Small languages

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 … ↪

Reviving an indigenous language: an interview with Daniel Huircapán

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Navarro 3 Zoom af kort

In August this year I read an article in the Argentinian newspaper Página 12 about the National Conference of Indigenous Languages held in Argentina. Unfortunately, the article was quite lacking in information about the Conference itself and about the linguistic work done by Daniel Huircapán, who was mentioned in the article. I thought this was too bad, because his work sounded very interesting – so I decided to contact him myself by email. On the 3rd of September 2019 I did a Skype interview with Daniel Huircapán who is a member of the Günün a Küna indigenous community in Argentina. He is one among a small group of people (mostly natives) who since 2007 have immersed themselves in the … ↪

Culture and language of the Kalasha

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kalashabook

Denmark has a special connection with the Kalasha people in northern Pakistan. The Danish scholar of religious sciences Halfdan Siiger visited the Kalasha people in 1948, and he wrote a book – not yet published – about their religion. Later, the anthropologists Mytte Fentz and Svend Castenfeldt undertook field work in the Kalasha valleys. They wrote several articles and books about their observations, in particular Myth Fentz’s wonderful book The Kalasha: Mountain People of the Hindu Kush, published in Denmark at Forlag Rhodes.

The Moesgaard Museum in Aarhus possesses a lot of objects from the people, including some gand’aw, or wooden sculptures of ancestors. In addition, Copenhagen linguist Ida Mørch and Jan Heegård visited the area and studied … ↪

Ragnarǫk at the University of Copenhagen? The ideology of closing down smaller language programmes

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Johannes gehrts ragnarok mindre

The closure of Old Norse, Old Danish, modern Icelandic, and Faroese as elective courses at the University of Copenhagen is sad news indeed, that has also been covered also in the daily press. That this is a deeply misguided decision will almost certainly be self-evident to readers of Lingoblog. 

Ideological absurdity

There is an obvious absurdity that the oldest university in Denmark will not offer medieval Danish. Or that a world-class Old Norse research institute (Den Arnamagnæanske håndskriftsamling) will no longer offer teaching in Old Norse. Or that the same institute, which is a joint Danish-Icelandic venture, should no longer offer teaching in modern Icelandic. I expect that I will not need to convince you either that this is … ↪