Three natives Americans They rack their brains in front of a computer, trying to remember – and record – dozens of words in the Apache language related to everyday activities, such as cooking and eating.
They are creating a digital English-Apache dictionary, one of several projects that aims to preserve indigenous languages at risk of disappearing in the United States.
They work with the computer program “Rapid Word Collection” (RWC), whose algorithm scans Apache written and audio databases to find forgotten words, define them, translate them into English, pronounce them with the appropriate tone, and record them.
Everything serves to bring these practically forgotten languages back to life: children’s books, phone applications or web pages.
Joycelene Johnson, a 68-year-old teacher, and two colleagues have fun validating the word “kapas” which means potato or potato.
Are “Written language apps are fine for students who have a collection” of Apache vocabulary and grammar, explains Johnson.
In the bilingual schools on your reservation there are “a thousand students” but “Only one person in a primary school class is capable of speaking it fluently.”
This workshop on the Apache language is one of many offered by the International Conference for the Documentation, Education and Revitalization of Indigenous Languages (ICILDER), which was held last weekend at Indiana University, in the central United States.
About forty indigenous peoples from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and New Zealand, among others, gathered in the bucolic city of Bloomington, on the occasion of the International Day of Indigenous Peoples in the United States, which has 6 .8 million natives, the 2% of the population.
Linguists, teachers, students, researchers and chiefs debated the recovery of their oral languages, aware of the magnitude of the catastrophe.
4,500 languages threatened
Of the more than 6,000 languages registered in the world, nearly half are in danger of extinction and 1,500 are threatened with immediate disappearance, according to a 2021 study that UNESCO reported last December.
The NGO The Language Conservancy (TLC), which works to protect fifty indigenous languages in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Australia, developed the RWC computer program to create dictionaries in order to preserve this heritage.
With a budget of three million dollars from public and private funds, TLC regularly creates group workshops made up of indigenous and white linguists.
Each group “register 150 words a day, so with ten groups there are 1,500 words and 15,000 every ten days” for each language, explains Wilhelm Meya, founding president of TLC since 2005 and co-organizer of ICILDER.
“Technology allows us to save languages much faster than before. Starting from scratch, we can now create a dictionary in 12 months, compared to 20 years before“says this 51-year-old American anthropologist born in Austria, who defines himself as a “social entrepreneur”who has surrounded himself with linguists.
In most countries with indigenous peoples, native languages are rapidly becoming extinct with the death of the last speakers.
The United States is the country with the highest number of languages threatened with death, 143 out of 219, followed by Canada, with 75 out of 94, according to TLC.
Before the Europeans
Before the arrival of Europeans 500 years ago, nearly 500 indigenous languages were spoken in the United States.
Nowadays, “the situation is really reaching a level of crisis and emergency, since the average age of the last speakers is 75 years”warns Meya.
There are only “a few years to register these languages”warns the expert, who distributes his dictionaries, school books and methods free of charge in public educational institutions in the United States, including Amerindian reservations.
Jacob Chávez, a 26-year-old Cherokee student, declares “delighted” with these new technologies because their language can “develop” among the young “Much faster and for longer” than in the past.
Taltan language teacher Pauline Hawkins feels “really excited and happy to see this dictionary” digital, after his parents contributed to the first paper dictionary in the 1980s.
However, her colleague Dannielle North King, 51, of the Chemehuevi or Nuwuvi tribe, criticizes the “western method” to transcribe their “oral and spoken indigenous language” into written form.
In 2022, Meya was the target of criticism from a Lakota official over the copyright of his editing work.
“We do not own the copyrights or the IP addresses of the languages on which we work”responds the head of TLC.
Regarding the risk of being accused of “cultural appropriation,” Meya responds: “If I were a white doctor with an indigenous patient, would I be prevented from treating him because he was not indigenous?”
“Languages are not a racial issue,” but rather the “foundation of identity, the nation and sovereignty,” he says.
Source: AFP
Source: Gestion
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