Today is the European Day of Languages. Currently, there are many languages both native to Europe and to the rest of the world risking becoming extinct in the next few decades as a result of linguistic imperialism and prejudice and discrimination of their communities.
This post is a compilation of initiatives where you can help preserve our linguistic (and, as a consequence, cultural) diversity around the world. All of them are projects run by the community itself.
Under the cut you will find the projects, an explanation of where the money would go to and the link to their official explanation and fundraising page. The languages included are:
Greko (or Calabrian Greek)
Navajo
Septemptrional Catalan
Yuchi
Cornish
Wampanoag
Hawaiian
Feel free to add more in your reblog or message me and I will add them to this post.
1. An me platezzise, zio, or “If you speak to me, I live”: adopt the Calabrian Greek language.
“Greko, or Calabrian Greek, is a millenary language that still exists and resists (the living speakers are nowadays only few hundreds) in a handful of picturesque towns [...] in the south of Italy. Though it used to be the main language spoken all over Calabria, since its arrival in the VIII century a.c., is now at the verge of extinction. We don’t want to and we can’t allow it. However, we will never be able to do all this by ourselves: the people who currently speak the language are few and mostly elderly, and the language is currently risking to disappear within the next 10 years. That’s why we need your help.”
The Associazione Ellenofona Jalò tu Vua is doing an online fundraising with the objective of 41.400€. This would allow them to carry on 2 projects:
The first, creating of free Greko language workshops: “We want to create free, permanent workshops of Calabrian Greek in the same places where it still resounds the echo of this language. We will even have Skype lessons for Grekophiles from all over the world who want to learn this language. We want to get children, young people and adults involved again in the rediscovery of the love for their own language and their own roots.”
The second one is the house of hospitality, or to spiti tis filoxenìa. “Filoxenìa is the opposite of xenophobia, it′s the love for the stranger. Bova, capital of the Calabrian Greek culture, [...] is the ideal place to create a permanent space of experience and exhibition and that could treasure precious stories about hospitality”. This project wants to exhibit the experiences of everyone who did a journey, from Griko emigrants who had to leave their country, to new arrivals to their land. All the material will be documented in its original language and also translated to Calabrian Greek by the students of the language workshop. This project also plans to create a mapping of all the languages spoken in Calabria, “starting from the historical linguistic minorities of this region – Greko, Arbëreshë, and Occitan – whose survival was put to an extreme test after masses of people emigrated over the last century - up to the new languages that enrich our ever-evolving identity, such as Kurdish, Arabic, Hindi, Tigrinya, Yoruba, etc.”
2. Save our Navajo language: The 1st Navajo-English Children’s Educational Show
“Like many Navajo tribal members, my parents were part of the boarding school syndrome and were abused and punished if they spoke their traditional Diné or Navajo language. I wasn’t raised to speak my language, so I would be more successful in life, is what my parents were told. Because it was important to me, I took Navajo language classes at the University of New Mexico and even then it was considered a foreign language”.
“Media has become the new form of storytelling and through it we can achieve learning objectives. Mass media has been seen as detrimental to indigenous ways of life by taking away precious time from learning from elders. As our different cultures grow and change, adaptations can occur to ensure the survival of indigenous languages.”
Dr. Shawna L. Begay and Charmaine Jackson want to create a children’s TV show in the style of Sesame Street that helps children learn Navajo. This fundraiser was started in November 2017 and they have already about half of the money needed, and they’ve already started producing the first puppets that will be used in the show. Make a donation to help them be able to continue it.
3. La Bressola: provide quality education in Catalan in Northern Catalonia (state of France). You can only donate to this from the states of France or Spain.
Since Spain sold Northern Catalonia to France, separating it from the rest of the lands inhabited by Catalan people, France has imposed the French language through brutal humiliation and repression. All the indigenous languages of France (Catalan, Breton, Occitan, Basque, Arpitan, Corsican, etc) have endured a harsh process of language substitution, to the point that many of them are on the brink of extinction if we don’t act soon.
The school system has been the central element of the Great Linguistic Genocide of France. Even nowadays, the French government prohibits that public schools teach in their local languages instead of French. In fact, statistics show that in Northern Catalonia more than a 75% of the population would want Catalan to be more present in schools, but only 3% of the kids in schooling age have access to Bressola schools. And the few who can have access to Catalan in another way do it with resources from Southern Catalonia learning the standard Central Catalan variety, meaning that Septemprional Catalan (the local variety from Northern Catalonia) is getting lost.
La Bressola is a group of schools in Northern Catalonia that teach in the Catalan language. They have been working since 1976, and the schools have grown in number of students and centers thanks to their great innovative education methods and linguistic immersion. Every time, more and more people want their children to attend these schools, but the French government is making it impossible, because they don’t allow them concessions or aid. This results in huge waiting lists and hundreds of lost opportunities of creating new native speakers.
You can also help by signing this letter to the French minister of education.
4. yUdjEha gO'wAdAnA-A k'ak'ânEchE (Yuchi language project): Revitalize the Yuchi language for future generations.
Yuchi is the language of the Yuchi people, a Native American culture originary from the Tennessee River Valley but who nowadays live in Oklahoma. Yuchis are not recognised as a tribe by the government of the United States, which means that they get no funding.
“The Yuchi Language Project is a model program for language and cultural revitalization. Using the most effective immersion methods in schools and more, the Yuchi Language Project is seeing children once again speak Yuchi at home, school, church, and at our Yuchi Ceremonial Grounds for the first time in nearly a century. The program earned the Oklahoma Humanities Award for Education in 2013. YLP has partnerships with over 12 local and regional organizations including the Tribal Languages Center at Bacone College. YLP provides training for and collaborates with other Native American language programs in Oklahoma, Alaska, Florida, Minnesota, and Norway.”
5. Pellwolok an Gernewegva – the Cornish Language Television service: provision of a sustainable internet-based television service in Kernewek, the Cornish language.
“Kernewek has been without its own bespoke service ever since the revival of the language began. Pellwolok an Gernewegva has been established as a first step in addressing this lack of content and in providing speakers, learners and the wider cultural community with an online channel which produces regular output in Kernewek.
This service has been running over the past year and a half on a completely voluntary basis and now produces a series of walking shows, the first chat-show and a monthly news magazine. It is watched by Cornish speakers in Cornwall, of course, but also in other parts of the UK, Europe and around the world.
Our aim is to attract funding and thereby set up a small base studio which will allow us to include more volunteers in the project and offer them training in media skills. From this, we want to develop a Kernewek output which improves fluency and offers learners and children the essential programme material they need to grow them in the language.
There is also the possibility that we could convert this content into shows for use in other minority languages and thus generate a revenue stream. This is now a real possibility because the internet allows such content to be dispersed more easily from Youtube and Facebook via Smart TV apps.
Kernewek, one of Britain’s indigenous languages, is recognised by UNESCO as being ‘critically endangered’. The number of speakers is, however, growing at a significant rate, and by supporting this project you can play your part in taking the language a further step away from the danger zone. You will be helping to provide a public service and helping to underwrite Cornwall’s distinctiveness. Above all, this is about Cornish being a modern language with a secure future, spoken by a growing community of all ages.”
6. Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project:
“Reclaiming our language is one means of repairing the broken circle of cultural loss and pain. To be able to understand and speak our language means to see the world as our families did for centuries. This is but one path which keeps us connected to our people, the earth, and the philosophies and truths given to us by the Creator.” -- Jessie ‘little doe’ Baird, Project Founder.
“Through the processes of religious conversion, laws against the use of the language, mainstream education, and commerce, the Wampanoag language ceased to be spoken around the time period of the mid-19th century. There were no fluent speakers of the language for six generations; over 150 years. The Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project began in 1993 under the direction of Jessie 'little doe' Baird who earned a Master’s Degree in Algonquian Linguistics from MIT in 2000. Through the joint collaborative efforts of members of The Assonet Band of Wampanoag, The Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Wampanoag Tribe of Aquinnah and the Herring Pond Band of Wampanoag, the project aims to return fluency to the Wampanoag Nation as a principal means of expression.
The project successes to date are:
The only inter-tribal cooperative project for the tribes of the Wampanoag
The credentialed training of two Wampanoag linguists
Over fifteen certified language teachers
The development of a dictionary that currently holds over 11,000 words
The development of curriculum for second language acquisition of adult learners
The development of a no English curriculum for all ages
Immersion camp curriculum for all ages
3-Week Summer Youth ‘Turtle’ Program for youth ages 5 – 13
Community language classes held in Mashpee, Aquinnah, Plymouth, New Bedford and Boston
The first American Indian language to reclaim a Language with no living speakers.
There is a young child now being raised with Wampanoag as a first language. She is the first Native speaker of the language since the mid 19th century”
7. ʻAha Pūnana Leo (The Hawaiian Language Shall Live):
This organization offers non-profit preschool in Hawaiian language, culture and values; online courses of Hawaiian language; an infant and toddler program to help families who want to make the Hawaiian language the primary language of their home.
They worked to remove the law that banned indigenous languages from being teached in the schools in the USA (which was in place until 1986). The Pūnana Leo preschools were the first immersion program in an indigenous language in the United States. The first opened in 1984, and now there are 11 preschools located in 5 of the Hawaiian islands.
