Metaglossia: The Translation World
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Metaglossia: The Translation World
News about translation, interpreting, intercultural communication, terminology and lexicography - as it happens
Curated by Charles Tiayon
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Endangered languages are struggling to survive in the modern world -

Endangered languages are struggling to survive in the modern world
The UNESCO World Atlas of endangered languages currently lists more than 3,000 languages. There are many reasons a language can become extinct. Extinction is usually attributed to military, economic, religious, cultural or educational suppression; globalization also contributes to the neglect of minority languages. Linguists have struggled to preserve and revitalize endangered languages for many years and make use of new technologies and media to preserve the cultural identity and the cultural knowledge associated with the languages. The Translation People recently blogged about Google campaigning to save the world’s endangered languages

Survival International, an organization that supports tribal people worldwide, and VOGA (Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese) deal with endangered languages. Both recently reported on their efforts to preserve the Bo language even after the death of the last known speaker Boa Senior, the only native speaker for nearly 40 years. The language dates back 65,000 years to Africa and was spoken on the Andaman Islands. Since January 2010, Bo has been considered a dead language, and it isn’t only linguists that mourn its extinction. Anthropologists also mourn the last Bo speaker since her death means the loss of historical knowledge and a cultural identity. The director of Survival International commented on this, “With the death of Boa Sr. and the extinction of the Bo language, now a unique part of our human society is nothing more than a memory. Bo’s death should be a warning to us all and not just the other tribes of the Andaman Islands.”

Boa Senior’s death was reported on by the BBC by K. David Harrison. Harrison is the author of The Last Speakers: The Quest to Uncover the World’s Most Endangered Languages, and has appeared in The Linguists, a documentary about the efforts to capture endangered languages. At the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2008 it received worldwide recognition. Harrison equates the survival of languages with the survival of species and speaks in this context of a parallel extinction. Harrison believes that 80% of the species are unknown, and even 80% of the languages are not yet documented. He emphasizes the important relationship that exists between our language and the environment in which we live. Harrison is also a strong supporter of new technologies which can help to make people aware of endangered languages. After The Linguist documentary aired at various film festivals, in 2009 it was published on the Babelgum website: “If the internet is used properly, it can be an enormous influence on enhancing the people’s awareness and may help to preserve minority languages.”

International organizations and institutions share this view. The European Union is funding a project for the protection and preservation of languages. The ELDIA program (European Language Diversity for All) has a grant of almost €3 million and makes use of the so-called “vitality barometer”, a gauge to show the risk of a language. ELDIA focuses its work on 14 Finno-Ugric languages, such as Meänkieli in Sweden, and the variant of the Estonian language, which is spoken by Estonian workers in Germany.

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Using Moodle: Status of language translations for Moodle

Hi Ralph

We are sharing the same concern - some of your suggestions are happening under the hood. I can add another speculation to your list: most language pack maintainers do the work voluntary in their free time. What people spent their spare time on, can change.

First contact of new translators usually goes via email with me. In our email contact we sort out some of the problems mentioned in your post, at least problems which can be sorted out. A very often asked question is indeed which files contain the strings for the students. As you know, that can't be answered. I created a translation FAQ that addresses some of the issues on http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Translation_FAQ

There are not that many new translations started anymore - what happens the most is people taking on an abandoned language pack, which is good of course. Occasionally someone has a locally maintained language pack to share. It's a shame people maintain a local language pack, because it is a lot easier to maintain it on http://lang.moodle.org and then it is shared in one go. Being someone who likes to share work, I don't understand peoples objections against that.

But people speaking a (minority) language have their own responsibilities: if they feel the need for a language pack, if they feel the need to cooperate and share, the platform and the people to help them are here on moodle.org. Open Source software is the only way to go for having software translated in a minority language and personally I find this really important. Those 60% of poorly maintained language packs can be a starting point or a motivation for those people to get on with it.

I'm giving your idea of contacting the admins a thought, but again, it is the responsibility and the choice of the people to share their work.

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Nicaragua translates Constitution into indigenous languages

Nicaragua translates Constitution into indigenous languages
Separatist leaders say ‘thanks, but we already know our rights’

Mother Tongue: Indigenous members of the Miskito and Sumo-Mayangna nations can now read the Nicaraguan Constitution in their own language (photo / Tim Rogers)

By Tim Rogers/ Nicaragua Dispatch
October 15, 2012

In an effort to better incorporate the indigenous communities of Nicaragua’s historically marginalized Caribbean coast, the legislative National Assembly this month printed first-edition translations of Nicaragua’s Constitution in the languages of Miskito and Sumo-Mayangna.

The translations of the Constitution— known as “Kuntri Wauhkataya” in Miskito and “Kabamint Mabani Tingnita Ulwi Yakwa” in Mayangna—will provide indigenous leaders with better access to Nicaraguan law, says congressman Brooklyn Rivera, president of the National Assembly’s Commission on Ethnic Affairs, Autonomy and Indigenous Communities.

Sandinista lawmaker Brooklyn Rivera (photo/ Tim Rogers)

“Until now, the Constitution has been inaccessible (to many indigenous communities) because we didn’t know what it said and couldn’t read it in our own language,” Rivera, a Miskito leader and political ally of the Sandinista Front, told The Nicaragua Dispatch. “This changes now that we will have the Constitution in our hands and in our own language to better understand what it says.”

Rivera, who proposed the initiative last June, says 1,000 copies of the Constitution have been printed in Miskito and Mayangna and will be distributed to community leaders to read, analyze and share with others.

The congressmen and YATAMA leader says the translations were done by technical teams that spent three months getting the wordings right. He says the translations are faithful to the spirit of the Magna Carta.

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Maltese in a digital age - timesofmalta.com

A recent front page article in this newspaper suggested that Maltese, together with a number of other “small” European languages, risks being left out in the cold in the digital age (Maltese At Risk Of Digital Extinction, October 1). The immediate motivation for the article was a report published under the auspices of Metanet, a Europe-wide network of research centres involved in the development of language technology and re­sources, of which the University of Malta’s Department of Intelligent Computer Systems and Institute of Linguistics form part.
The digital extinction of Maltese is being addressed by ongoing developments both within academia and industry
- Albert Gatt
The report adopted the term digital extinction to describe the risk faced by languages which do not have adequate support in various areas of language technology.
The term has a satisfyingly ominous ring to it, one that was no doubt designed for the pages of the popular press.
Nevertheless, the point made by the report is well-taken. Broadly speaking, it is this: while some languages – notably English – appear to have a comfortable existence in the digital/computational world, as indicated both by their frequency of use in the electronic media and by the development of intelligent, language-sensitive technology for these languages, others like Maltese are far less well represented and are therefore a cause for concern.
There are two important prin­ciples that implicitly underlie this report.
The first is that multilinguality should be safeguarded as an outward manifestation of cultural and social diversity, with technology functioning as a bridge to effective communication.
The second is that all languages should be equal, that is, all speakers should be able to avail themselves of technology to facilitate communication, no matter how small the linguistic community they hail from.

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Lost in translation

Let me just punish you with another vocabulario, a Spanish-Tagalog dictionary, fallen apart at the seams, corners eaten away by termites. I always assumed I knew basic Spanish but this revealed to me how little I did.
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KYUK radio listeners get stories in Yup'ik and English | Rural Alaska | ADN.com

BETHEL -- This just in: State-am qillerqistai yuangelliiniat angun qimalleq.

Translated from Yup'ik to English, that means Alaska State Troopers are searching for an outlaw hunting guide. It's how Sophie Evan began her 8:30 a.m. newscast here on a recent morning.

Evan's audience of up to 15,000 radio listeners in the largest Western Alaska city and 22 surrounding villages always hears the news twice. First in English, next in Yup'ik.

While the facts stay the same, the manner of storytelling changes with the language.

"Rarely will I use the English way of 'tell the story, sound bite. Tell the story, sound bite,' " said Evan, who imagines she is talking to her late grandmother or other elders as she reads the news. "When I have an interview that's really good, I have them tell the story themselves, all in Yup'ik."

In a state struggling to preserve 19 remaining Alaska Native languages, Bethel public radio station KYUK airs at least three Yup'ik newscasts a day. Not as history lessons or word-of-the-day instruction, but as straight coverage of current events.

Spoken by about 10,000 people -- more than 40 percent of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta -- Central Alaska Yup'ik is the healthiest of the Alaska Native languages, according to the Alaska Native Language Center in Fairbanks. With the exception of some St. Lawrence Island households who speak a different variety of Yupik, it may be the only Native language still being learned by children in village homes, said center director Lawrence Kaplan.

At the Eddie Hoffman Senior Center in Bethel, elders compete for the seat closest to the boom box radio at news time, said services director Louise Charles. KYUK blares in Lower Kuskokwim living rooms and kitchens up to 90 miles upriver.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2012/10/13/2660040/western-alaska-radio-listeners.html#storylink=cpy

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Is Arabic turning into an endangered language in Dubai? Parents fight back

UAE parents are hitting back at Dubai's education system for pushing Arabic - the region’s traditional language - to the side, in favor of English language classes.

Since 2010 the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) has invested millions of dirhams in English lessons they say will best prepare Dubai's youths for university and a career in an increasingly integrated world. However, this move has proved less than popular with Dubai residents who believe the focus on English has gone too far.

Over 50,000 parents said in a recent ADEC survey, rating the standard of education in Dubai, that the highly westernized emirate has neglected its Arabic roots. The message could hardly have been clearer with 82 per cent of those questioned saying they would prefer math and science to be taught in Arabic.

According to Dr Masood Badri, ADEC's head of research and planning, this is more than just a language problem. Parents feel that the English language focus means that the broader culture of the region is being neglected.

Now a more moderate bilingual model of education has been proposed which would allow Dubai to hold onto its Arab culture while also teaching students the necessary standard of English for higher education.

But it's not just attitudes to education that need adjusting: the resources currently available to schools in Dubai are predominantly English, posing a greater challenge to teachers who want to educate pupils in their mother tongue.

Dr Badri has promised that the council is tackling this problem with a long-term plan to produce more material in Arabic: "We hope that in the next five years we will have such a bank in place and, in the long run, we could provide students an option to chose whether they want to learn these subjects in Arabic or English," he said.

Many parents worry that if the council doesn't deliver on these promises the children of forward-thinking Dubai will lose their past heritage forever.

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Making English creative and easy

What a teacher needs is some ingenious ideas to make a language lesson fun and interesting.

ENGLISH grammar can be a dry subject to many students, but with a dash of creativity even the most mundane activities and tasks can be made interesting.

Budapest International Languages Institute director Julia Dudas argues that creativity is important in the classroom and should be encouraged even within a rigid curriculum.

“Creativity depends on the teacher and handling subjects such as grammar does not mean it should be rigid.

“The teacher can encourage students to write a poem using a sentence structure beginning with “I like, I love, But I don’t like, I hate” and asking the students to fill in the blanks with their own experiences or images.

“The end result will be the active usage of the language while being creative at the same time,” she said.

Dudas from Hungary was among the international speakers invited to share language teaching ideas during the ninth Malaysia International Conference on English Language Teaching (MICELT) held in Ipoh last week.

The event was organised by Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) and ELS language centres, and allowed participants, mostly English language teachers, a platform to exchange ideas and practices for a better learning environment.

Conference chairman Assoc Prof Dr Arshad Abd Samad said in his welcoming address that since the English language was evolving, the teaching approach and materials should also reflect those changes.

“Not only do we need to meet the needs of students to equip them sufficiently before they head into the world, but we also have to ensure the world’s needs can be catered through the students,” he said.

Among other notable speakers and topics brought up during the three-day conference included Prof Marc Helgesen from Miyaki Gakuin Women’s University, Japan, who spoke on self-assessment and “Happiness 2.0” and how positive psychology played a role in teaching.

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Endangered Languages and Cultures » Blog Archive » New book on minority languages of Nigeria

New book on minority languages of Nigeria
October 13, 2012, 8:05 pm by Peter Austin
Readers of this blog may be interested in a new book that has just been published by Ruediger Koeppe Verlag on minority languages of Nigeria (thanks to Stuart McGill for giving me a copy for review):

Roger Blench and Stuart McGill (eds.) 2012. Advances in Minority Language Research in Nigeria, Volume 1. Cologne: Ruediger Koeppe Verlag.

The book is available from Koeppe via Amazon for USD 48.79 (including postage).

The chapters in the volume comprise papers presented at the monthly meetings of the Jos Linguistic Circle (northern Nigeria) plus an overview by Roger Blench of current linguistics research and language development in Nigeria. Topics covered include phonetics (Ch 3, 9, 11), orthography (Ch 5, 9), verb morphology (Ch 7, 8, 12), focus (Ch 6), noun class semantics (Ch 10), and historical linguistics (Ch 2, 4). A full list of contents is available here.

I have yet to read the volume in detail but a quick skim shows that the papers are pretty much all descriptively oriented with lots of new materials on previously undescribed languages being included. The book is very nicely produced and bound, with copious tables, maps and illustrations. It does, however, show the limits of paper-based publication at a time when multimedia presentation of linguistic research is relatively easy to achieve. So, for example, Chapter 3 on “Unusual sounds in Nigerian languages” that discusses labio-coronals, interdental approximants and an “explosive bilabial nasal” includes spectrograms and still photographs but would have been so much stronger if audio and video recordings of these phenomena were presented. Language Documentation and Conservation publishes online multimedia such as Lobel and Riwarung’s “Maranao: A Preliminary Phonological Sketch with Supporting Audio” in Volume 5 (2011) or Feeling et al.’s “Why Revisit Published Data of an Endangered Language with Native Speakers? An Illustration from Cherokee” in Volume 4 (2010). At SOAS, we publish multimedia volumes of Language Documentation and Description (such as Volume 10) as a book with accompanying CD or DVD.

Congratulations to Blench and McGill for putting together this volume and making materials on otherwise poorly known languages of Nigeria more widely available.

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Gaelic body says onus on community to see language prosper as Mòd launches - Heritage - Scotsman.com

By MIKE MERRITT
Published on Friday 12 October 2012 22:57

PUTTING up signs in Gaelic could be good for business and help accelerate a revival of the endangered language, a leading campaigner said yesterday.

• John Macleod, head of An Commun Gàidhealach, praises plans for provision of Gaelic services and signage by businesses and public services

• Mr Macleod also warns of the need for the Gaelic-speaking community to play its part in keeping the language alive

• The Mod brings in between £3m and £5m to the local economy each year

John Macleod, president of An Comunn Gàidhealach – the body which represents the Gaelic language – said he was pleased to see a growing number of companies using signs in Gaelic and English, including some that were not legally obliged to.

“It is encouraging that many public organisations including councils, enterprise agencies, health boards, government, parliament, national agencies and national parks now have plans in place for the provision of their services in Gaelic, but much still needs to be done to ensure that the availability of such services is actively communicated to the public so that they can make use of them,” said Mr Macleod.

“More recently, several commercial organisations in Scotland have taken to exhibiting bilingual signage in their premises, without being legally required to do so. Could this be an indication of the start of a recognition, similar to what is seen in Wales, that Gaelic in Scotland has value and is here to stay?”

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Creating safe haven for indigenous languages

AS part of its efforts to promote and encourage the use of indigenous languages by Nigerian youths, the Federal Government has developed a template for the standardization of four Nigerian languages, including Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Ijaw, with a possibility that other Nigerian languages would take their turn in no distant time.

This has resulted in a report on the harmonization and standardization of Nigerian-related languages, which was officially handed over to the Federal Ministry of Education to be included in the nation’s educational curriculum in Abuja over the weekend by the Minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke. It was received by the Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike on behalf of the ministry

The forum provided the two ministers the opportunity to re-iterate the determination of the federal government, as parts of its transformation agenda towards ensuring that Nigerian youths were actually encouraged to embrace the use of indigenous languages to the detriment of foreign languages. They were united in their assertion that foreign languages were doing incalculable damages to the psyche of the average Nigerian youths, blaming the elites for the trend.

The report, a joint efforts between the Centre for Black African Arts and Civilization, (CBAAC) and the Cape Town, South African-based Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), according to its Director-General, Prof. Tunde Babawale was aimed at re-igniting the interest of younger Nigerians in their indigenous languages.

The workshop, according to Babawale, which centred mainly on the four languages brought together specialists in these languages from Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Benin Republic and resource persons from CASAS network, noting the final report that was submitted was a product of several meetings held in Abuja, Port-Harcourt and Johannesburg in October, 2010.

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Pacific communities in NZ keen to set up school to revive languages

Three Pacific communities in Auckland, New Zealand want to set up a charter school to help revive their languages.
Cook Islands Maori, Niuean and Tokelauan are all on the most endangered languages list in New Zealand.
Representatives from the three communities are putting together a joint bid for a primary school in south Auckland that would teach in the three languages and some English.
One of the Niuean members, Mele Nemaia, says her language is now classed as dying and charter schools are a chance to save it.
She says it’s urgent because most of the 20-thousand New Zealanders of Niuean descent don’t speak the language, and there are fewer than 15-hundred people on Niue itself.
“And I don’t think that’s enough to actually guarantee that our language will continue on. So it’s very important, very vital to us to maintain, retain and to use our language in this country.”
Mele Nemaia says teaching in Niuean, Tokelauan and Cook Islands Maori would also help the students to do better academically.
News Content © Radio New Zealand International
PO Box 123, Wellington, New Zealand

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'96% languages in India endangered'

LUCKNOW: Majority of the Indian languages could become extinct if timely efforts are not made to preserve them. According to Indian linguistics, of 380 languages spoken in India, 96% are...
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allAfrica.com: Nigeria: FG to Promote Teaching, Learning of Nigerian Languages

The Federal Ministry of Education has assured the public that the standardised and harmonised orthography of four Nigerian languages would be effectively used by teachers, researchers and students to advance the teaching and learning of indigenous languages so as to preserve the country's culture.

Minister of State for Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike, who announced this during the handing and taking over ceremony of the harmonised and standardised orthography of four Nigerian and other related languages, noted that orthography helps in the preservation of local languages by making them amenable to further improvement through research and documentation.

The Nigerian languages that had their standardised and harmonised orthography handed over to the Federal Ministry of Education are: Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo and Ijaw.

According to Wike: "Societies that have documented their indigenous languages continue to influence other societies in a manner that ensures the dominance of their culture and languages. The development of harmonised and standardised orthography in Nigerian languages should be viewed against this background and taken more seriously by all stakeholders if we must curtail the cascading influence of foreign cultures and values on our youths."

The minister stated that the most practical strategy to check the decline in the study, knowledge and usage of indigenous languages is to have them documented.

"The need to do so as a country is strongly supported by the fact that we are a multi-ethnic nation. Consequently, our national literacy and education models must inevitably reflect the extant linguistic and ethnic pluralism."

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Endangered Languages and Cultures » Blog Archive » ELDP Grant Round 2013 – Call for applications

The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) at SOAS offers one granting cycle for 2013. The grant round opens next Monday 15th October 2012 10am (BST) and closes on 15th January 2013, 5pm (GMT).

The key objectives of the ELDP are:

to support the documentation of as many endangered languages as possible
to encourage fieldwork on endangered languages, especially by younger scholars with skills in language documentation
to create a repository of resources for the linguistic, social science, and the language communities
Grant categories available are:

Small Grants of up to £10,000
Individual Graduate Scholarships
Individual Postdoctoral Fellowships
Major Documentation Projects
Important dates:

Applications open: 15th October 2012
Deadline for submission: 15th January 2013, 5pm (GMT)
Decisions notified: 15th June 2013
Application forms and further information is available here.

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Professor works to preserve endangered languages | Research and Economic Development

A linguistics professor trying to save a language on the brink of extinction has received some help from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Documenting Endangered Languages program.

The program, a joint project of the endowment and the National Science Foundation, awarded UNT linguistics professor Timothy Montler the $350,000 grant for his efforts to document and preserve the Saanich language, a dialect spoken by a small group of people on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Timothy Montler, Professor of Linguistics and Technical Communication

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Guwahati Book Fair: Dictionary software gets good response

GUWAHATI: The Xahaj Xandhan Axomiya Abhidhan or Easy Searching Assamese Dictionary, a software designed by a city-based programmer, Durlav Gogoi, has become one of the most sought-after products...
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Endangered Languages Project

About Using EndangeredLanguages.com
How do I create a user profile?

What kind of content should I upload?

What are the guidelines for sharing material through this site?

By uploading videos or documents am I relinquishing ownership of them?

Will material shared with this project be stored safely?

Can I upload content but not share it?

How do I report inappropriate, irrelevant, insensitive, inaccurate content that has been put on the site?

How can I contribute to the Endangered Languages Project site?

Does it cost anything to participate in this project or to provide endangered language related material?

How do I remove the material I shared through this site?

How can I help document an endangered language?

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Langues nationales et apports cognitifs

Langues nationales et apports cognitifs
Par Dr. Seynabou Diop | Seneweb.com | Vendredi 05 octobre, 2012 20:55 | Consulté 533 fois | 4 commentaires Favoris
| -Imprimer| Envoyer
Contribution | Mots Clés: Langues nationales, Education, Senegal
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source: Seneweb.com

Monsieur le Premier Ministre Abdoul Mbaye, lors de sa déclaration de politique générale devant les élus du peuple, le 10 Septembre dernier, a bien souligné que l’un des problèmes dont souffre le secteur éducatif au Sénégal est « la faible intégration des modèles alternatifs d’éducation». Je ne peux que me réjouir, en tant qu’éducatrice, de cette observation pertinente, à ce niveau du gouvernement, et à l’occasion d’un discours aussi important. Mais, comme l’a si bien suggéré Monsieur le Premier Ministre, le plaidoyer de l’intégration des langues nationales à l’école, comme «modèle alternatif d’éducation», a pendant longtemps existé sans grands résultats.

Pour un modèle alternatif d’éducation avec les langues nationales, au moins trois arguments pédagogiques fondamentaux existent : l’argument identitaire, l’argument de soutien au développement psychomoteur, socio-émotionnel et cognitif de l’enfant, et enfin, l’argument de pourvoyeurs de contenus aux autres disciplines académiques. Les termes, "langues maternelles", "langues de terroirs" ou "langues parentales", seront utilisées ici d’une manière interchangeable pour référer aux différentes langues nationales parlées par les enfants chez eux, et qui peuvent correspondre aux langues d’enseignement à l’école. Elles se réfèrent donc aux six langues nationales retenues officiellement en 1978 : Wolof, Seereer, Pulaar, Diola, Mandinka, et Soninké (Programme Décennal de l’Education et de la Formation, 2000). Il faut dire aussi qu’à ces trois arguments, qui ne sont développés ici que brièvement, pour introduire l’aspect cognitif des langues, s’ajoutent beaucoup d’autres, aussi plausibles, pour montrer l’importance des langues nationales à l’école.

L’argument identitaire, le plus souvent avancé, met l’accent sur le besoin d’utiliser les langues nationales à l’école pour permettre aux élèves, dès la petite enfance, de s’approprier leur identité, ce qui leur permettra de mieux connaître leur culture et leur histoire. Cet argument constitue l’un des principaux motifs utilisés par les éducateurs, les politiques et les parents pour l’intégration des langues maternelles à l’école. Ainsi, il constitue le tronc commun de beaucoup de documents d’orientation de politiques générales avancées depuis les états généraux de l’éducation et de la formation de 1981 (PDEF, 2000). Le deuxième argument, l’argument du développement psychomoteur, socio- émotionnel et cognitif, soutient que l’enseignement des langues nationales supporte un développement équilibré de l’enfant. Le psychomoteur relève de tout ce qui ressort des fonctions psychiques et motrices travaillant ensemble, par exemple, dans la bonne coordination des yeux et de la main de l’enfant pour copier une information au tableau. Le socio-émotionnel se définit comme étant tout ce qui ressort des émotions, de l’affect et de la sensibilité de l’enfant par rapport à son milieu. Le cognitif relève de la faculté de connaître et des stratégies mises en place pour faciliter ce processus.

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Boost to indigenous language intrepreting

Indigenous language interpreting services will be boosted with the extension of a national accreditation system.

The federal government has announced it will allocate $286,000 to National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI).

The organisation will use the money to create testing materials in indigenous languages spoken in Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland.

This boost will see extra languages covered as well as para-professional interpreters step up to the next level to receive professional accreditation.

There are more than 500 interpreters in Australia who help Aboriginal people overcome language barriers because English is sometimes their second, third or even fourth language.

Many interpreters work with people interacting with the court and health systems.

A parliamentary inquiry on indigenous languages released its report in September recommending extra funds to improve accreditation.

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FG Expresses Concern Over Fading Nigerian Languages | Leadership Newspapers

FG Expresses Concern Over Fading Nigerian Languages

Thu, 04/10/2012 - 2:20am | KUNI TYESSI News Education

The federal government has expressed concern over the preference of foreign languages especially the English language as against the indigenous mother tongues especially on the part of parents and school teachers who seem to have lost interest in the languages.

The minister of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Chief Edem Duke at the standardisation and harmonisation ceremony of orthography of four Nigerian languages, Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Ijaw at the Ministry of education, presented by the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, CBAAC, lamented that the young generation especially the upcoming ones run the risk of forgetting their mother tongues if the situation is not addressed urgently.

He lamented that, “Despite this reality, most African languages face threats of extinction. In most Africa homes, there is growing lack of use of African languages. Indigenous languages are not longer spoken with pride.

The value we place on the use of our indigenous languages have over time, been eroded by our preference for foreign languages”

He said, “It is disturbing to note that most parents encourage the use of European languages by their children forgetting that wherever our children may be around the world and not matter how long they stay in foreign countries, they must always remember that they are first of all Nigerians and must therefore not forget their mother tongues”.

“We must begin to see the use of our languages as essential components of empowering our people, our countries and the continent. If we fail to promote the use of our languages, we risk stagnation, backwardness and amnesia”

He recounted, “Africa has one of the most complex language situations in the world. The continent has over 2000 languages according to UNESCO, 30 percent of the world’s languages are spoken in Africa”.

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Languages: The endangered-speeches list

When 92-year-old Bobby Hogg died on Tuesday he took with him a whole language. Hogg was the only man left who could talk in the old fishing dialect of the town of Cromarty in the Black Isle area of the Highlands.
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Endangered Languages Project - Koro - Bibliography

"Endangered Languages Catalogue Project. Compiled by research teams at University of Hawai'i Mānoa and Institute for Language Information and Technology (LINGUIST List) at Eastern Michigan University"
2012. "Endangered Languages Catalogue Project. Compiled By Research Teams At University of Hawai'i Mānoa and Institute For Language Information and Technology (LINGUIST List) At Eastern Michigan University."
"Ethnologue: Languages of the World"
Lewis, M. Paul (ed.). 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 16 edn. http://www.ethnologue.com/home.asp. (15 February, 2011.)
""Hidden" Language Found in Remote Indian Tribe"
Dan Morrison. 2010. ""Hidden" Language Found in Remote Indian Tribe." In National Geographic, Online: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/101005-lost-language-india-science/.

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Endangered Languages | Linguistic Society of America

Endangered Languages

Linguists are active throughout the globe in efforts to document, preserve and revitalize endangered languages. The LSA has a wide ranges of resources and programs intended to foster this important work, including the Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CELP). The Committee has undertaken the following projects:

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