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Hubert Devonish
Jamaican Language Unit
31st January 2004 |
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| Suriname, with its large number of
small linguistic groups, shows the least signs of
community level activity in the area of protecting
indigenous language. |
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| Macushi/Makushi |
| There is a series of community initiatives
in the preservation of indigenous endangered languages
of Guyana. Miranda La Rose (Stabroek News, April
2, 2003) reports on the launch of two books, a 19-page primer written by Miriam Abbott (2003a,b),
entitled ‘Let’s Read and Write Makushi’,
with illustrations by the Makushi Teachers’
Language Workshops, as well as a beginners’
book with the title ‘My First Grammar Book’
aimed at Makushi-English speakers. According to
the Stabroek News (April 2, 2003), this was the
outcome of a series of four workshops, involving
26 teachers and Makushi researchers, aimed at developing
the teaching of Makushi literacy in primary and
nursery schools in the Rupununi area. As part of
this thrust, a tri-lingual, Makushi-English-Portuguese
dictionary is being developed to cater, not just
for that section of the Makushi population, estimated
at 9,000, living in Guyana where English is the
official language, but also the estimated 14,000
living in Brazil where Portuguese plays that role.
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| Wapishiana/Wapishana |
| Basing themselves on work already
undertaken by linguists from 1967 onwards, the Wapishiana
Writers Workshop, has been in operation. It consists
mainly of teachers who have as their goal the promotion
of literacy in Wapishiana in their schools and communities.
They are reported as having produced a number of
publications in the language (La Rose, 2003), as
many as 20 according to Melville (2003, p. 3). Other
Wapishiana language promotion activities at the
community level have included training nursery school
teachers to read, write and make teaching aids in
Wapishiana. In addition, a Wapishiana dictionary
is being compiled by a speaker of the language,
Collette Melville (GINA, 2003). At the level of
overall language policy and practice, Adrian Gomes,
the coordinator of the Wapishiana Literacy Association
and head teacher of the Aishalton Secondary School
is reported as seeming to favour a formal policy
on native language literacy and bi-lingual education
(GINA, 2003). |
| Lokono (Arawak) |
| Melville (2003, p. 3) reports the
absence of any focused activity in favour of Lokono
(Arawak). He does suggest, however, that some villages
have, from time to time, organised classes. He indicates,
however, that the work of the group organised by
the Catholic Church at Santa Rosa, a Lokono community,
appeared to be developing well. All of this is against
the background of the pioneering work done by Father
John Bennett (19??), a Lokono Anglican priest, who
has produced an Arawak-English dictionary as well
as a set of ten lessons in Lokono. |
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| Garifuna |
| It is difficult to deal with the fate
of Garifuna in Belize without linking it to its
fate in the other countries where it is or has been
spoken. In the country of origin, St Vincent, Langworthy
(n.d. p. 42-46) suggests the last speaker of Vincentian
Garifuna died in 1932. Fortunately for the survival
of the language, the majority of the Garifuna speaking
population of St. Vincent had been deported by the
British to Central America at the end of the 18th
century, as a result of an uprising against the
British. In Central America, the language has thrived
and spread across several countries, notably Guatemala,
Honduras and Belize.
In Honduras, within the ethnic Garifuna community,
some children are L1 Garifuna speakers, others
have passive competence and others have no knowledge
of the language. The state of affairs varies from
one community to another. A bilingual education
programme has been pioneered for Garifuna communities
in Honduras. In Honduras, isolation and the concentration
of the Garifuna community has helped with language
preservation but language shift is taking place
there as well. In the case of Belize, five out
of the six Garifuna communities have reportedly
shifted to Creole. The apparent exception is Hopkins.
A significant a bold step in the area of language
policy with reference to Garifuna was taken when
the Central American Black Organisation (CABO)
issued a declaration in 1997, on the initiative
of the National Garifuna Council of Belize, in
the form of a ‘Language Policy of the Garifuna
Nation’, along with the ‘Garifuna
National Language Preservation Plan’. According
to Langworthy (n.d., p. 45), however, the response
to this quasi-legal framework at the level of
individual communities seems to have been patchy.
Individual communities have initiated small scale
language preservation activities but this has
been localised and limited in its effect. The
trans-national nature of the project and the assumption
that ‘trickle down’ would work has
proven to be false. The suggestion is that the
declaration must be made more widely available
to the Garifuna communities and language maintenance
materials shared across communities. Teachers
and language activists need to meet more regularly
to share materials, strategies and methodologies,
in particular for teaching literacy in Garifuna
and for teaching the language as a second language.
Hopkins has been suggested as the venue for an
immersion summer school programme in the language
for children from communities such as St. Vincent
where the language has been lost.
Significant amongst the developments supporting
Garifuna in Belize is the compilation of Garifuna-English
English-Garifuna dictionary (Cayetano 1993). There
is, as well, an orthography which has been agreed
upon for the language by speakers of the language
across the various countries within which the
language is used.
At the level of international recognition, Garifuna
stands out head and shoulders above the other
Caribbean indigenous endangered languages. In
2001, UNESCO declared Garifuna to be one of the
19 masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Cultural
Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO, 2003).
In keeping with its relatively high profile,
Garifuna is the only one of the indigenous languages
under discussion that has significant support
at the level of the Internet and the Worldwide
Web. Links between Garifuna activists across the
various countries in which speakers reside have
been fostered by the GarifunaLink, an e-mail list,
and the Garifuna-World Web site. However, the
vast majority of users of these technological
resources do not reside in Central America and
the Caribbean but rather in North America. The
home communities within which the language still
resides and within which it is threatened, remain
on the periphery of the information and communications
technologies being employed for language preservation.
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| There are community groups representing
indigenous communities in St. Vincent and Dominica
which have expressed an interest in the revival
of Garifuna and Karifuna, the two closely related
Arawakan languages which became extinct in these
two countries in the first decades of the 20th century.
In the case of St. Vincent, there is the potential
for help coming from the Garifuna of Belize and
the rest of Central America. |
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