Thursday, March 24, 2005

The Blog and The Newsletter

I have added a link to this blog to the contact page on the site. Imagine, a link to the blog about the site from the site itself. Crazy. I'm also considering a newsletter in the future, some people have expressed interest in one. I'm not sure myself yet what I would be including in it, besides the obvious - updates, new pages, new reviews etc. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Icelandic and Irish

I added an Icelandic page and a page for Irish just in time for St. Patrick's Day, I suppose. I'm gathering up resources for Korean and still working on the other Celtic languages. I am also finding information on more supplemental materials for all the languages, starting with the biggies.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Esperanto and Incubus

I just received the invitation for this year's Esperanto congress. It's in Vilnius, Lithuania. That sounds like an interesting place. I wish I could go, but I have a trip planned to the exotic and ancient land of Florida. Someone asked me if there was a transcription anywhere of the movie Incubus (filmed all in Esperanto). I looked for it in the past but couldn't find one, so a few weeks ago I started doing it myself. I do a little bit here and there, it'll take a little time but when I have it finished I'll post it on the site. My Esperanto is not great, so there are a few spots I have trouble getting the exact wording. It doesn't help that it is spoken with odd (and even incorrect) accents in a few spots. Maybe I'll post a review of the movie, as it pertains to Esperanto, and then a transcript from there. It's not a priority right now.

I've just finished up the Other Languages page, and pages for Swedish, Danish and Norwegian.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Breton, Provencal and Catalan

Anyone notice that my blog entries have been a little more involved? I'm getting into this 'blogging' thing. I can see why people enjoy this.

I mentioned my interest in Celtic languages in one of my previous posts. I thought about learning Breton before, it's an interesting language (aren't they all?). It's sort of a 'Frenchified' Celtic - it has that French 'R' which I like. I seem to be leaning in a 'Languages of France' direction. The crown jewel of my language study comes when I learn Provencal (someday). I've had a fascination with it since the day I learned of it in French class in high school. And I've looked into the other 'dialects' of Occitan and they just don't interest me as much. Don't know why. For Pete's Sake - if anyone reading this knows of any books on Provencal or even Occitan in general, please let me know. Let me specify - books written in English. I've found a few resources in French, but no books written in English. Catalan, another language spoken in southern France, seems to interest me as well. Here's a good spot for a Tolkien quote -

'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'

Added a Why Learn Languages page. Also a Learning for Travel and Learning for Business page.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Old Habits Die Hard

I recently read a report (there is a summary of it in the January newsletter of Ogmios) on the state of the Hawaiian language in Hawaii. I was shocked at how few people speak Hawaiian. I was also shocked to learn that Hawaiian was not taught in public schools, and until recently not even in private schools (which explains why so few people speak it). I always thought that most native Hawaiians spoke the language. Whenever you see Hawaii on TV or in movies, the people always seem to use the local lingo to describe things, or use colorful phrases for the tourists. I don't believe everything I see on TV but Puerto Rico is a US territory and everyone there speaks Spanish as well as English, so I, and probably everyone else, assumed it was the same in Hawaii. I was wrong.

The 'Old Habits' I'm referring to in the title belong to the US government. Until very recently, it was actually illegal to teach Hawaiian in public schools, except as a foreign language. And even then, it didn't get a whole lot of support. This is a policy left over from the imperialist days of the late 1800's and early 1900's when the US government sought to squash any streaks of nationalism in it's newly acquired territories. I'm not suggesting that the US government necesarily fears this nationalism today, but rather the inertia of it's bloated bureaucracy prevents reversing this and similarly ridiculous and anachronistic laws without an
enormous effort from someone. It usually takes a large and motivated popular movement to create that change. The Hawaiians seem to be doing just that.

What shocks me most is not that governments do this, or have trouble undoing what they have done, but that people let it happen. Within just a few generations, there are now only a few thousand native fluent speakers of the language. Not only was it not taught in schools, but it was abandoned in the home, too. It's not surprising that people would choose to learn a language (in this case English) out of necesity for survival, but it is shocking that people would completely abandon their native tongue for it. The US government made it illegal to teach the language in public schools as a native tongue, but didn't ban its use altogether. The Hawaiians themselves let that happen. We all know that the situation was similar (or worse) among the native Americans on the continent, but do they have the political ability or will to do as the Hawaiians have begun to do? Doubtful. Hundreds of languages of North America have been lost forever, and many more are facing extinction. I don't know yet what I can do to help, other than create
awareness of this ongoing problem.

I've added a second Language Tips page, as one was just getting too unwieldy.