The International Year of Languages: Awareness initiatives

Anyone who is interested in the community initiatives of the UN International Year of Languages, please have a look at this site; it provides an interesting set of links to blogs which are also supporting the International Year of Languages (and the Potato, and Sanitation, and Green Earth …)

A relevant book that perhaps people would be interested in reading is Language Death, published in 2000, by linguist David Crystal. It’s a short, very readable thesis on why it is that we should work to preserve the many languages of the world and what the current statistics and reasons are on language death.

My aims for this year are to perfect my other proficient languages, as well as work on the other official languages of the UN, but also to try and track down and develop my skill in minority languages. In my travels in Europe, attempting to communicate in the local dialect–Romansh, not Dutch or French, or Galician, not Castilian–has resulted in many new friendships and a greater, in-depth look to cultures which may soon be lost. And Chavacano–the Spanish creole of the Philippines–has a new and intriguing fascination to me, much to do with history and and with my own cultural connection to it.

As well as the Language Exchange program on Facebook, there are community sites such as palabea.net where people are willing to teach others their native language in order to learn new ones–an excellent example of people harnessing the power of the Internet for mutual benefit.

With acknowledgements to Don of donosborn.org for alerting me to the existence of the IYL 2008 blog tracking site, thanks.

March 23, 2008 - Posted by Myn. | Uncategorized | multilingualism | 1 Comment

1 Comment »

Thanks for the shout out, Myn.

Re minority languages and their future, the situations are more complex than made out. Personally I think that information technology opens some interesting possibilities for developing languages that have relatively few speakers and are “less resourced.” Obviously languages that are really endangered present a big challenge, but in some cases communities are rallying.

You mention Facebook. There is also a group there for International Year of Languages, if you or any of your readers are interested.

Comment by Don | March 23, 2008

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About

I’m a former Melbourne girl who is finally putting my observations and my newsreel on a blog again, as I am worried I have been boring my regular correspondence list for only about a year or so.

I have been living in Prague for more than a year now and there are always new things to learn, about the area, about my research commitments, about myself. Sometimes in taking action one makes mistakes; is moving at all better than being static? Transplanting oneself into a new culture, a new language, means that certain illusions that one holds near are questioned; there are new roles to step in, new characteristics to acquire, old barriers to shed. Sometimes the results aren’t what I had expected, nor are things that I am necessarily comfortable with, and so the analysis and learning goes on: in the end, I think, I can only give myself a values reassessment, remember what it is that I came here for, and move on.

So what is it that I came here for?

My main career trajectory is in the medical sciences and in science policy and legislation: but there are plenty of other things that catch my attention. It is unlikely that I will ever talk about the details of my work, but there are plenty of other interesting items of science news, medical legislation and policy that I can always chat about in the mean time.

So what’s the deal with the architecture, and the arts?

If you’re one of the lucky devils reading this page who ever took a class with me, do you remember about fifty percent of the time I would never actually be doing what the class was about? Be it chemistry where I was sketching the lecturer behind the podium or in an economics lecture writing physics equations, everything is kind of interrelated for me–and at least I am never bored.

I find the visual and aural world very enriching and fascinating–I have always loved architecture and the combination of multimedia and traditional arts, and I guess the only thing preventing me from moving into that field is an enduring curiosity as to how art and structure affects the brain, emotions, reactions. Lying within symbols and forms are ideologies of kinds–the minute we create a straight line, we are seeking an ordered form away from organic structures. What inspires us to create such order? And how is it that some themes seems so universal? The physical transplant is teaching me a lot about institutionalisation–the kinds of expectations that I was socialised with, and what have become my ‘own values’. And even though I can never experience the world through someone else’s eyes, or ever have anyone else do the same for myself, at the very least, this is will be a place to talk about those observations.

Ah, yes, and there is the whole thwarted concert violinist thing–always that to keep in mind, too.

And where can one find me?

~~You can’t~~ hmm.

If you have my email, that’s about the only way you can start.

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Embryonisms: on Science and Arts.

All the things I should have said and didn’t.