#Endangered Languages

[amanufacturedheaven]

Rare Language Learning: Polari

If you have ever used the words:

- Naff

- Butch

- Camp

You have unknowingly been speaking the sociolect known as Polari, the language of queer people primarily used in the 30s to the 70s. Polari is now an endangered language, as labelled by the University of Cambridge

Something of note: Many resources out there imply (or state) that Polari was a language invented and used solely by white cis gay men, which is decidedly untrue. Many words of Polari come from drag culture, lesbians, and the Romani people and their language. The use of ‘the language of British gay men’ may be a more palatable title to the general public, but it is not to me. I did my best to curate a variety of resources, but unfortunately much of queer history has been lost many more decades than I’ve been alive, if you have any other resources for studying Polari I would love to read them, message me or leave a link in the replies.

Articles

Learn Polari, the Secret Language of the Gays ⚢ Out Magazine

Polari: The code language gay men used to survive ⚢ BBC

Polari and the Hidden History of Gay Seafarers ⚢ National Museums Liverpool

The Story of Polari, Britain’s Secret Gay Language ⚢ Fabulosa!

Polari People ⚢ Fabulosa!

Polari: a language born from prejudice ⚢ Englishpanish

The secretive gay language that gave LGBTQ people a voice ⚢ GAYTIMES

A brief history of Polari: the curious after-life of the dead language for gay men ⚢ The Conversation

Study Material

The Polari Bible ⚢ Internet Archive

Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang ⚢ Internet Archive

Sociolinguistics / Polari ⚢ StudySmarter

FlashCards ⚢ Quizlet

New Polari Translator ⚢ LingoJam

Polari: A sociohistorical study of the life and decline of a secret language. ⚢ Dissertation, University of Manchester

Polari: a language born from prejudice ⚢ Englishpanish

Simon Bowkett: a short blog in Polari for LGBT+ History Month ⚢ Civil Service LGBT+ Network

[quinthetoucan]

y'all please check out my friend alex's book!! its a free online resource for learning māori, the endangered indigenous language of new zealand, and we hope that it can help spread this beautiful language to even more people!

(plus this book is a blast hehe)

[dsm-wannabe-linguist]

Me in my teens discovering that French is not the only language spoken in France

[useless-catalanfacts]

Yesterday, the linguist and activist Carme Junyent died. It saddens me deeply to write this post, because she was someone who I really admire.

She was a linguist who led the Grup d'Estudis de Llengües Amenaçades (GELA, Research Group on Endangered Languages) in University of Barcelona and author of many books and articles about language diversity and the defense of minoritized and/or indigenous languages here and around the world, and a firm defensor of immigrants' language rights and cultural diversity. She was also very active in defense of the language rights of her own community, Catalan speakers, against linguistic imperialism from Spanish and French.

Even in her last moments, she wrote an article about the right to die speaking one's mother language (Catalan in our case) if you are in your own country, instead of the usual case of forcing the patients who are part of the local marginalized and/or indigenous language community (even those in the very last moment of their lives) to speak in the dominant state language (Spanish, in our case). She sent it to the newspaper Vilaweb, where she often collaborated, to be published right after her death:

She has died of cancer at 68 years old. In her last months, most doctors who treated her in Catalonia's public healthcare system did not speak or did not want to speak Catalan, only Spanish. But she took the decision to keep firm and not change her language, so she could die in her mother tongue.

[dougielombax]

“bUt NAeBodY sPakeS iT¡ tiS a DEaD LAnguaGe, sHUrE¡ WHiT’s tHe PoiNt? Let iT DiE.”

Okay.

Okay.

Could you perhaps tell us WHY the language you fear so greatly is threatened or dead?

No. Do go on.

Tell us.

Why is it dead? What happened to those who spoke it? Why weren't they able to pass it down the generations?

Why is this so?

Because they sure as shit didn’t just stop speaking it for the sheer hell of it!

You don’t know?

Oh dear.

No it’s not natural.

And it’s not about nativism, you daft shite!

Imagine being scared of a language!

Why does it threaten you so?

Why do you act like it shakes the foundations of your state?

Tell me.

Pathetic!

…

Many such cases.

MANY such cases!

[kkulbeolyeonghwa]

General Ainu sentence building

Here's a handy guide on making sentences in the Ainu language.

The sentence structure is Subject-Object-Verb. This will be easier if you know a language like Japanese or Korean which use the same order.

Pronouns have two types: ones to be used "normally" like in English or Japanese, and ones to be attached to the verb. (You've seen the = sign in Ainu text? That's a marker of an attached pronoun.)

There is no verb conjugation. The only time you'll need to modify a verb is when the subject is plural. This is when a verb might change completely. (Check my post on plural verbs.)

Paykar ek. (spring come) - The spring is coming/comes/came. Here, the subject is "paykar" (spring) and the verb "ek" (to come) can mean "to come" at any time. If you would like to specify a time, use words like "numan" (yesterday), "nisatta" (tomorrow) etc.

The sentence structure is very regular.

Toan kur nisatta Sapporo un oman. (that person tomorrow Sapporo to go) That person is going to Sapporo tomorrow. The verb is always at the end of sentences. Here, the subject is "toan kur" so the verb has no pronoun attached to it. However, if the subject is a pronoun, it would look like this;

Nisatta Sapporo un ku=oman. (tomorrow Sapporo to I-go) I'm going to Sapporo tomorrow. The pronoun is attached to the verb. The standalone pronoun can also be included in the sentence;

Kuani anakne nisatta Sapporo un ku=oman. (I (topic) tomorrow Sapporo to I-go) I'm going to Sapporo tomorrow. The meaning of this sentence doesn't change much in English, but including both the standalone and the verb-attachment pronoun act as a stronger message that "I" am DEFINITELY the one going to Sapporo (and nobody else)

Kuani ka keraan topenpe ku=e rusuy. (I also sweet candy I-eat want) I want to eat sweet candy too. The topic marker "anak"/"anakne" and the standalone pronoun (here "kuani" can be left out. However, the pronoun attached to the verb can never be dropped. Therefore, sentences like "kuani ka keraan topenpe e rusuy" are not allowed.

[q-soc-official]

Daily Irish Lesson 14

To say 'I love you' in Irish we say 'Tá mé chun tú a mharú'

Pronunciation: taw may kun too ah vah-roo

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Around 10 years ago, a linguist with experience in Haudenosaunee languages, Karin Michelson, was invited by three Oneida women to assist them in going through the archives of one of the world’s best-known museums. The Oneida women went to the Smithsonian Institution as part of a program known as Breath of Life, which enables Onkwehón:we to bring linguistic works back to their home communities. Michelson, who co-authored a dictionary for the severely endangered Oneida language, came along to help them sift through the archives. She first forged connections with the Oneida when she was at the Centre for Research and Teaching of Native Languages at the University of Western Ontario. “I think I would not have stayed in school if I had not met some of the people I got to work with,” she said. She went on to teach at Harvard before finally settling into a role at the University of Buffalo. But Michelson, a non-Indigenous woman who grew up in Chateauguay in the 1950s and 60s, encountered something else in the Smithsonian’s archives that caught her interest and surprised her – an unpublished manuscript called Notes to a Mohawk Dictionary.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[llyfrenfys]

I'm making my opposition to the proposal to severely reduce language provision at the University of Aberdeen known - Scottish Gaelic, an endangered Celtic langauge, is one of the languages at risk of being cut. This would do immense damage to the language revitalisation effort. @uniofaberdeen must reverse this decision and commit to protecting Gaelic and other languages in their institution.

If you feel the same way, you're encouraged to make more posts and stories about the issue to show the University of Aberdeen just how much this decision is frowned upon. Use the hashtag #saveuoalanguages in your posts to get the word out about this.

I'll be travelling tomorrow and wish I could do more right now. But together we can make it known just how unpopular this decision is.

[linguisticdiscovery]

How the Mohawk community is working to revitalize their language

[hanaflorbloom]

every time i see someone say that we should erase all other languages and make english the 'universal language' I'm reminded how ignorant and culturally insensitive some people are. to not be aware of the historical and cultural significance of a language in most cultures is bizarre. in erasing a language you would thus be erasing years of important history of a culture. i hope these people educate themselves before speaking on something they know nothing about simply because it would 'make their lives easier'. not to mention its so tone-deaf to the people who are fighting for language revitalization due to the historical language suppression of their ancestors.

[covenawhite66]

There are 2,900 languages that are endangered. This means they have fewer than 10,000 speakers, and most of them are not being passed on to younger generations.

What Causes Language Extinction?

1. Colonization and oppression

2. Globalization and urbanization

3. Education and media

4. Attitudes and prestige

Why Does Language Extinction Matter?

1. Cultural heritage

2. Scientific knowledge

3. Linguistic diversity

How Can We Save Endangered Languages?

1. Documentation and revitalization

2. Policy and legislation

3. Awareness and advocacy

Places ranked by Endangered Languages

1. Africa with 619 languages

2. Asia with 613 languages

3. South America with 448 languages

4. North America with 182 languages

5. Pacific with 592 languages

6. Europe with 238 languages

7. Australia with 108 languages

[labratofthemonth]

fun summer idea to keep yourself sane: learn a lesser known, endangered, critically endangered, or extinct language!

Im currently learning Ainu and it feels cool to be a part of keeping it alive. A great resource i’ve been using is So You Want To Learn A Language, but there are some lesser spoken languages on Drops. (Ex.: Galician, Igbo, Irish, Persian, Samoan, Māori, etc.)

Another resource I really like is LingoHut. It’s free and has lessons for languages like Macedonian, Armenian, Malay, Urdu, etc.

Have fun learning!

スイ　ウヌカラアン　ロ！☻

(p.s. this doesn’t just have to be for the summer! you can learn a language anytime ☻)

[thenuclearmallard]

The Enets are almost completely extinct. They have been Russified from colonization and some assimilated to their neighboring tribe the Nenets. There are less than 200 left if the numbers reported are truly accurate. Let's bring them back to light and honor them.

[lookninjas]

Saw this opinion a couple times today (twitter thread about why the Baltics are independent countries and not just one Baltic megastate), and hadn't really noticed it before, so I'm curious how many of you might agree:

(I'm also curious how self-selecting my friend group and my mutual-in-laws group is on this topic, but we'll see.)

[kkulbeolyeonghwa]

Counting 1-100 in Ainu sinep-asiknehotnep

The dialect used: Shiraoi

Today, we will learn the numbers in Ainu. In Ainu, there are different number systems used in counting different things. This system I'll be showing now is the one used to count general things (think the East Asian counter word 個)

1 - sinep シネプ 2 - tup ツプ 3 - rep レプ 4 - inep イネプ 5 - asiknep アシクネプ 6 - iwanpe イワンペ 7 - arwanpe アラワンペ 8 - tupes トウペシ (many dialects tupesenpe) 9 - sinepes シネペシ (many dialects sinepesanpe) 9 - wanpe ワンペ

Easy right! These numbers have "roots" which are used when counting further from here:

1 - sine シネ 2 - tu トウ 3 - re レ 4 - ine イネ 5 - asikne アシキネ 6 - iwan イワン 7 - arwan アラワン 8 - tupes トウペシ 9 - sinepes シネペシ 9 - wan ワン

Now, how do we count 11-20?

11 - sinepikasmawanpe 12 - tupikasmawanpe 13 - repikasmawanpe ... 20 - hotnep

See the pattern? The number starts with 1,2,3... all the way to 9, followed by -ikasma + wanpe (10) 20 is its own distinct number, which is the base for numbers when counting further from here.

30 - wanpeetuhotnep

40 - tuhotnep

50 - wanpeerehotnep

60 - rehotnep

See how 20 is the base number here? 40 is literally "two twenty" and 60 is "three twenty". From here, 30 is "ten before forty(two twenty)" and 50 is "ten before sixty(three twenty)"!

To say numbers between these tens, use the same system as 11-19.

31 - sinepikasmawanpeetuhotnep

32 - tupikasmawanpeetuhotnep

Finally, 100 is asiknehotnep. You can probably see how this is formed! "five twenty"

I'll make a post about counting after 100 after!! Go watch it if it's up!