High-Tech Toys Turn into Language-Learning Tools

Hand-held video games, iPhones and iPods are the top toys of today’s kids, and they spend hours and hours every day on them. But, just as one Native American-owned company has figured out, these interactive gizmos can also be great language-learning tools.

This summer, Banning, Calif.-based Thornton Media introduced its Language Pal, software that can program an indigenous language onto Nintendo DSi hand-held consoles and the first ever Native American language iPhone/iPod app.

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Wisconsin Lawmaker Calls Native Languages “Dead”

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to set aside $250,000 a year for Native American language preservation is “goofy and crazy,” given the state’s current financial crisis, says Republican lawmaker Scott Suder. The governor should be focusing efforts on preserving jobs, not “dead languages,” Suder said. Read the story here. 

NYT Profiles Northern Arapaho Language Preservation Efforts

Today’s New York Times features a story on the efforts of the Northern Arapaho Tribe to preserve the Arapaho language. There are only about 200 Arapaho speakers living today, and tribal leaders on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming fear their language will not survive. As part of the effort to see that the Arapaho language does not disappear, this tribe of 8,791, recently opened a new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers. To read more about it click here. To watch an audio/slide show click here. To learn more about language preservation efforts, such as this one, and to learn about other strategies for preserving native languages, don’t forget to register for Falmouth Institute’s Language Preservation Summit, Oct. 28-29 at the Fantasy Springs Resort in Indio, Calf.

Wisconsin May Revive Native Language Initiative

Wisconsin State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster has proposed reviving a state-funded program that supports Native American language instruction, the Wisconsin State Journal reported on Sept. 21.

In the 2009-2011 Education Agenda submitted last week to Governor Jim Doyle, Burmaster requested $250,000 for the Tribal Language Revitalization and American Indian Academic Achievement Initiative, which would allow tribes, in partnership with a school district, Cooperative Education Service Agency (CESA) or university, to apply for funding that could be used for instruction materials and/or to hire staff. The superintendent also requested $10,000 for FY 2010 and FY 2011 for Department-sponsored activities related to instructional leadership in tribal languages.

In a series published in June, the Wisconsin State Journal reported that only about one-half of 1 percent of the state’s tribal members can speak their native languages. And of the state's 426 school districts, only 10 offer classes in a tribal language, and only one is an immersion class. There are five endangered languages in the state.

The former state-funded tribal language initiative, which ended in 2003, supported efforts for more than two decades.

Stakes are High in Language Preservation Scrabble Game

For most Scrabble players the letters K, H, N, U, A, A, C might not amount to much. But for hundreds of school children using the Official Dakotah Scrabble Dictionary, those letters can be parleyed into the seven-tile word, “canakahu,” meaning “spine.” In the lingo of the game, using all seven tiles is a bingo worth 50 bonus points. The game itself is worth much more to the people working to save the Dakotah language. Read more about it here.

The Chumash Indians’s new dictionary ensures its language will never die

There are not many experts in Samala, the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians’ nearly extinct native language. Actually, there is just one: Richard Applegate, Ph.D. So when the tribe needed someone to assist in creating a dictionary to revive it, there was only one person to ask.

At the dictionary’s unveiling party at the Chumash Indians’ Chumash Casino Reort in Santa Ynez, Calif., in April, Applegate, a non-Native, said in a speech, “My deepest desire is not to be the sole cultural bearer of this language.”

The 600-plus-page, 4,000-entry illustrated dictionary will hopefully keep that from being the reality for long. Read more about it here.