Listen & Learn Blog

A fascinating article in the New York Times takes a look at Guaraní, an indigenous language of Paraguay that is spoken by an estimated 90% of the population.

We often hear of indigenous languages dying out because of lack of speakers, but Guaraní is different. It’s been supported by governments throughout history, including dictators who have used speakers as informants. Under General Stroessner, who ruled from 1954 to 1989, the language thrived – the General made it an official language and rewarded rural speakers with land for their loyalty.

It’s not just dictators who have supported the language though. When democratic rule was established in Paraguay, the language was furthered strengthened when it was made equal to Spanish. Now there is debate in the country about its future.

You can learn more about Guaraní over at Omniglot.

A new hub for endangered languages has been set up on the Internet.

Described as an “ark”, the site features eight “talking dictionaries” featuring dying languages from around the world. The dictionaries feature photos of cultural objects, written words and audio recordings of native speakers pronouncing words and sentences in their language. Some languages are being written down for the first time.

Alfred “Bud” Lane, one of the last fluent speakers of a Native American language called Siletz Dee-in from Oregon, said: “The talking dictionary is and will be one of the best resources we have in our struggle to keep Siletz alive.”

Other dictionaries feature Matukar Panau, an Oceanic language from Papua New Guinea which has only 600 speakers. Before the Enduring Voices team began studying it three years ago, the language had never been recorded or written. The Matukar Panau dictionary contains 3045 entries, 3035 audio files, and 67 images.

Even though they had never experienced the internet, the Matukar Panau community asked for their language to be placed on the web. They finally saw and heard their language online when computers arrived in their village last year. (Source: National Geographic)

Other dictionaries are now in production, including a ninth for Celtic tongues.

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 states; one of only two that do not observe daylight savings time; and has a rich history pre-European contact.

It has two official languages: English and Hawaiian. Hawaiian Creole English (or pidgin) is used by many residents of the state, either as a native or second language. The Hawaiian language experienced a resurgence since the late 20^th Century, with immersion schools and a campus of the University of Hawaii teaching in the language. However according to Keola Donaghy in an interview with Indigenous Tweets, the number of speakers has now reached a plateau of around 10,000 people.

Donaghy is a non-native speaker but has done a lot of work to promote the language, including working on the Google search interface in Hawaiian. He has a vision that people will be able to use technology in Hawaiian. Read the rest of his interview, and view links to Hawaiian language resources here.

Have you, like me, never used Twitter? This news could tempt us – a computer science professor has set up a website to track tweets from speakers of indigenous and minority languages.

Called IndigenousTweets.com, the site currently tracks 82 languages including Cymraeg, Māori and Wolof. There are plans to add more, and some may come from the input box that allows users to add the Twitter names of other people they know who are tweeting in their native language.

Kevin Scannell, the professor behind the site, also blogs about the project. Scannell is starting to post interviews with speakers of indigenous and minority languages who are involved in language revitalization efforts and who use their languages online which should also be really interesting.

So, what are you waiting for? Get tweeting and connecting with people in your target language!

(Source: Storify)

In the news recently was the story of the two remaining speakers of Ayapaneco, who do not talk to each other.

A little closer to home the remaining speaker of Nuchatlaht, an indigenous language of Canada, remains enthusiastic about speaking the language. Alban Michael is 84 years old and has been speaking Nuchatlaht since he was a child – it was his mother’s only language. Living in a remote part of north Vancouver Island, there is little opportunity for Mr Michael to speak his native language, although a friend from a nearby Mowachaht band has a dialect that is close enough for them to be able to converse.

Work is being done to preserve these native languages, including an immersion programme that teams an ‘apprentice’ with a fluent speaker – this seems to be getting results.

According to the article in the Victoria Times Colonist:

The roughly 30,000 aboriginal people of Vancouver Island mostly came from two linguistic families, Wakashan and Salishan, further divided into six languages (there is argument over that number, since it’s not always clear where a dialect ends and a language begins).

Some overlap in the manner of Swedish and Norwegian, while some have been described as different as Russian and Congolese.

Only a few hundred of those 30,000 natives still speak the old languages fluently. The First Peoples’ Council gave this snapshot:

- A total of 115 people are fluent in the dozen dialects (including Alban’s Nuchatlaht) of Nuu-chah-nulth on the north and west Island.
- Just a dozen speakers of Ditidaht (also known as Nitinat) remain.
- Kwak’wala, the language of the Kwakwaka’wakw, who live along the inner coast and islands north of the Comox Valley, has 148 fluent speakers.
- The Salishan languages are found from Sooke, through Victoria and Duncan and up to the Comox Valley: ? Thirty remain fluent in Comox-Sliammon.
- 278 are comfortable in the dialects of Hul’q'umi’num’, found from Cowichan Bay to Nanoose.
- About 60 speak the Sencoten language of the Saanich Peninsula. The associated tongues of T’souke, Lekwungen, Semiahmoo, which were spoken from Sooke through Victoria are listed as “sleeping.”

Students at some universities are foregoing traditional languages in favour of learning indigenous languages, according to the LA Times.

Rather than taking French, Spanish or Mandarin, the students are learning indigenous Latin American languages such as Zapotec, Quechua and Mixtec. Their reasons for taking the classes are varied – some want to work with the people who speak the language, others to get closer to their roots.

In Los Angeles, Felipe Lopez also gradually shed his shame for Zapotec.

Many of the estimated 300,000 Oaxacans living in Los Angeles County are of Zapotec decent, he said. He wanted the language and the culture recognized as distinct, even in a sea of Spanish-speaking Mexicans.

Lopez now represents his countrymen living in the United States by serving as a liaison to the Oaxacan government. And he and two UCLA colleagues worked for eight years in the 1990s to write the first Zapotec, Spanish, English dictionary. The thick book defines 9,000 words in Zapotec, a language that is hardly ever written.

With the many stories in the news about endangered indigenous languages, this shows that there is still enthusiasm and reason for learning and keeping at-risk languages alive.

A new language has been discovered in a remote part of India.

The language, Koro, was discovered by a team of linguists who were on an expedition as part of National Geographic’s “Enduring Voices” project on threatened indigenous languages.

It is estimated that the language is spoken by around 800 to 1200 people and has never been written down. Koro is distinct from other languages in the area, and belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family. According to BBC News:

The researchers were searching for two other little-known languages spoken only in one small area.
As they heard and recorded these, they found a third which was completely new to them and had never before been listed.

“We didn’t have to get far on our word list to realise it was extremely different in every possible way,” said Dr David Harrison, one of the expedition leaders.

The linguists recorded thousands of words- and found Koro was distinct from other languages in the area.
It belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family, which includes around 150 languages spoken in India. But scientists were unable to find any others closely related to Koro within this group.

I find it amazing that this language wasn’t ‘discovered’ until now! I wonder how many other languages we haven’t yet heard about?

After yesterday’s post on New York’s linguistic diversity, I was pointed to a follow-up post on the New York Times’ City Room blog. This post wondered what the least-spoken languages are in New York.

As they point out, no data is available for the city itself, but the census’ American Community Survey has statewide figures for the question “what languages other than English do you speak at home?” These were the least common answers:

1. Cayuga: 6 speakers.
2. Eskimo languages: 7.
3. Delaware: 9.
4. Iroquois: 10.
5. Kusaiean (spoken on Kosrae Island, Micronesia): 10.
6. Mohave: 13.
7. Algonquin: 13.
8. Kachin (spoken in northeast Myanmar) : 22.
9. Pangasinan (spoken in northwest Philippines): 22.
10. Pidgin: 22.
11. Zuni: 24.
12. Kazakh: 26.
13. Faroese (spoken on the Faroe islands off Denmark): 27.
14. Inupik (an Eskimo language): 29.
15. Cajun: 31.
16. Achinese (spoken in Aceh, western Sumatra): 32.
17. Mayan: 35.
18. Tungus (spoken in Siberia and northeastern China): 36.
19. Rhaeto-Romanic (spoken in parts of Switzerland): 39.
20. Ponapean (spoken on Pohnpei Island, Micronesia): 40.
21. Muskogee: 40.

It’s interesting that Native American languages such as Iroquois and Algonquin are just as scarce as Kusaiean, a language spoken in Micronesia, a place most people would struggle to point out on a map (it’s north of Papua New Guinea and east of the Philippines, if you’re looking). And they are more scarce than Pangasinan, spoken in the northwest Philippines, and Kazakh, possibly only recognisable from the fictional character (and movie) Borat.

Should there be more of a focus on indigenous languages in America?