#iyil2019

[superlinguo]

Describing grammar for language learners: Living Languages Learners Guide for Pama-Nyungan revitalisation

Living Languages have created a Learners Guide grammar template, for people who want to create language-learning materials for their language. The Learners Guide is written in plain English, and includes extensive information about what could be included, and how to talk about it. The guide is designed for Pama-Nyungan languages, the most wide-spread language family in Australia.

From the Living Languages website:

The template has been written with Pama-Nyungan revitalisation languages in mind. We hope it will be used and adapted by communities for their own needs - giving life to, and showcasing the individuality and beauty of, their languages. It has been created for people to make it their own and share their language in a way that would best suit their community of language speakers and future generations.  

The reference group has designed this resource as a tool for Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people working on their own languages. Please respect the people who are the authority for the language and follow their wishes and protocols if you are not from the language community.

We would like to keep a record of who has a copy of the template, so that if we make any updates or additional resources, or find any errors, we  can let you know.

The Learners Guide was a major project for Living Language in 2019. They had a team of people writing and reviewing the document. I helped out with some of the general sections – after writing a descriptive grammar it was an interesting challenge to help with a grammar specifically for learners.

The Learners Guide template document can be requested from Living Languages through their website. The materials have been specifically written with Australian languages in mind, but it could be adapted if you’re working on creating resources for other communities. 

[linguaphiliax]

The Value of First Languages

[allthingslinguistic]

British Sign Language is one of 11 indigenous languages in the UK. The use of signed communication in the UK can be traced back at least to the 17th century. The parish record of St Martin’s Parish in Leicestershire mentions that in 1575 Thomas Tillsye, who was deaf, used signs “for the expression of his minde instead of words” during his wedding ceremony. In his account of the great fire of London in 1666, the famed diarist Samuel Pepys mentions one of Sir George Downing’s informants, a deaf boy, who recounted news about the fire using signs: “And he made strange signs of the fire … and many things they understood, but I could not.” Sign languages evolve naturally when a community has enough deaf members. Sometimes this happens because of a high incidence of deafness in a certain region, as in the case of Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (now extinct) in the US, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language in Israel, Ban Khor Sign Language in Thailand, Yucatec Mayan Sign Language in Mexico, and Kata Kolok in Indonesia. These are examples of village sign languages, and they can teach us a lot about inclusion: deaf community members are well integrated into the community because everyone, deaf and hearing, uses the sign language. Other sign languages have emerged when deaf children get together in educational settings, such as residential schools. For example, when deaf children from all parts of Nicaragua first came together at schools for the deaf in the early 1980s, attempts to teach them Spanish failed. Instead, they created a new sign language, now known as Nicaraguan Sign Language.

Sign languages are fully-fledged, natural languages with their own dialects – they need protecting

[siancore]

State Library’s IYIL2019 Word of the Week: Week 40.

[sgribhisg]

NA DEAN UAILL A T-ATHAIR NO A DO MHÀTHAIR, ACH DEARBHADH DO GHIÙLAN FHÈIN GUR DUIN' UASAL THU.

[Do not boast of your father, or of your mother, But prove by your own conduct that you are a gentleman.]

Bho "Gaelic Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings" by T. D. MacDonald⁣

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[speaknahuatl]

[henrydoeslanguages]

The 14 Indigenous words for money on our new 50 cent coin

A new 50 cent coin features 14 Indigenous words for money, recognising the diversity of Australian Indigenous languages.

i’m usually dismissive of these kinds of (in this case, literally) tokenistic gestures, but I actually think that this could be a good way to inform otherwise completely clueless people that a) yes, there are multiple indigenous languages here can you believe it and b) yes, they are still being spoken

[superlinguo]

2019 Australian 50c coin celebrates International Year of Indigenous Languages

Every year Australia produces a 50c coin to celebrate the theme of the UN International Year. This year it’s the International Year of Indigenous Languages, and a coin has been created with a design that includes the word for ‘coin’ or ‘money’ in 14 different languages.

(image via indigenous.gov.au)

I’ll be keeping my eye out for one, in the mean time there’s an interactive page at the Mint that lets you click on each of the words and learn more about the language. And if you want to make sure some coin goes towards Indigenous languages you could donate to AIATSIS or RNLD.