Successes |
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Me'phaa | Maori |
Catalan | Frisian |
Mohawk | Literacy |
In 1992, Weathers re-visited Ilianteco, and was amazed to find the difference in language use and attitudes. He writes, "In spite of the fact that the town has become more 'modern' than many Me'phaa towns, with electricity, schools, clinics, regular passenger service to the outside, and even satellite dishes, children were talking Me'phaa in the streets, and shop keepers and sophisticated looking citizens alike were glad to talk to me in their language" (Weathers, p.c.). Although people could speak Spanish better than they could before, they had switched back to Me'phaa.
How did this revitalization happen? It began when some of the influential Me'phaa leaders spearheaded a back-to-Me'phaa movement. Weathers speculates that after they achieved some status in, and some of the benefits of, the Spanish-speaking society, they realized they wanted to keep their Me'phaa identity and language. Positive attitudes toward being Me'phaa were the driving force behind this shift back to their native language.
The most effective thing they did was get rid of the Spanish-speaking teachers, and replace them with Me'phaa ones. Now speaking Me'phaa became a requirement rather than a liability when it came to getting a teaching job. ...
The Maori language project is interesting because it has succeeded
in dramatically slowing the shift toward English by using immersion
schools for all age-groups.
The Maoris perceived that the key to reviving Maori was to teach the children before they went to school in English. Rather than wait for the government to do something, the Maoris took matters into their own hands. A meeting of Maori leaders, sponsored by the Department of Maori Affairs in 1981, suggested the establishment of all-Maori-language preschool groups, in which fluent Maoris mostly volunteers would conduct the programmes and make up for the fact that the majority of Maori parents could no longer speak their language (Spolsky 1990:122). These were called 'kohanga reos' or 'language nests'.
The local Maori communities were in charge or organizing and implementing these language nests, and the Department of Maori Affairs provided some encouragement and financial support. These locally-controlled projects boomed from four language nests in 1982 to nearly five hundred in 1987.
"The effect of the kohanga reos cannot be exaggerated. Where six years ago a bare handful of children came to primary school with any knowledge of the Maori language, now each year between 2000 and 3000 children, many of them fluent bilinguals, start school after having already been exposed to daily use of the Maori language for three or more years" (Spolsky 1990:123). Of importance is not only the length of their exposure to Maori, but the age of their exposure. They are exposed to Maori culture and language before they have been strongly impacted by English language and culture.
The success of the Maori project has not been limited to preschools. There is also a strategy for the primary schools. Maori parents hope to add class after class, as new children arrive year after year from kohanga reos, until a completely Maori school exists (Fishman 1991:241). As a result of this strategy, Maori is starting to become available as a language of instruction in New Zealand primary schools, a move recognized by the Department of Education. These bilingual classes are not as successful in secondary school, and only some of the courses are taught in Maori. There is even a bilingual post-secondary institution, Makoura College, to instruct bilingual teachers (Spolsky 1990:124).
A major problem with the Maori bilingual programs is the big gap in knowledge of Maori between the children from the language nests and those who are not. Right now those children are only in primary school, but soon they will be in secondary and post-secondary schools. There is an urgent need to develop teaching material in Maori at higher levels. Spolsky notes, "When the five-year-old starts secondary school in seven or eight years, his level of knowledge of Maori and fluency in it will be far ahead of the children completing secondary school now: the enormity of the challenge is obvious" (Spolsky 1990:127). However, the Maori teachers, with minimal resources and working often against established administrative patterns, are starting to build a blueprint, pioneering their way into the new domain of Maori education.
In addition to schools and preschools, the Maori language project has been successful in reviving the language among the adults. One method, called the aatarangi, teaches those who are already Maori speakers (mostly grandparents) to become language teachers (Fishman 1991:237).
Interacting with the aatarangi movement is the Family Development Program (Tu Tangata Whanau). This program establishes urban neighborhood centers where Maori is spoken. Their goal is to re-establish Maori cultural norms of hospitality, caring, spirituality and sharing behavioral norms for which the spoken Maori language is considered essential (Fishman 1991:237).
There are Maori immersion programs for adults, too. These adult immersion programs take place on marae, which are like recreational and cultural centers in Maori communities. The courses usually last about one week. Before entering the course, the adults are asked to prepare some survival phrases in Maori because, during the course, the use of English in completely banned. The students survive with the help of their dictionaries and with pantomime.
There are about 30-35 students in each course, which usually is divided into three groups at three different levels. The groups join for some activities and separate for others. Activities include everything from lectures, to sweeping the floor, to giving a speech. ...
The adult immersion programs have been successful. They have resulted in adults speaking much more Maori, which in turn feeds into the children's immersion experience. The course has also become recognized in academic circles. It is part of the degree program at Te Wananga o Raukawa, a Maori college (Nicholson 1989:110). ...
The Maori language project has been a success that has defied all the experts' predictions. It has succeeded because of its unique immersion programs particularly its "language nests". It has also succeeded because it was a project that was conceived entirely by the Maori people.
In 1716 Philip V forbade the use of Catalán (Paulston 1987:49). The result of this repression was that by the end of the 19th century, Catalán was a dying language, spoken monolingually only in the villages, and giving way to Spanish even in the center, Barcelona. But in the early twentieth century a group of intellectuals and poets succeeded in reviving the language in conjunction with a movement to promote Catalán nationalism (Wardhaugh 1986:353). After the nationalist movement failed in 1923, Catalán was suppressed for many years. In 1939, Generalisimo Franco banned Catalán from any kind of public use in the street, in schools, in the mass media, in the administration, in the law courts, in cultural production, in social and economic circles, etc. (Alemany 1992:2).
The shame and inferiority formerly associated with Catalán seem to have been banished. The result of this latest revival has been an increase of Catalán speakers at the spectacular rate of 43,000 new speakers a year. The number of Catalán speakers of all ethnic groups is increasing, and this increase is not only biological. It is a result of an intentional government program which encourages Spanish speakers to switch to Catalán. A 1986 census indicated that a higher percentage of young people from 15 - 19 years speak Catalán than the older generation. 64% of the general population speaks Catalán, but 78.2% of the young people (Alemany 1992:1). The higher percentage of young speakers indicates that society is shifting toward the use of Catalán.
Language became an issue in Friesland (the Dutch province where Frisian is primarily spoken) in the nineteenth century. At that time, an active Frisian movement embarked on a very successful Frisian language project. The reasons for this project are rooted in a desire to preserve the uniqueness of the Frisian culture. A 1979 Frisian news item stated, "Many Frisian see themselves as 'an ancient and freedom-loving people' who are constantly involved in 'wrenching concessions from a highly centralized and essentially foreign government'" (quoted in Fasold 1984:311).
During the 1970s, the Mohawk people of
Kahnawake in Quebec -- a native reserve on the outskirts
of Montreal -- were experiencing the decline of their
language, which had been replaced by French and then by English.
In 1978 the province of Quebec enacted Bill 101, the French
language charter, which curtailed education and services
in languages other than French. Fighting for the survival of their
language and culture, the Kahnawake Mohawk established the Kanien'kehaka
Raotitiohkwa Cultural Center to preserve their cultural heritage.
In addition, in 1980 they established a Mohawk immersion program
modelled on French immersion programs elsewhere in Quebec, in order
to reintroduce the use of the language to younger people in the
community. This was the first Aboriginal language immersion program
in Canada, and it has since become a model for other Aboriginal communities
in North America. Recent research on the use of Mohawk language in
Kahnawake has shown that the immersion program has had a positive effect
on the knowledge and use of Mohawk in the community:
Through the control of its school system, which enabled the community to introduce a Mohawk immersion program for elementary school children, this effort has proven largely successful by three measures: 1) a rise in the ability to speak Mohawk [especially among those less than twenty years old who went through the immersion program], (2) an increase in the mixing of Mohawk with English; and (3) an increase in the private speaking of Mohawk among the youngest people surveyed. The Mohawk language now enjoys a central place in the soul of the community - an indication of both the success of the revitalization efforts and the tight link between language and cultural identity in this community.
A handicap to the full revival of the language, however, is the fact that a middle generation (i.e. people in their twenties and thirties) do not know the language and have not learned it, which makes full revitalization difficult.
(Information from: Hoover, M.L. and the Kanien'kahaka Raotitiohkwa Cultural Centre, 1992. The Revival of the Mohawk Language in Kahnawake. Canadian Journal of Native Studies. 12(2). pp. 269 - 282.)
Most language projects almost instinctively emphasize literacy. In India, the government gives prizes for writers who prepared Hindi materials for the newly literate. Navajo teachers are producing literacy materials needed for their language project (Reyhner 1990:108). Nearly everyone in the province of Catalunya is being taught to read Catalán. The Me'phaa are targeting literacy with the "Me'phaa 2000" program, which aims to have 2000 works in Me'phaa by the year 2000. ...
The number of Basque newspapers is growing, indicating an increase in literacy. This is significant, because traditionally Basque is only an oral language. There are volunteers who have translated hundreds of specialized volumes into Basque. These efforts have resulted in a Basque university, which now teaches a third of its curriculum in Basque. "For the first time in history, there are young Basque intellectuals who are embarking on academic careers in Basque rather than only in Spanish or French" (Fishman 1991:178).
A literacy project can also give a language permanence. Cherokee and Mohawk are two Amerindian languages which have a long history or contact with Europeans, and also a long literary tradition (Crawford 1989:8). That these languages survive when other Amerindian languages surrounding them have not is a testimony to the staying power that literacy gives a language. In general, languages with literary traditions survive longer than languages with oral traditions only. ...
Literacy has been instrumental in the Kaurna revival project in the plains of Adelaide, Australia. Kaurna is an aboriginal language which ceased being used on a daily basis in the 1860's. The last speaker died in 1929. Although it is almost unheard of for a language that has gone out of all use to be revived, Kaurna appears to be such a case. ...
Since the time of Franco, the Basques have had Basque-immersion private schools, called ikastolas. The ikastolas have had a great impact on the teens. "Relative to their parents, 14- to 18-year-olds are strikingly ahead in claiming to know some Basque (50% vs. 17 %)" (Fishman 1991:180). The future of Basque looks better than its past, because the revival efforts have had an impact on the age-group most likely soon to begin families of their own. ...
Arapaho is a North American Indian language spoken in Wyoming and Oklahoma... [T]he language has had a small revival (an increase of at least four speakers) due to an immersion project that was unrelated to the educational system. The Arapahos took two sets of women with babies to live with the two elderly women who spoke the language. Two years later, the children and their parents are able to speak fluent Arapaho (Peter Jacobs, personal communication). If the mothers continue their contact with the elders, and if they continue speaking Arapaho only to their children, Arapaho may continue to exist as a living language. This project highlights the fact that there is no language which is so far gone, that nothing can be done with it. It also shows the effectiveness of immersion and mother tongue transmission. ...
Fasold, Ralph. 1984. Sociolinguistics of Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Fishman, Joshua. 1980. Minority Language Maintenance and the Ethnic Mother Tongue School. Modern Language Journal. Volume 64, No. 2. 167-172.
__________.1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.
Nicholson, Rangi. 1989. Maori Total Immersion Courses for Adults in Aotearoa / New Zealand: A Personal Perspective. In Reyhner 1989:95-106.
Spolsky, Bernard. 1990. Maori Bilingual Education and Language Revitalization. Vox. Issue No. 4.