allthingslinguistic:

Cuando Muere una Lengua / When a tongue dies is a video from the project 68 voces (68 voices), a project “to promote the pride, respect, and use of these indigenous Mexican languages ​​among native speakers, and non-native speakers”. 

The audio above is in Náhuatl de la Huasteca de Hidalgo, with Spanish subtitles, and English in the video description. The other six of the videos from the project so far, in Huastec, Mayan, Mixtec, Totonac, Yaqui, and Zapotec with gorgeous illustrations, are available from the 68 voces website, which also has further information about why they were created:  

At present, 364 language variants are spoken in Mexico, classified in 68 linguistic groups, and 11 linguistic families (INALI, 2008). At least, one-half of these are in a state of “accelerated extinction.“ 

Here’s a quote from Gabriela Badillo, the creator and director of the project, from an article on Global Voices: 

In general, the communities that we have approached have received [the project] with emotion, eager to see part of their history, tradition and culture in a video. They are not shown as a ‘static culture’ or a museum exhibit, but rather [shown as] something living that is evolving and growing with the times and the new generations; avoiding the usual ‘clichés’ of indigenous people and including the youth of the communities, as well as contributing Mexican artists. Above all, in classrooms we have been told that children have been particularly touched [by the project].

languagessi:

Livonian, the Disappearing Language of Latvia’s Baltic Coast

vainkielijutut:

Livonians, a tiny voice in the Baltics

They have come here from all over Latvia, in hopes of finding a leader who can protect a culture dating back eight hundred years. Once, they were thirty thousand strong, but today they have dwindled to little more than two hundred. A tiny group, speaking an ancient language, linked to Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian.

“Nowadays, the younger generation are getting interested again in Livonian culture. We fought for that and we are proud, but of course the language is still in danger.” (Gunta Gintere, Livonian community leader)

In the last century, the Livonians were driven from their coastal fishing communities, as Latvia was fought over by waring neighbors, Germany and Russia. Scattered across the region, many ended up speaking Latvian, and forgot their native language. But now, there is a fresh interest in Livonian.

“We’re certainly not the last to speak Livonian, but the first of a long line.” (Linda, Livonian student)

The reality, however, is not so promising. Few Livonian language dictionaries even exist, and research on the community is limited for want of resources. Valts is writing a study, one of the very few done.

“The problem working with Livonians is, we can’t get people free of other work. Which basically means that we have simply no time.” (Valts Ernstreits, Livonian expert)

So far, only Estonia, Finland and Hungary, who share the same linguistic origins, have financed research, as well as the cultural center in this village of Mazirbe. But the Livonians here hope for more help, especially from the EU.

Ojibwe Language Revitalization at University of Minnesota

This came in the mail for me today!

(Source:http://www.latg.org/2014/11/effects-of-language-loss.html/)

socimages:

The stigma of immigrant languages.

By Calvin N. Ho, PhD

As an undergraduate majoring in linguistics, I was fascinated with the concept of endangered languages. Colonization, genocide, globalization, and nation-building projects have killed off untold numbers of languages. As linguist K. David Harrison (my undergrad advisor) tells NPR, speakers of stigmatized or otherwise less-favored languages are pressured to abandon their native tongue for the dominant language of the nation and the market (emphasis mine):

The decision to give up one language or to abandon a language is not usually a free decision. It’s often coerced by politics, by market forces, by the educational system in a country, by a larger, more dominant group telling them that their language is backwardsandobsoleteandworthless.

These same pressures are at work in immigrant-receiving countries like the United States, where young immigrants and children of immigrants are quickly abandoning their parents’ language in favor of English.

Immigrant languages in the United States generally do not survive beyond the second generation. In his study of European immigrants, Fishman (1965) found that the first generation uses the heritage language fluently and in all domains, while the second generation only speaks it with the first generation at home and in limited outside contexts. As English is now the language with which they are most comfortable, members of the second generation tend to speak English to their children, and their children have extremely limited abilities in their heritage language, if any. Later studies (López 1996andPortes and Schauffler 1996 among them) have shown this three-generation trend in children of Latin American and Asian immigrants, as well.

The languages that most immigrants to the U.S. speak are hardly endangered. A second-generation Korean American might not speak Korean well, and will not be speaking that language to her children, but Korean is not going to disappear anytime soon — there are 66.3 million speakers (Ethnologue)! Compare that with the Chulym language of Siberia, which has less than 25.

Even if they’re not endangered per se, I would argue that they are in danger. While attitudes towards non-English languages in the U.S. seem to be improving, at least among wealthier and better educated people in some more diverse cities and suburbs, the stigma of speaking a non-English language still exists.

How many of you have:

• been embarrassed to speak your heritage language in front of English speakers?
• been reprimanded for speaking your heritage language in school?
• been told to “go back to [country X]” when someone overhears you speak your heritage language?

I’ve heard innumerable stories about parents refusing to speak their native language to their children. Usually, the purported rationale is that they do not want the child to have language or learning difficulties, a claim that has been debunked over and over again by psychologists, linguists, and education scholars.

I’m sure that these parents truly believe that speaking only English to their children will give them an edge, though the reverse is true. What I wonder is how much this decision had to do with an unfounded belief about cognition and child development, and how much it had to do with avoiding the stigma of speaking a language that marks you as foreign, and as “backwards and obsolete and worthless”?

Calvin N. Ho is a graduate student in sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles studying immigration, race/ethnicity/nationalism, and Asian diasporas.  You can follow him at The Plaid Bag Connection and on Twitter.

indielinguist:

This just arrived in the mail for me!

nativeamericannews:

Challenges and Solutions to Keeping the Lakota Language Alive

“There is more to an immersion school than simply bringing in elders and having them teach the chidren,” said Sunshine Carlow, education manager of Lakȟól’iyapi Wahóȟpifor, the Lakota Nest Immersion School on the Standing Rock Reservation in South Dakota.

tealingual:

IndyLan is an application for learning some of the Europe’s endangered languages and about the cultures of the people who speak them. You can learn Northern Sámi,Basque,Cornish,Gaelic,GalicianorScots. It’s free to download from App StoreandGoogle Play.