Language archives and public outreach:INNET languagesindanger.eu

Radosław Wójtowicz, Tomasz Wicherkiewicz, Nicole Nau, Katarzyna Klessa, Maciej Karpiński

INNET 3rd Conference on Costing and sustainable funding of endangered language archives

Budapest, 5-6 September 2014.

Topics and structure of our talk

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• What we did (+ evaluation)

• What we learned

• What is new: Package for minority

schools in Poland

What we did

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• For whom?

• Why?

• How?

• Links and connections

For whom?

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Target group•High school students and their teachers

Audience found +•Younger pupils•University students•General public

Latest news: Poland’s Ministerstwa Administracji i Cyfryzacji will use the portal in a campaign promoting multilingualism and the use of regional and minority languages

Why?

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Goals•To raise awareness of language endangerment•To spread knowledge about the world’s linguistic diversity, linguistics, language endangerment, language archives and language documentation •To encourage action: to keep languages alive, to document a language or dialect spoken in one’s environment, to become a linguist

How?

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Means•Attraction – design, photographs, audio recordings, films, activities•Information – Book of Knowledge: more, longer and more serious texts than usually on Internet sites; lesson outlines•Interaction – quizzes, exercises, interactive map, study questions and tasks, revision questions •Empathy – portraits of young(er) speakers of endangered languages, portraits of young linguists

Links & Connections in Public Outreach

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Linking•Archives and the public

• archives should be user-friendly for non-specialists• public should appreciate the value of archives

•Linguists and the public•Academia and the mundane world out there on the Net

• Use what your students use: Wikipedia, YouTube…•Outreachers and outreachers

Growing number of general interest and educational websites

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Outreach programme of languagelandscape.org

Or: Combine language documentation and public outreach right from the beginning

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Inne-jezyki.amu.edu.pl

What we learned (1)Case study: EFL materials in Poland

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Teaching materials > English as a Foreign language > a lesson outline on the heritage languages of the Channel Islands.

•Phase I – Awareness assessment: mundane everyday problems affected one of our school visits, but the situation uncovered a difficult reality in Polish secondary schools: questions such as the organization of the school system, the social significance of school final examinations and teachers’ working conditions turned out to be as important as the level of awareness of language endangerment among students.

What we learned (1)Case study: EFL materials in Poland

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Phase II – Material development: the significance of language testing (cf. Shohamy 1993 and later works) for both the school environment and individuals, and for our materials in terms of topic selection, but also e.g. task instruction.

What we learned (1)Case study: EFL materials in Poland

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• Phase III – Testing and finalization: only two teachers at one school willing to test the outline despite our strong efforts. The main feedback on the part of EFL teachers did not concern the content of the outline, but its compliance with the final examination requirements.

cf. Grenoble (2009), Grinevald (2007): communities of speakers of endangered languages sometimes view the priorities of language documentation very differently from linguists.

What we learned (2)There is much diversity!

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Europe is quite uniform in terms of language attitudes, but our results (INNET deliverables D4.1 & D4.3; Wójtowicz 2014) show that in every partner country, the situation concerning school materials on endangered languages is very different, e.g.:

•Poland: school curricula seemingly offer many possibilities in terms of the number of school subjects, but they are not flexible: extra-curricular topics have slim chances of being covered, unlike in Germany, where the choice of school subjects is limited, but students are offered room for individual projects they complete at the end of the school year.

What we learned (2)There is much diversity!

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• Hungary: problems of the Hungarian diasporas and the situation of the Romani minority turned out to be sensitive and controversial issues, while in Poland: no similar reactions, the topic of linguistic minority rights as human rights warmly welcomed.

cf. Grenoble & Whaley (2006: 21) about conditions for language revitalization: “(…) one single program which holds the key for success for different language groups around the globe (…) simply doesn’t exist, nor can it exist, because for every individual community a specific combination of issues enters into picture.”

What we learned:Conclusions for the future

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Since there are some important parallels between the work of linguists with different groups of non-linguists, why not have a closer look at the solutions worked out by field linguistics and test them in future public outreach projects:

•Pay close attention to locally relevant factors: in one state or region one may directly access students, but in another it might be teachers (or parents or other people) who need to be targeted first.

What we learned:Conclusions for the future

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• Try to provide a favourable environment for bottom-up initiatives. From the researcher’s point of view, it is worthwhile to look at what reception a set of materials gets in different school communities in Europe. However, alternatively to developing and localising a common educational product, this perhaps could also be achieved in a different way: through establishing several more independent (national/regional) networks of linguists, teachers, students, etc., seeing what kind of materials they develop together and compare the results.

What we learned:Conclusions for the future

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• Build long-term relationships with school communities so that ideally, they come up with their own initiatives and stay involved.

cf. Grenoble (2009:61): “Language documentation has largely been driven by the needs and goals of (…) linguists, with less attention to the needs of communities of language users and potential speakers. (…) Yet in order for any revitalization program to be successful, it must be driven by the community.”

What we learned:References

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Grenoble, Lenore A. 2009. Linguistic cages and the limits of linguists. In J. Reyhner and L. Lockard (eds.), Indigenous language revitalization: Encouragement, guidance & lessons learned. 61–71. Flagstaff: Northern Arizona University.

Grenoble, Lenore A., and Lindsey J. Whaley. 2006. Saving languages: An introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grinevald, Colette. 2007. Linguistic fieldwork among speakers of endangered languages. In O. Miyaoka, O. Sakiyama and M. E. Krauss (eds.), The vanishing languages of the Pacific Rim. 35–76. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

INNET Deliverables. Available at: http://innet-project.eu/deliverables Odé, Cecilia. 2008. Teaching materials on language endangerment. An interactive e-

learning module on the Internet. In T. de Graaf, N. Ostler and R. Salverda (eds.), Endangered languages and language learning: Proceedings of the conference FEL XII: 24–27 September 2008, Ljouvert/Leeuwarden. 147–150. Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy.

Wójtowicz, Radosław. 2014. Language Endangerment in European Secondary Schools: Challenges and Perspectives. In The Future of Education 2014, 4th Edition: Conference Proceedings. 236–240. Padova: Libraria Universitaria.

What is new: Package for Polish minority schools

Twofold content

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Introduction: History

Introduction: Repertoire

język rosyjskich staroobrzędowców

Bardzo niewielką mniejszością w Polsce są rosyjskojęzyczni staroobrzędowcy, którzy mieszkają w kilku miejscowościach Suwalszczyzny i Mazur. To bardzo ciekawa społeczność, mieszkająca przez wieki w religijnej izolacji, wywodząca się z Rosjan wygnanych z Carstwa Rosyjskiego za niepodporządkowanie się reformom w Cerkwi Prawosławnej. Mimo, iż język rosyjski w skali globalnej jest z pewnością jednym z najsilniejszych, to gwary staroobrzędowców są już mocno spolonizowane, a ich znajomość maleje wśród następnych pokoleń.Archaiczny język rosyjski wraz ze staro-cerkiewno-slowiańskiem uzywany jest w liturgii (również w księgach liturgicznych) staroobrzędowców.

no pictures of persons

Zadanie:Odgadnij, co znaczą następujące wyrazy w gwarze polskich staroobrzędowców, a następnie przyporządkuj im wyrazy ze standardowego języka rosyjskiego:

ljadufka

samachod

paciong

zładziej

wakacji

patstawufka

поезд / pojezd

вор / wor

xолодильник / chołodilnik

начальная школа / naczalnaja szkoła

aвтомобиль / awtomobil

каникулы / kanikuły

Hyperlinks :

Więcej o Rosjanach-staroobrzędowcach:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFLgMAIjuCI; http://inne-jezyki.amu.edu.pl/Frontend/Language/Details/22http://inne-jezyki.amu.edu.pl/Frontend/Language/Details/28

Posłuchaj też staroobrzędowego zespołu chóralnego Rabina z Gabowych Grądów:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmjeAC6FrgQ

How to save your/minority language?

Documenting

How to document languages?

Analysing dataLinguistic dataSociolinguistic data

Revitalizing

Why revitalize languages?

How to save the language of your Heimat ?

Teaching aids

How to save your/minority language?

- writing a book- compiling a dictionary/pictionary -documenting language landscape

Two games to get to know the languages

Thank you!