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Language brought back to life | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6718 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 27 27 November 2011 at 6:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wampanoag Language
I saw this documentary on PBS. It was fascinating. Before learning the language of her ancestors, she reportedly had a dream in which people were speaking to her in that language. They kept repeating one particular word/phrase that she later learned meant "We still live here." Then there were the handwritten notes in the language describing the impact of the diseases brought from Europe, the loss of their land, etc. She went to graduate school to study linguistics (under professor Ken Hale) in order to revive the language. She is truly a remarkable woman. Excerpt from the documentary: We still live here Edited by translator2 on 27 November 2011 at 7:18pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Humdereel Octoglot Groupie United States Joined 4777 days ago 90 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written), Turkish, Persian, Urdu Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 27 27 November 2011 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Captivating, simply captivating. It's great to learn that a language has been given the chance to be revived. Makes me want to learn Wampanoag.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6381 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 3 of 27 27 November 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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That's really awesome! So wonderful to find languages that go against the trend. I'm a bit sceptical of the
romanticism ("The sun is inanimate, therefore our people knew that the earth revolves around the sun"), and the newsreader's dead eyes freak me out, but those are minor details in an otherwise wonderful clip. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mjhowie1992 Diglot Newbie AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4979 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 4 of 27 04 December 2011 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose Hebrew was nearly at this stage at one point. I haven't read much about how Hebrew nearly died, and
then underwent the great revival, so is anybody able to fill me in on how this all happened? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4571 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 5 of 27 04 December 2011 at 11:49am | IP Logged | ||
Perhaps a significant reason why the revival of Hebrew was such a success, was the fact that it was the only language that was common to all Jewish communities. Not all Jews had Yiddish as their first language, so nation building would have been more problematic if it were chosen as the national language. Compare that to the situation with Irish. Since nearly all Irish people speak English they don't really need the Irish language unless they live in a Gaeltacht, so there is little incentive for the residents of Dublin and Cork to get fully proficient in it or use it in their daily lives. This actually makes me wonder if the Hebrew revival project could have succeeded if it was launched now, rather than a century ago - could it have out-competed English as the lingua franca of a more internationalized and secularized Jewry? Another interesting aspect of language revival is the effect the first languages of the "revivers" have on the revived language. There is a controversial viewpoint in Hebrew linguistics that Modern Hebrew is not the same language as Biblical Hebrew. Paul Wexler argues that it's an Indo-European language relexified with Semitic words, while Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that it is a hybrid language - http://www.zuckermann.org/mosaic.html Edited by vonPeterhof on 04 December 2011 at 11:53am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| zekecoma Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5143 days ago 561 posts - 655 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 27 04 December 2011 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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I want to see Latin come back from the dead D:.
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| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6458 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 7 of 27 04 December 2011 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | ||
Si voles, discendum est, acime ;). Though, I do not think that there’s somewhere where that is very likely to happen. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4571 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 8 of 27 04 December 2011 at 4:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apparently this has been done with Sanskrit in some places - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHLIy-WHDew
And there are more villages like that - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_revival However, I am not sure about the value of Sanskrit in modern Indian culture and how that compares to the greatly diminished value of Latin in modern Western cultures, so I cannot tell whether or not this can be viewed as a precedent. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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