at the same time as developing their confidence in the language.
Creating videos is perhaps the most powerful tool, but it takes some time for users to be trained on how to do this. Windows Movie Maker on PC and iMovie on Mac are both good initial movie editors. Another option is movie editing in the cloud, with an app like WeVideo or YouTube Video Editor. Both are good free options. Adobe Spark is a free app that can be downloaded or used in the cloud, and it can be a good all-in-one editor for younger learners or for those who can’t afford to take the time to learn how to use a more powerful tool. Finally, even Powerpoint can incorporate audio into slides and be turned into a movie.
Reading, Writing, and Vocabulary
Reading materials in endangered languages can be scarce. While some endangered and minority languages have a robust written history, many do not. If written materials exist, online databases can offer language workers easy access to collections. For example the ‘Ulukau: Hawaiian Electronic Library’ catalogues newspapers in the Hawaiian language from 1834 to 1948. For languages with little or no written resources, materials designers will need to be more creative. For example, by using tools like Google Forms, Survey Monkey, or Qualtrics, teachers can create surveys that include simple questions for beginner students or reading sections for more advanced students, or a general comprehension test using a multiple choice format.
Writing with technology offers many possibilities beyond simple word processing. Collaborative writing ‘in the cloud’ allows for creative pair, group, and even whole class writing activities using Google Docs. An activity can be scaled up or down depending on the proficiency of your learners. Survey tools mentioned above can be open ended, requiring students to respond to questions in writing. WordClouds can be used with tools like PollEverywhere, where students are asked a question, such as ‘what’s your favorite animal’. Students then respond on their phones, and their answers are displayed in real time in a word cloud.
Vocabulary options are many. Quizlet, Anki, and Memrise allow both learners and teachers to build their own flashcards. There are numerous crossword puzzle makers and word search makers. Cloze test makers, such as Learn Click or Cloze Test Creator, allow you to easily make fill in the blank type activities where learners are required to use all of their language skills to complete the task.
Another option for vocabulary is the use of databases. The Miami-Illinois Digital Archive (MIDA) is one example (http://ilaatawaakani.org/). Developed by the Myaamia Center in collaboration with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, the goal of this database is to assemble all the various resources in the Miami-Illinois language into a single searchable space that can be useful for both researchers and learners. It currently has over 50,000 entries and there are plans to open up the resource to other language communities with a sister project called the Indigenous Language Digital Archive (https://ildarchive.org/). This new site is being used now by the South West Oregon Dene Research project to build the Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ digital archive. Online dictionaries, such as the Siletz Dee-ni’ dictionary (http://siletz.swarthmore.edu/), are another option. Such dictionaries often have audio associated with the written entries to aid learners in the pronunciation of words and phrases. While the resources listed in this paragraph typically require training and support, these can be among the most powerful tools available to language revitalization workers.
Considerations for Language Revitalization Contexts
The Low Tech Environment
In some language revitalization contexts there is little access to technology or computers. Nevertheless, there are still powerful ways that technology can be creatively utilized. A single computer classroom can be a valuable tool, especially if teachers have access to a projector and speakers. Teacher-controlled activities, such as a Powerpoint presentation of a story in the language, can incorporate audio, images, and even video. The single computer can be used for students’ presentations, as a workstation in part of a rotating station in the classroom, or as a spot for students to write a short story together, either led by the teacher or where each student comes up and continues the story in a chain activity.
Even in environments lacking computers, most students now have smartphones. Many younger students use social media on a regular basis, and teachers can set up spaces to use the language such as an Instagram or Twitter feed. More simply, teachers can encourage students to text with each other in language using their phones, or tap into texting tools such as Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp. An additional option for cell phone use is Kahoot. A teacher can set up a language quiz or poll, sharing the address with students so that they can answer the questions and see the results immediately from the computer projected at the front of the class. Smartphones in general are becoming more common, but challenges remain in terms of unequal access, variation in platforms and apps, and the ability of learners to use their phones effectively for learning and not get distracted.
Creating Materials
One of the biggest challenges facing small and minority languages is a lack of materials. Producing materials is a specialist area for publishers working on learning materials for major languages, yet small profit margins rarely allow for any collaboration with Indigenous communities. Tribal and community language programs are often short on capacity and funding, which leaves the bulk of materials creation up to individual language departments and teachers. Where possible, language programs should have a technology expert who can help create materials and coach teachers who want to create their own materials but need support. Training personnel at conferences, workshops, or institutes not only increases capacity, but often results in the creation of materials that can be taken back to the community and directly used for learning. Creating e-books, electronic dictionaries, or other digital materials avoids the additional costs of printing materials.
Documenting with an Eye toward Everyday Language
Since many ‘smaller’ languages are still being documented, it is important for community members to work with linguists or documenters to make sure that the type of everyday language needed for communication and conversation is captured. Instead of word lists dictated by linguists looking for minimal pairs, documentation should be done on natural, everyday communication. When possible, it is preferable to have two or more speakers interacting in a realistic situation so that documentation can capture the nuances of the language, such as greetings, turn taking, changing of topics, agreement, joking, or closing. Using video offers further opportunities for capturing paralinguistic communication that is vital to effective cultural competence in the target language, such as facial expressions, proxemics, and gesture. Language workers can then more easily repurpose documentation materials into pedagogical materials. The ‘sweet spot’ is when documentation is useful to a community of teachers and learners and not just linguists.
Including Learners in the Process of Materials Creation
Another option is to include students and learners in addressing the need for materials. Project Based Learning (PBL) offers many options for both increasing the amount of material available in a target language, but can also extend the reasons for using the language, encouraging students to get involved. Projects can be teacher led or student led, but are often negotiated so students have some input in deciding the direction of the project. Creating maps, videos, books, e-books, posters, audio material, and websites are all examples of products that students can help create. When these materials have an authentic use outside of the classroom, it enhances the project. For example, in one situation, high school language students created language materials to be used in a preschool immersion classroom. They were trained in how to capture and edit audio, video, and images, and how to turn these into an e-book. They then produced a small library of e-books that featured images and recordings of themselves speaking in their language, as well as recordings from the wider community, and even of the preschool children who were to receive the materials.
A Healthy Skepticism toward Technology
While technology certainly offers language teachers opportunities that did not exist before, it is important not to look at technology as a silver bullet for endangered languages. There are limitations and pitfalls associated with using technology, time and money being perhaps the most important ones. Given the reality of limited budgets, technology can be a heavy drain on language programs where equipment and applications need to be kept up to date. There is often a learning curve associated with new programs as well as the time commitment required to produce materials, and teachers are often short on precious time. A language revitalization effort has to look at where their time and money would best be spent, and in many cases technology will not be the best answer. Finally, much of what can be accomplished with technology is best described as an extension of learning. That is, initial teaching of new language features is usually best done in person, with technology acting as a way to reinforce or extend the learning, offering more opportunities for practicing the language or reviewing language skills.
‘Train the Trainers’ Model for Workshops
How can knowledge of best practices in using technology be shared most effectively? One model that has proven useful in many teaching contexts is the ‘train the trainers’, or ‘train the leaders’ approach. An example of this is the Costa Rican workshop: ‘Primer Taller de Formación de Maestros de Lenguas Indígenas Costarricenses: Estrategias Didácticas y Uso de Herramientas Tecnológicas’ held at the University of Costa Rica in April of 2018. Fifteen members from seven Indigenous language groups from around the country were selected to come to the capital to take part in the two-week workshop. Participants were carefully chosen on the basis of being language leaders or important teachers in their communities, who would not only benefit from the workshop themselves, but who would then be able to return home and share what they had learned with others. After learning about pedagogy and technology, participants developed an action plan for how to share their ideas once back home, effectively becoming trainers themselves. This model, when implemented successfully, allows for the quick dissemination of useful techniques and ideas about language teaching and technology use, which can then benefit as many people as possible.
Technology as a Resource for Teacher Support
Teachers and people working in language revitalization situations often feel isolated and alone. With few others in the tribe or community concerning themselves with the same issues, many teachers are in need of support. Some support can come in the form of moral support, just having a place to ‘vent’ or share problems that are hard to understand unless you are doing similar work. Support can also be in the form of asking questions about problems and getting feedback on possible solutions. Support also comes in the form of learning about what people are doing in one context that can potentially be useful for other contexts. While traditionally conferences and workshops have been outstanding sources of such support, time limitations and the expense of travel can create obstacles to getting this type of support.
Technology serves an important role in addressing this problem. Social media, emailing or skyping others with expertise offers us an ability to receive such support anytime, anywhere. Facebook groups and email lists, such as the ILAT list, are a place for public sharing and discussion of ideas unique to this specialized community. Similarly resource centers such as the NILI Resources Center (http://nilirc.com/) offer a place for teachers to browse materials for ideas, search templates that can be turned into their own language, or use ready-made materials if the language they are working with is represented.
17.1 How about Just Shifting Back? How One Passamaquoddy Speaker Led Her Community to Language Documentation and Revitalization
Margaret Apt, a middle-aged Passamaquoddy woman from Eastern Maine, USA, had grown up away from the Reservation and was doing everything she could to improve her Passamaquoddy language skills, but now the Elders were no longer speaking in public. She noticed that when they needed a new word to discuss a contemporary topic they would shift to, and then remain speaking in, English. Passamaquoddy, an Algonquian language of the Eastern USA and Canada, was becoming invisible. I asked Margaret if we could try an experiment using video. She agreed and began to convene a group of speakers who also agreed to be filmed. Whenever the talk drifted into English, Margaret would gently remind the speaker to switch back to Passamaquoddy. It worked, and soon speakers were having long conversations about contemporary experiences totally in Passamaquoddy. This speaker-facilitated, nonintrusive, documentary style videotaping soon became an accepted method for Passamaquoddy language documentation. Subsequent presentation of the video back to the participants and community, referred to as Video Feedback, stimulated more deeply contextualized conversation and sometimes motivated new language initiatives (see Figure 17.1.1). Margaret became the first Facilitator of the method that came to be called Natural Group Conversation and Activity Documentation. So just by acting on her wish to speak Passamaquoddy with her friends without English intruding, and with a little help from the video, Margaret launched an active process of language revitalization in her community that is also being replicated elsewhere.
Figure 17.1.1 Ben Levine and Julia Schulz documenting Passamaquoddy-Maliseet natural conversation as developed with Margaret (Dolly) Apt.
As Facilitator, Margaret would create a safe space for speaking. She might start the conversation off with a question and then ask for contextualizing information. Speakers gained confidence and soon were telling stories, laughing, or commiserating – creating speaker-driven language in natural, real-life ways. Playing the video back gave the speakers new awareness and the emotional strength to take on the topics that concerned them and activities they wanted filmed. More speakers became involved, and a new confidence to address language endangerment emerged as Passamaquoddy became more visible again.
This practice of video feedback triggers new and often deeper conversations, creating rich content for teaching and learning as well as linguistic analysis. Recording these conversations and playing them back has proven to be helpful in addressing historic community trauma and its effects in suppressing language use. It has also resulted in the emergence of new leaders advocating for revitalization.
Margaret and other participants next learned to log, transcribe, translate, and subtitle over 100 videos, first available as DVDs that later became part of the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet online dictionary and audio archive which can be seen at www.PMPortal.org. Margaret taught her daughter Plansowes and some friends who had tried to learn Passamaquoddy and understood the language but couldn’t speak it, how to record dictionary entries and example sentences with Elders and then post them on the Portal. The recording process immediately helped these tech-savvy, 30-something fluent comprehenders improve their language skills and increased their interest in learning and using the language. Excited at this breakthrough, they shared Portal links to words and videos on social media. Soon there was heightened visibility of the language, increased respect for speakers, and an expanding new constituency for Passamaquoddy language, especially among those living in the diaspora who could now be connected to the language. The Elders, in turn, became acquainted, in a non-threatening way, with the Passamaquoddy-Maliseet writing system.
The participants in Margaret’s conversations subsequently initiated new language revival projects: two immersion preschools; a video-based program for fluent comprehenders and language classes for adults. One man engaged in graduate studies so that he could become a linguist for the tribe. Two others became language teachers. What started with one person, Margaret, looking for ways to get her own Passamaquoddy language back, grew into language revitalization with many different components. Today there are new speakers of Passamaquoddy for the first time in forty years, and the model has inspired other groups. Language activists in an Ayöök-speaking Mixe community in Southern Mexico saw Passamaquoddy videos and invited Speaking Place to start the documentation and revitalization process in their town. The Mixe have used the same methods. They have also had training from our team on linguist-guided community self-documentation. Like the Passamaquoddy who inspired them, they have started immersion schools and are building a Mixe radio station. Now other towns in Oaxaca are starting to adopt these methods as well. While each community shapes the methods and process to their own circumstances, starting with video documentation of facilitated natural group conversation and activity can be a potent launching pad for revitalization.
17.2 Online Language Learning Materials Development
Welsh is relatively fortunate among the world’s lesser-used languages, with its official status, government support, rich literary tradition, dedicated radio and television channels, and important role in the education system in Wales. Welsh-medium education is available from nursery right through to university-level, whilst those attending English-medium schools learn Welsh as a second language. It is also possible to learn Welsh as an adult, and around 18,000 learners attend adult Welsh classes in Wales each year.
One course provider, Nant Gwrtheyrn, specializes in week-long residential courses, which particularly attract learners from abroad or whose lifestyles don’t suit weekly classes. However these learners sometimes find it tricky to maintain the ‘buzz’ and keep using their Welsh once they’ve returned home. Through the KESSFootnote 2 programme, a partnership was established between Nant Gwrtheyrn and myself, a PhD student at Cardiff University, in order to develop a research-based set of online learning materials that would complement the beginners’ level residential course and allow learners to maintain regular contact with the Welsh language.
Despite the very specific context of the project, the lessons I learned should be applicable to online materials development in many environments.
Try to plan a manageable project based on available human/financial resources. Do you need to create an entire curriculum or just supplementary materials?
Don’t expect the planning and writing process to follow linear stages – decisions made part-way through the process, or new information about learners’ needs/expectations, will mean you need to revise earlier work.
If online learning resources are already available for your target language, try to collaborate with the authors rather than competing with them. Don’t reinvent something that has already been produced for your language – focus on creating new resources which will complement existing ones.
In terms of the language content of materials, consider the domains in which you hope learners will use their language skills. For example, you could select vocabulary and phrases used in the home, in the workplace, in ceremonies, or in the wider community.
Also keep in mind why you are creating digital learning materials as opposed to paper materials. To reach a geographically dispersed audience? To encourage learners to practise frequently? To facilitate independent learning? Electronic learning materials should not simply be digitised versions of paper materials (e.g. PDFs of worksheets). Instead they should offer something over and above the ‘offline’ experience, making use of what technology can uniquely offer – e.g. interactivity even without classmates/tutors, or instant personalised feedback, or helping make input comprehensible by offering hyperlinks and images.
Don’t allow technological developments to dictate the resources you create without reference to language learning theories/principles. In other words, don’t create something just because it’s technically possible – always reflect on the benefits a resource will bring to the learning experience.
For audio/video resources, consider including recordings of ‘new speakers’ as well as ‘native speakers’. In some language contexts this would be an appropriate way of demonstrating that learners are valued members of the linguistic community.
Plan for future sustainability! I failed at this one, as the online platform hosting my resources has disappeared, taking my content with it! So think about long-term plans for your materials – e.g. how they might be migrated to new platforms, or how they might be adapted for mobile devices as opposed to computers.
17.3 Rising Voices
The Internet provides a special opportunity for communities that speak Indigenous, endangered, and minority languages to attract and involve younger generations in language preservation and revitalization – an involvement that is crucial for the survival of these languages and cultures.
Supporting such communities, especially Indigenous communities across Latin America, in this work has been a primary focus of Rising Voices (RV), the digital inclusion initiative of the organization Global Voices. RV works to promote equity and diversity online through training, mentoring, and the creation of peer-learning networks. With the increased accessibility of devices such as smartphones and tablets, and the spread of Internet connectivity (including through community-owned networks) Indigenous communities are increasingly accessing information online. However, they rarely do so in their native language. That is changing. Communities’ access to information and digital tools is making it easier to create multilingual content themselves. Creating content online by uploading videos to YouTube, translating free software, or writing on blogs and social media platforms is a positive step that Indigenous communities can take toward ensuring that their language is present in all facets of life, especially in the digital realm.
Rising Voices’ support takes many different forms, including organizing workshops and gatherings. In recent times, we have held events in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Chile, in collaboration with a range of local partners. In these meetings, participants run hands-on workshops and engage in peer-led discussions addressing the linguistic, technical, and socio-cultural obstacles they face promoting their languages online. These events also include a public component designed to showcase the work and its possibilities. A direct result of these gatherings has been the creation of local, national, and international networks of mutual support and solidarity.
Rising Voices has also created the Activismo Lenguas (Language Activism) portal to map projects across the region and to highlight the important role that technology is playing in language revitalization, as well as to inspire other communities wanting to do similar types of initiatives. Visitors to the portal can search by country, language, and the type of digital tool that they utilize in their revitalization activities. We are also working to research and analyze the opportunities and challenges for sharing knowledge through Wikipedia in Indigenous languages. This work has given us valuable access to the perspectives of practitioners on the ground, and allowed them to share their stories.
Finally, our social media campaigns encourage engagement with minority languages in a fun way, such as tweeting and creating memes. In observance of the International Year of Indigenous Languages 2019, Rising Voices created a rotating Twitter account (@ActLenguas) where each week a different Indigenous language digital activist manages the account, tweeting about their personal experiences of using technology in support of language revitalization. Our work in Rising Voices has shown the possibilities provided by technology. But it is important to stress that the Internet and digital media are only tools, and that the real driving force behind this work is the hundreds of young people who have stepped forward and demonstrated their commitment to ensuring that their language and culture are reflected in all facets of society, including the Internet.
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