Indigenous languages

Expedition into the savannah and jungle to look for a lost language

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(Spanish version, translated by Jonathan Mastai Husum, can be found here)

Our islands bear twisting names in fading tongues

Whose meanings now escaped our young

                  Basil Rodrigues, Spanish Arawak from Guyana, in his poem Santa Rosa

Around a year ago, I published this article on Lingoblog on whether linguists can prevent a war. I had written it after the Venezuelan supreme leader and his government had claimed two thirds of their neighboring country Guyana. The dictator’s parliament also supported the land claim, and now that area is listed as “contested” in several places. Sad, because the Spanish and the Venezuelans never really had shown any presence in that part of the world.

The land claim, and the … ↪

Basque as an (imperfect) window into the past

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Today is International Day of the Basque Language, which we celebrate at Lingoblog with an article by Iván Igartua.

Being a language isolate in Europe is a strenuous condition, often fraught with vicissitudes. There are over 150 genetically isolated languages in the world (for which no relatives have been found thus far), but I would venture that none of them has inspired so many hypotheses of all sorts about its remote origin and possible genetic connections as the Basque language. Albeit thoroughly unconvincingly, Basque has been alternately related to Etruscan, Burushaski, Pictish, Chinese, the Celtic group of Indo-European languages, the Berber and Caucasian languages, the Na-Dene linguistic phylum, or the Uralic and Paleo-Siberian languages, among many others. Some otherwise serious … ↪

Expanding Greenlandic Language to Support 2SLGBTQIA+ Terminology and challenging the colonial heteronormativity

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Greenlandic is a language which is rich in cultural heritage, and it is currently evolving to be more inclusive by developing words and terms for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. This is a big step, enabling all queer Inuits in Greenland to express themselves in their native language.

Last year, Sipineq+ (a volunteer association for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Greenland) started this important work. They teamed up with three volunteer translators to create a list of 132 words and terms which cover the wide range of identities and experiences in the 2SLGBTQIA+ spectrum. They collaborated continuously and discussed their suggestions on what these terms could be in Greenlandic and they explained the meaning to our volunteer translators. This helped the translators to … ↪

World Endangered Writing Day: January 23rd, 2024

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World Endangered Writing Day was born out of a suggestion by David Crystal, the author of The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, and many other books on language topics.

He was reading through the manuscript of my new book Writing Beyond Writing: Lessons from Endangered Alphabets, and came to the passage where I say that in traditional Balinese culture one day a year, the day consecrated to Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, Balinese revere their books, and writing itself.

Nothing written may be destroyed, or even a letter crossed out. Each household takes out its books (which in Balinese tradition are oblong pages of palm leaf, written on with a stylus and then bound between wooden slats), dusts them off, … ↪

Indigenous languages ​​in Brazil and the Corona epidemic.

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Soon after the start of the corona pandemic, the Associação Brasileira de Linguística (ABRALIN) initiated a virtual lecture and workshop series entitled Abralin ao Vivo: Linguists Online. The many wonderful contributions, from budding local talents to international celebrities (including Peter Bakker from Denmark), have been recorded on the website and can be watched again. Brazil is of course well represented in the program, and the indigenous languages ​​are often featured. Brazil has up to 160 different Amerindian languages, of which around 120 are spoken in the Amazon. Virtually all of Brazil’s indigenous languages ​​are in danger of extinction due to factors such as the small size population groups, the appeal of the Portuguese language, and the physical … ↪

A Brief History of the Canadian Language Museum or How a Posting on Linguist List Changed My Life

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On June 8, 2007 a posting was distributed on Linguist List with the following subject line: “An International Language Museum in Denmark”. I was teaching Linguistics at the University of Toronto at the time and received many messages from Linguist List daily, but this one caught my eye. I had never heard of a language museum before, and my first thought was ‘A language museum! If any country should have a language museum, Canada should have a language museum!’ There are more than 60 Indigenous languages in Canada; early European settlers brought both English and French, now the country’s official languages, and more recent immigrants have brought hundreds of languages from around the world. Issues, debates and conflicts … ↪

Tevfik Esenç & Ubykh: cenaze – begrafenis – begravelse – funeral

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TÜRKÇE: Ünlü Kafkas Ubihca dilinin son abidelerinden (konuSan) olan Tevfik Esenç, 7 Ekim 1992 hayatini kaybetti ve son yolculuğuna uğurlandi. Sadece danimarkali Ole Stig Andersen son fotoğraflari Cekebildi. Bu kendince bir ilk ve Tevfik Esenc kendisiyle  beraber ünlü Ubihca dilinin  ( kendine özgü 80 ünsüz sesli olan Ubihca) sonsuza veda etmesi oldu. Türkçe nin 22 ünsüz sesi bulunuyor.

ENGLISH: On the 7th of October 1992, Tevfik Esenç, the last speaker of the famous Caucasian language Ubykh, passed away. He was buried that same day. Ole Stig Andersen from Denmark was there. He was the only one who took pictures. These unique pictures are shown here for the very first time. With his photos, Ole Stig Andersen recorded a special event … ↪