Peter Austin has provided an elaborating post on the origin and argument for the concept of a language footprint, and Lauredhel started a lively discussion about the topic at Hoyden About Town (great blog, by the way). I added to the discussion there, but thought I'd post some of those comments here too - since we're all about ecological consciousness at the mo, recycling seems in order:
As for my own language footprint? I wonder whether it’s really as small as I would like to think. I’m a native English speaker in Australia. I speak Dutch, German, Spanish and a bit of Portuguese and French. These are all European, of course. I want to learn some more world languages, in particular, Hindi. This still doesn't do much for my language footprint. I also document Australian indigenous languages, one in particular: Dalabon. I can speak it *fairly* comfortably now, but more often than not, speak Kriol or English with the Dalabon people I work with. While all the documentation activity may reduce my language footprint, speaking Kriol with Dalabon people surely undoes most of that ‘good’ work.
That I speak Kriol with Dalabon people surely gets at the socio-linguistic heart of the matter: the desire to connect with other human beings, and when this can be done more efficiently in one language than another, good intentions give way to efficiency. It requires phenomenal discipline to overcome this, and this is the aim of the master-apprentice scheme, as recently discussed on the RNLD list.
In my favour - and towards reducing my language footprint, I do engage in some activities which may mitigate against my use of Kriol. The very activity of documenting Dalabon creates a domain in which the language is spoken, given it is otherwise largely silent. Transcribing the recordings has also greatly improved the Dalabon of my main consultant. Another tick. I also lecture Dalabon students enrolled in Certificate 1 in Own Language Work at Batchelor. Hopefully these activities will go some way towards revitalising the language. Of course, me speaking it more with my consultants, and encouraging them to do the same with their children is the golden standard.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
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9 comments:
Bulanjdjan Maïa wrote:
Hi Bulanjdjan!
If I may say, I think your language footprint may be better than you think.
This is because we may need to add an idea of relativity to the concept of language footprint.
Domination is relative. As a speaker of French, I may be considered to impose French in some contexts (eg. in philosophy – which is one of my activities , Italian philosophers would use French rather than Italian), but on the other hand, there is a high pressure of English upon French. This is striking on facebook for instance.
In my job as an editor, one of my duties is to organise practically and financially translations of English books into French. It never occurred to me that this could improve my language foot print until recently. Due to the cost of oil and raw materials, these translations are becoming financially dodgy, to the point that I’m wondering whether they will remain sustainable. The books we translate are highly specialised field guide books on fauna and flora. If we can’t translate them, specialists (and others) will buy them in English. The vernacular French names of animals and plants may get written off rapidly. Then we can imagine that scholars, university teachers in natural sciences may eventually drop French in their activities, since they will have to rely on English books anyway. This could happen in a range of disciplines: economics, mathematics… Then we can imagine that only a few specific topics (literature, history, philosophy) will be in French. And so on…
This piece of science fiction, of linguistic fiction, occurred to mean while I was working on a very tight translation budget. It showed me that I may actually be improving my language footprint when I help in translating books from English into French. Of course, the process is not the same when we translate from Danish into French. But this is relative, and language diversity can also be, to some extent and in some context, the diversity of “relatively dominant” languages.
This is also why I try writing my facebook status up dates in French sometimes, although I can tell you it sounds extremely awkward (French doesn’t sound suitable for it; interesting…).
Hence my point is that as long as you also speak Dutch and German, your foot print cannot be that bad. Of course, this is not enough, and I feel I have to open that unexpected domain in endangered language.
Marrûh-mah djah-yin yabok-ngan? Kardu ngarrah-menmen-niyan French, Dutch, German mahkih?
Yuwai, brabli gudwan aidiya bla kipgon yusimbat difrendifrenwan langgus olataim. If yu luk la main blog yu gin faindim sambala post weya ai bin raidim garrim Kriol. And why not, we shouldn't just be writing about language, we should be writing IN language
Bulanjdjan Maïa wrote:
Yuwei, garra Sarah, wan minbala imeil gija, minbalab traim raidimbat brom Dalabon. Bad la im blog ai bin dink modeba wi shudbi raidim brom munanga, najawei dad najamob kan sabi wad wi toktok. O wi garra trensleit matbi.
Yeah, with Sarah, when we email each other, we write in Dalabon (as much as we can), but on other occasions English is appropriate for others to understand.
But translation is an option!
Another good idea would be to start inserting common and key words from minority or other languages into English texts/posts/comments/whatever. This would at least reduce the footprint of each English text and give those who don't sabi that language so well a chance to start picking up a few words. Im rait lagijat? Kah-mon?
Yeah, kah-mon. I have a fantastic book which is called 'A Short History of New Zealand', by Gordon McLachlan. It's written in Pākehā, but has a lot of Māori words in the text, without translation or explanation. I loved it, except when I couldn't figure out what the word meant!! I think it was written for a (Pākehā) Kiwi audience, who could reasonably be expected to know the Māori words being used.
Bulanjdjan Maïa said:
Kah-mon, bah kardu ngurrah-monwoyan dulu lorrk-no.
I think it's a good idea, but we need to be very careful how we do this because we might end up with empty tokens (like dreamtime or even Tjukurrpa), or just loosing the specificity.
Eg. if I start using kirribuk (Dalabon) for true, I'm not sure how I can remind others that this actually means "generous" as well.
I think it's important to translate.
Kardu kah-mon, kardu kahke! Mak ngah-bengkan, ngah-njirrk! Maybe yes, maybe nothing. I don't know, I don't have a clear view about it.
But I'll try!
I think kahke would be a good one to start with?
Ai bin luk yu sekanwan peregref weya yu bin pudum lis bla ola langgwuj yu toktok. Yu neba bin pudum tharran langgwuj yu toktok oldeioldei garra yu Dalabon spikamob - Kriol. Mi rekan yu gin yujum Kriol bla konekt garra tharran Dalabonmob (yu bin tok lagijat lida, ngi?). Tharran Dalabonmob sabi yu gadim bigeswan rispek bla tharran traditional langgwuj dumaji. En yu 'encourage'imbat olabat bla tok olabat ron langgwuj.
I saw you didn't list Kriol as one of the languages you speak. I think you can use Kriol to connect with the Dalabon speakers (like you said later on?). So Dalabon speakers know you value traditional language, and you're encouraging them to speak their language.
I s'pose I'm trying say don't undervalue your speaking Kriol with Dalabon speakers. If you can communicate your ideas in Dalabon, then do so. But I think speaking in Kriol is much better than, say, speaking in English (which can create language barriers, it isn't the speakers' first language dumaji). Using Kriol makes you linguistic expertise more accessible for first language Kriol speakers.
Thanks, hooch, that's an interesting point about using Kriol to transfer linguistic expertise. (And by that I assume you mean 'this is how you can learn about your language and document it'?)
Bulanjdjan Maïa and I manage to write to each other in Dalabon every so often (I believe I was the one to last drop the email-ball...), and it's interesting to see how far we can (and can't!) get. Especially cos we sometimes have non-overlapping vocabulary!
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