Hawaiian language revival began on Kaua‘i
In September 1984 the first Hawaiian immersion preschool opened on ‘Elepaio Road in Kekaha. It was called Punana Leo O Kekaha. The teachers were from Ni‘ihau, the only place where Hawaiian was still the first language in the home. …
SudanTribune article : A Language Lesson in the Nuba Mountains
The Sudan has recently been much in the news, despite the situation in Dar Fur having been plainly apparent since February 2003. The tragedy unfolding for the people there is also a tragedy for minority languages, many of which may never recover from the dislocation and dispossession that follows, as its inhabitants are turned into refugees in their own land. Broadly speaking, however, many groups have been scattered from their home area and now exist only as refugees in large Sudanese towns. Although the older members of the displaced communities are very committed to their language, the Sudanese Government is equally committed to the destruction of minority languages and the enforced adoption of Arabic. As a consequence, many ethno-linguistic groups are finding it difficult to maintain language competence among their children. This is particularly true in the case of the peoples of the Nuba Mountains in Southern Kordofan, where violent attacks on these communities during the 1990s caused many villages to be deserted and their inhabitants scattered or killed. If taken individually, the Nuba communities were always small in number by comparison with peoples such as the Dinka, Nuer, Fur and Zaghawa, and their languages correspondingly more fragile.
Of course, the death of people is immeasurably worse than the death of a language. Reading about the Sudan in general seems to be an exercise in hopelessness.
TheStar.com - In Latin, even flatulence suddenly seems highbrow
Still, you have to admit: Even the domestic travails of Walter the Farting Dog take on a certain epic quality once rendered in Latin. It’s just not the same when, in the English version of the children’s blockbuster, Walter’s flatulence drives would-be robbers from the family home. Where’s the gravitas in that?
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Wichita Eagle | 07/17/2006 | Kansans give Ethiopia 25,000 books
Children in Ethiopia have little access to books outside the classroom, where there might be only one book for every 100 students.
The books collected by the drive will go to the Ethiopian Books for Children and Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization trying to change that.
In 2003, the group established the Shola Children’s Library, the first free children’s library in Ethiopia. It was a huge success, attracting 40,000 visits in its first year.
The Kansas book drive launched when Clark met Jane Kurtz, a local children’s author raised in Ethiopia and the foundation’s co-founder. The foundation wanted to expand and Clark, then the president of the Kansas Reading Association, was looking for an international project.
So, were these books in English?
I presume so.
That’s great, but it’s also kinda… odd, innit?
I’m going to start posting “language news” posts here on Infundibulum. It’s something I find myself wanting to blog about a lot, and my opinions on it are prehaps a bit too opinionated to put up on the Blogamundo developer blog, so I figured I would bring them here.
I actually experimented for a bit on Blogspot here: Language News, and I found plenty of content. As a matter of fact, I’m going to import those posts here right now, so, here comes the onslaught.
Here’s the description from that temporary blog:
I post briefly about language stuff: language death, language revival, and language policy, especially. Suggestions welcome at pathall at gmail.
Offer still stands — suggestions welcome.
If you’d like to subscribe to this category exclusively in your feed reader (if, say, you’re not interested in my Javascript stuff or random blatherings), then you can do so at:
http://ruphus.com/blog/category/LanguageNews/feed/
Or:
http://ruphus.com/blog/category/LanguageNews/atom/
If you prefer Atom.