Re: non-English WEB sites (was Re: Has anyone made a real conlang?)

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, at 11:17  PM, Joe Fatula wrote:

> From: "Dirk Elzinga" <dirk_elzinga@...>
> Subject: Re: non-English WEB sites (was Re: Has anyone made a real
> conlang?)
>
>
>> Hmmm. Could you actually do such a thing? That'd be a real
>> accomplishment! I'm hoping after my fieldwork this summer with
>> Chemehuevi (Numic/Uto-Aztecan) that we'll have at least the rudiments
>> of a web site *in* Chemehuevi. We're almost decided on the writing
>> system (though there are a few nagging questions still); next will be
>> training the 12 remaining speakers to use it and start generating
>> materials in Chemehuevi.
>
> An interesting thought just occured to me...
>
> I'm guessing that these twelve people are older, as the final speakers
> of a
> language generally are, so they might not use computers themselves,
> but if
> you can get them to (as it seems you would they do for the website),
> I'll
> bet some of us here (me!) would enjoy learning some Chemehuevi...  And
> I'd
> also bet that they'd be tickled pink to find someone online who wants
> to
> write back and forth with them in their native tongue, even if only
> rudimentary stuff.  Wouldn't that be something...
The fellow I'm going to be working with most is in his late 30s. He was
raised by his grandmother who used only Chemehuevi at home. He tells
the story of when he went to school; he couldn't speak English, and the
other kids teased him quite a bit. It got to the point where the
teacher had to put him out of the classroom because of the disruptions.
He got into fights frequently because of the teasing and never finished
school. He now realizes that he is actually a community resource
because of his first-hand knowledge of the language and culture (along
with the remaining Chemehuevi-speaking elders). He is also a very
courageous person; he bought a computer and signed up for internet
access at his own expense even though he has very little experience
with this technology, because he knew that it would be instrumental in
helping to preserve (or at least document) his language and culture;
he's really putting himself "out there". The other elders are also
eager to help, but are much more skeptical of my motives, etc. Years of
getting shafted by the White Man has made them understandibly wary.
I've gotten a lot of help from a semi-speaker who has coordinated a lot
of the interactions between me and the elders. Her mother is a fluent
speaker, and she is learning the language now herself.

The project will have several stages. First, we need to establish a
practical orthography. This work is mostly finished, but there are some
details which need to be worked out. (I'll be happy to elaborate if
there is interest.) After the orthography is settled, I will be
training the remaining speakers in using it to write in Chemehuevi.
This will be a daunting task; no matter how transparent the orthography
is from a linguistic (or even naive user's) point of view, the *idea*
of writing traditional, and possibly sacred, narratives is very foreign
to many native cultures. Persuading them that they can write even
seemingly incosequential things will be hard enough. And that it's okay
to make mistakes. Once we have a body of text, we can start creating
pedagogical materials and putting them into various print and
electronic formats. At best what we'll have by the end of the summer is
the shell of a web site, but probably not much material there.

My primary interest in the language is structural, not pedagogical. So
I am going to have to find a way to work some basic linguistic research
into all of this as well. The only published descriptive work on
Chemehuevi is a short grammatical sketch and lexicon by Margaret Press
published by the University of California Publications in Linguistics
series in 1980. It covers the phonology in 20 pages, syntax in the next
100. The lexicon contains barely 1000 items, and there are no texts. So
there is still plenty of work to be done.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"I believe that phonology is superior to music. It is more variable and
its pecuniary possibilities are far greater." - Erik Satie

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