How To Revive A Language With No Native Speakers

"This tartness was non-centrally published in Zcalo Glory Maintain equilibrium." As Los Angeles fourth graders acknowledge (equally their classes includes the study of California Indians), the distinct language of Los Angeles is Tongva. This American Indian language (also called Gabrielino) used to be traditional in villages all over the L.A. Bowl. These villages restrain given their names to places all over Los Angeles, plus Tujunga (from Tongva "Tuhuunga place of the old woman") and Cahuenga (from "Kawee'nga place of the fox"). But at any rate these unceasing reminders, the language has not been traditional for over 50 existence. I first encountered Tongva rapidly time was I began teaching at UCLA 40 existence ago, in the role of my trainer, the late lecturer William Cheery, introduced me to the field notes of J. P. Harrington, an ethnographer and linguist who worked with Tongva speakers wearing the immediate 20th century. It's hard to find information on Tongva. Contemporary are no audio recordings of people speaking the language, just a few scratchy wax totter recordings of Tongva songs. Contemporary are just starting out word lists from scholars, explorers, and others dating from 1838 to 1903, but Harrington's notes are the best source of information on the language. These store are recurrently inconsistent and maddeningly defective, however-it takes a lot of analysis to synthesize them into a hot reaction of the language. Enhanced the existence I compiled a Tongva dictionary of greater than 1,000 words and felt I knew fairly a bit about the language's language rules. Based on Harrington's work, I full-fledged a sound orthography or writing system, using shadowy letters, without much-repeated characters not set out on a highly praised keyboard (you can type Tongva on your phone!). Of trail, English speakers can't understand this system without learning its rules-just as non-Spanish speakers restrain to learn that the "ll" in "Pollo Loco" is nearby like "y". The English delivery of a word like" Tujunga" uses a "hard g," as in "alias", for example, but the Tongva "ng" represents the upright at the end of "bang" or in the norm of "comedian", without a fall to pieces "g" upright. My confidence in this organically academic approach to Tongva was shaken in 2004. I was asked to affair as a linguistic trainer to certain Tongva people who at ease to learn about their language at the Intimate of Verve Bury, a biennial competition in Berkeley where on earth members of California Indian tribes whose languages are no longer traditional can learn how to access systematic materials on populace languages. Influential with my dictionary, language rules notes, and typeable spelling system, I felt well on the brink to offer. On one occasion I met with my group of three ethnic Tongva learners, in spite of everything, I realized that people who want to learn their ancestral language don't want or need the actual threads as academic linguists. The first idea they want, they recurrently say, is to be able to beseech in their language. To be utmost useful to these participants, a dictionary be required to go from English to the path language, so they can find the words they want to say. (Linguists, on the new let somebody have, are greater likely to give a buzz such a list from the path language to English, to aid in detection words identical to words in relatable languages.) I got re no surface that first night at the workshop, equally I was by hand creating an English-Tongva keep details to my Tongva-English thesaurus to branch with the group the so therefore day. Ever to the same degree after that, I restrain met each month in San Pedro with an ever-changing group of learners whose core members story two of the Intimate of Verve participants from 2004. Limit of the people who come to these classes are Tongva descendants, but a few are sensitive community members. In amalgamation to lessons on word structure and prudence creation, we sing songs, play exercise, learn useful phrases for conversation, and conference words to be further to the dictionary. Songs are painstakingly approving to learning. We now restrain Tongva versions of Christmas carols, frozen folksongs, clutch songs-everything from the meadow song from "Maleficent" to a version of "This Pull in is Your Pull in" that includes lines like "Topaa've Tuhuung'aro from Topanga to Tujunga." Our Gabrielino-Tongva Sermon Congress has put together a phrasebook-including no matter which from "Chongaa'aa kukuume'a!" ("Sluice the dishes!") to "'Wiishmenokre" ("I love you")-and a degree book about plants. We've had to piece out a lot of threads using artistic quality, typical cause, and comparison with new local languages. Now we restrain a Coyote story (a reasonable piece like populace in Aesop's Fables), the Christmas story, and a version of the Aquarium of the Pacific's violet untruth story. Would the Tongva speakers of 100 existence ago understand these? I'm certain they would. Would they tormenter at the mistakes we make? Probably-but I wish they would also be forgiving.