Leokī: A Powerful Voice of Hawaiian Language Revitalization (original) (raw)
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Pu'a i ka 'Olelo, Ola ka 'Ohana: Three Generations of Hawaiian Language Revitalization
Online Submission, 2007
In the early 1980s, the Hawaiian language had reached its low point with fewer than 50 native speakers of Hawaiian under the age of 18. Outside of the Niÿihau community, a small group of families in Honolulu and Hilo were raising their children through Hawaiian. This article shares the perspectives of three pioneering families of the Hawaiian language revitalization movement over one generation of growth, change, and transformation. Our living case study stands as a testament for other Hawaiian language families who have endured the challenges of revitalizing the Hawaiian language as the living language of the home, school, and community. The article also celebrates the legacy of the Hawaiian language movement upon the 20th-year anniversary of Hawaiian-medium education within the public sector.
Internet applications for endangered languages: a talking dictionary of Ainu
2011
There are an estimated 6,900 languages spoken in the world today and at least half of them are under threat of extinction. This is mainly because speakers of smaller languages are switching to other larger languages for economic, social or political reasons, or because they feel ashamed of their ancestral language. The language can thus be lost in one or two generations, often to the great regret of their descendants. Over the past ten years a new field of study called “language documentation” has developed. Language documentation is concerned with the methods, tools, and theoretical bases for compiling a representative and lasting multipurpose record of languages. It has developed in response to the urgent need to make an enduring record of the world’s many endangered languages and to support speakers of these languages in their desire to maintain them. It is also fueled by developments in information and media technologies which make documentation and the preservation and dissemin...
Technology and Indigenous Language Revitalization
Indigenous or minority languages around the world have been making use of computer technology for over twenty years now (Zimmerman, Zimmerman, Bruguier, 2000; Warschauer, 1997). Computers have provided improvements upon earlier technologies in efforts to revitalize these languages not only because of the way they can combine audio, text, video and hyperlinks, but also because they release these languages from the notion that they belong in a hermetically sealed past and bring them into a modern context (Warschauer, 1998; McHenry, 2002; Galla, 2009). It is this motivational force that is perhaps the strongest feature of computers in Indigenous Language Revitalization (ILR) efforts, because while technology can help, a living language requires face-to-face communication happening between people (Villa, 2002; Hermes and King, 2013). This paper will discuss how computer technology is being employed in ILR and the conditions that need to be in place for technology to help revitalize not only dying languages, but those already extinct.
CYBERSPACE AND THE PRESERVATION OF INDIGENOUS AND MINORITY LANGUAGES
UNESCO Indigenous Language in Cyberspace Workshop, Yakutsk, July 2019, 2019
Discusses the issue of maintaining indigenous languages through cyberspace, and in particular the question of mapping endangered and other indigenous languages through time. Examples are drawn from Lisu in China, Myanmar, Thailand and India, and from Bisu in China, Myanmar and Thailand.
That the Internet invokes profound opportunities for language educators and students has been long discussed (with some of the better examples published in this very journal). In his 2001 book, Language and the Internet, David Crystal only sporadically mentions educational issues or contexts, but this does not diminish the importance or relevance of this book for applied linguists. Crystal, a prolific linguist who has authored numerous scholarly and reference texts on a variety of language related topics, turns his attention in this volume to the language practices visibly mediated by the Internet. In a personal preface to the volume, he mentions that as a prominent linguist, he has often been asked about what effect the Internet has had on language, a question for which he did not have a clear answer. This prompted him to explore a variety of what he terms "Internet situations," each of which comes to form a chapter in this 272-page volume.
The Fua Le'o Project: Promoting Self-Publication in Polynesian Languages
Reversing Language Shift: How to Re-awaken a Language Tradition, 2010
When use of a language decreases in a certain domain, communities can begin to view their language as irrelevant, stop transmitting their language to the younger generation and have a negative attitude in general about their language. Successful language maintenance and revitalization projects, then, must include efforts to: 1) stabilize and expand the domains in which an endangered language is used, 2) promote intergenerational transmission of the endangered language and 3) foster positive language attitudes among members of an endangered language community. These are precisely the goals that the Fua Le'o (Proto-Polynesian for 'language seed') project aims to achieve through implementing storybook kits for language communities throughout Polynesia. These do-it-yourself kits are designed for distribution to existing language revitalization programs throughout Polynesia. The project has just completed its pilot phase, which tested its impact on Hawaiian immersion school students in grades 3-6 on the island of O'ahu. The pilot study aimed to (1) assess children's enthusiasm for a storybook creation project in their heritage language, and (2) experiment with the feasibility and components of the kits. Results from the pilot study were overwhelmingly positive. Fua Le'o is therefore ready for expansion into Hawai'i and Polynesia at large.
The computer and the canoe: web-based communities across the Pacific Islands
International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2008
Issues relevant to web-based communities in the Pacific Islands are described. A brief geographic and demographic overview is provided, and unique cultural, social and educational challenges are discussed, with particular attention to Hawaii, American Samoa, and Chuuk, Federated States of Micronesia as illustrative cases. The computer and allied web-based technologies are viewed as serving some of the same contemporary functions for voyagers as did the canoe, in the historical voyaging tradition. Projects that aim to address some of the educational and social needs of Pacific Islanders as voyagers at the University of Hawaii and as leaders in their home communities are presented.