Language revitalization etc...

Devisa de l'Union Europenca, aquela frasa aurà jamai semblat tant teorica que dau temps d'aqueu mes de novembre de 2006. Lo Rapòrt de Bernat Joan sus la diversitat lingüistica en Euròpa foguèt vuejat de tata prepausicion interessanta per lo Parlament Europenc, en particular per lei partits politics ligats au Partit Popular Europenc (PPE - que ne'n fai partida l'UMP per França). Talament vuejat que Bernat Joan, Eurodeputat catalan, votèt pas per son tèxt. Lo Rapòrt auriá degut donar un contengut vertadier a la nocion de plurilingüisme en Euròpe, en particular en permetant a totei lei ciutadans europencs de s'adreiçar au Parlament europenc dins la lenga que vòlon, que siegue una lenga oficiala ò non. Per lo PPE, aquela prepausicion menava au separatisme e a la fin deis Estats d'Euròpa: fau dire qu'Euròpa auriá tanben agut drech d'intervenir sus lei politicas lingüisticas nacionalas. Demieg aquelei que sostenguèron lo Rapòrt, fau notar lei Verds Europencs - ALE, lo Partit Socialista... espanhòu e lo Sinn Féin irlandés (ALE).
Lei financiaments per lo Bureu Europencs per lei Lengas Mens Espandidas seràn pas seguits nimai après aquesta annada 2006. Es una menaça greva doncas per la diversitat culturala e lingüistica europenca, sosprenenta dins un temps que França fai votar de resolucions a l'UNESCO per la diversitat culturala.
Sosprenenta, avètz dich? Es qu'avètz pas legit lo tèxt presentat a l'UNESCO. Per diversitat culturala, s'enten pas la diversitat dei culturas, mai la diversitat dei supòrts culturaus e dei mejans d'expression artistica. Faliá pas s'imaginar autra causa!
Fònt: www.eurolang.net

O ausigueriatz bensai, perdegueriam un academician au mes de novembre de 2006. Es jamai una bòna causa de se regaudir de la mòrt d'un òme segur, mai lo matin qu'ausiguère la nòva, ma posquère pas empachar de pensar a aquel article dau Sénher Poirot Delpech (un nom ben occitan emb'aquò) qu'aviá publicat lo jorn de Nadau de 2003. Polit present de Nadau aquela annada, l'oblidarai jamai. Lo Sénher Del Pech I parlava dau cambiament de nom de la DGLF en DGLFLF: Delegacion Generala a la Lenga Francesa e ai Lengas de França. Per eu, aquò èra lo simbeu que "l'avenir serait donc aux vieilleries rustiques, aux cendres que l'on tisonne." E pamens, nos donava d'arguments imparables per mostrar que faliá pas donar ges de dignitat a de lengas autras que lo francés: ""façons de parler dépourvues de grammaire et de littérature à portée universelle". Passarem sus la pertinéncia dau prepaus, mai ieu çò que me fai rire es qu'aquel excellent òme sreà mòrt en se pensant que l'a de gens dins lo monde que parlan sensa grammatica... Fòra Chomsky doncas! Fòra 150 ans de lingüistica! L'academician aviá parlat: I a d'èstres umans que parlan una causa que ten mai de la bèstia que de l'uman, e mèfi, l'enemic poudriá èstre vòstre vesin... E aquò foguèt publicat per Le Monde, que mostrèt un còp de mai sa capacitat a reconéisser l'intelligéncia! Çò que me fai rire pasmens, es qu'ara eu es mòrt, mai la lenga nòstra, ela, viu encara...

E vò, avètz ben legit... Leis articles dau mensuau provençau Aquò d'Aqui son ara en linha sus lo web. Per leis escotar, mantunei biais:

1/ Lo sit dau jornau: http://c-oc.org/aquodaqui/ per retrobar tanben lei unas dau jornau e descargar lo vocabulari en linha.

2/ Anatz a la rubrica Podcast sus aquest Blog, i trobaretz lo podcast d'Aquò d'Aqui, per retrobar leis articles en version Audio.

3/ Clicatz sus aqueu liame que vos mandarà directament au podcast dau jornau, per vos abonar e recebre directament leis articles sus vòstre legeire de podcasts. Lo mielhs per aquò es de descargar iTunes: www.itunes.com

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Tres jorns de temps, de representants de minoritats de la França exagonala (Catalonha, Occitània, Bretanha, Alsaça, País Basc, Savòia, Corsegue) se son retrobats en Catalonha Nòrd per parlar dau bilinguisme : intervencions, escambis, experimentacions èran au programa.

La Federacion dei Lengas Regionalas a l’Escola Publica (FLAREP) s’acampèt a la fin de novembre, aquest còp en Catalonha Nòrd, d’un biais decentralizat : un jorn a Perpinhan, un jorn a Ceret, e un jorn a Figueres. Tres jorns per un aisse centrau, lo bilingüisme a l’escòla public, soleta garantida d’una transmission lingüistica eficaça.
Aquò pausat, es un moment, o fau dire, ideau per far lo ponch sus lei projects, leis avançadas, lei recuoladas, leis entrepachaments institucionaus ò financiers. Un moment de tria tanben per s’entressenhar per quant ais accions menadas dins lo país organizador. E de fach, lo collòqui foguèt dubert per de representants de l’institucion, dei sindicats e deis associacions que faguèron lo ponch de seis accions passadas e a venir. Un observador dau defòra se seriá pensat que lei lengas minorizadas de l’estat francés èran la prioritat de tot aqueu monde, talament leis institucions coma lei sindicats se mostrèron estrambordats per l’idèa dei lengas regionalas a l’escòla e lo bilingüisme francés/lengas ‘regionalas’.
Dau ponch de vista institucionau, tot vai ben, ò quasi : leis efectius creisson, i a mai de 50.000 escolans dins lei seccions bilingüas en França, es a dire 1/3 de la populacion escolara basca, 15% en Corsega, 6% en Alsaça.. A Ceret, en collegi e en licèu, la paritat orària es respectada, fach pron rare per èstre remarcat. De mai, fau apondre una sensibilizacion de mai en mai granda dei Regions : per lo representant de Div Yezh, associacion de parents d’escolans deis escòlas publicas bretonas, fau absoludament fisar la responsabilitat de l’ensenhament dau breton au Conseu Regionau, garantida de proximitat e de democracia. Una posicion visiblament pauc compartida per unei representants de l’associacion deis ensenhaires d’Occitània.
Bòna santat de façana emb’aquò, lèu denonciada per leis associacions : aprengueriam per exemple que leis agregacions en lengas dichas regionalas foguèron refusadas per lo ministèri. Leis efectius dei classa bilingüas representan pas mai de 3% de la populacion escolària de Catalonha Nòrd, mens qu’aquò per Bretanha e Occitània. Au problèma dei recrutaments, leis associacions rebrican que quand una empresa a besonh d’un pilòte per exemple, ne’n tròba. Lo fòrma se fau. Dins l’Educacion Nacionala, espèran que tot li tombe coma per miracle. Çò que, compte tengut dau trabalh d’eradicacion linguistica secular, risca naturalament pas de se far.
De mai, fai tres ans que i a pas una soleta dubertura de sit bilingüe en Catalonha Nòrd, mentre que n’i aguèt au mens quatre en Bretanha. En Alsaça, per l’associacion Eltern 68, associacion de parents d’escolans, i a ges d’ambicion regionala, e una granda manifestacion es prevista a Strasborg lo 18 de novembre. Lo CAPES es totjorn una insulta còntra lei lengas de França, e lo bilingüisme au collegi es jamai a paritat orari, ò quasi. Sovent, en mai de 3h de lenga, i a ren qu’una matèria ensenhada en lenga. E per ara, lei lengas de França seràn excluïdas dau brevet e son estatut au bac es pauc assegurat.
Segon una fònt ben informada, aprenguère meme que se lei lengas regionalas apareisson pas dins lo sòcle comun, es qu’o avèm mau comprés : LVE significa pas Lengas Vivas Estrangieras mai Lengas Vivas Europencas… Pasmens, i podètz totei anar veire, lo tèxt parla ben de LV Estrangieras.
Concors, bilingüisme, ensenhament d’iniciacion, disparitats entre lei territòris, tot foguèt discutit e analizat. Lei mesuras dau Rector de Montpelhier foguèron tanben comentadas, mai d’uneis ensenhaires de Catalonha regretèron de pas èstre estats asscociats a la concepcion dei precís de literatura, istòria, lenga. Precís financiats d’alhors per d’ajudas despartamentalas e regionalas, es a dire que l’Estat s’engatjarà pas dins un domani que en teoria es encara sieu.
Aquò dich, e o fau ben remarcar, lo representant dau rector comencèt son discors en catalan, e maugrat un discors pron consensuau e pron vuege de sense (per bastir l’Euròpa fau ‘une énorme dose d’humanité’, fau ben ‘comprene lo passat per mielhs comprene l’avenir etc.), aquò es una causa qu’auriam jamai vista fa dètz ans. La FCPE tanben parlèt catalan (‘mèrci i visca la USAP’). Tanben, la PEEP regreta que l’Article 2 de la Constitucion precise pas que lo francés es oficiau ‘dins lo respect dei lengas e culturas regionalas’, e la FSU se mostrèt fòrça revendicativa e au fiau dei problemas especifics dei lengas minorizadas de França.
Anem, oficialament tot va ben, lei lengas de França son quasi sauvadas. Vos liure doas darrierei revelacions per la rota, que valon la pena : per lo representant de l’UNSA, ‘siam totei un pauc jabobins en França’, et se la CGT a pas de posicion oficiala sus lei lengas minorizadas de l’Estat francés, es simplament qu’a pas lo temps de i pensar. Quauqu’un a lo mail de la Confederació General del Treball de Catalonha ?

Vaqui, a sortit fin finala: un pichon libre en occitan de Provença per aquelei que vòlon començar d'aprene la lenga nòstra.
Here it is, a wee book to learn Occitan (the provençal version).

Extrach dau 4en de cuberta:

Vous débutez en occitan ? Vous reprenez l'étude de l'occitan ? Ôsca est pour vous ! Incontournable outil pour mieux s'exprimer et communiquer rapidement en occitan, vous trouverez dans ce bloc-notes l'essentiel de la grammaire et du vocabulaire à assimiler, sous forme de fiches illustrées systématiquement assorties d'exercices corrigés. Ce bloc-notes bénéficie de l'approbation du Centre Régional d'Études Occitanes de Provence.

Le scénario


* 35 fiches thématiques

* 1 000 mots du langage courant

* 51 activités ludiques, toutes corrigées


Bonus


* Des cartes linguistiques

* Un lexique occitan/français

Per lo crompar en linha:

http://www.amazon.fr/Osca-parle-occitan-Niveau-exercices/dp/2729828680/sr=11-1/qid=1163278700/ref=sr_11_1/403-5890962-7451664

Una entrevista ambe Michael Payne
Michael Payne a trabalhat tota sa vida dins lei media, que siegue au Canadà per CBC, una experiéncia bilingüa, per la BBC au País de Galas que ne’n foguèt director ò per Reuters, que dirigèt per dètz ans. Rèsta ara en Droma Provençala.

Avèm agachat una emission de Vaquí sus França 3, nos podètz dire çò que n’avètz pensat ?
Me siáu pensat que patís, coma totei lei emissions de television que son sota-financiada e pauc preparadas, dau fach qu’es visiblament una emission que degun vòu, e que doncas passa an un orari dificile e li son pas donats ni lei mejans ni lei ressorças per far quicòm d’asatat a la realitat de çò que cercan lo monde, quicòm d’interessant que dona d’èr an una emission modèrna. Es dificile dins aquelei condicions de far que que siegue. Per ieu, èra tras qu’interessant de veire que i aviá una emission en occitan dins lo sud de França, mai ai trobat que li fautava clarament d’argent, de ressorças, e de monde amb una capacitat de produccion per veraiament fabregar un produch televisat polit. Es verai qu’en França una bòna part dei programas son pas tan ben fachs, mai de costuma au mens an de brinde. Èra clar que Vaquí aviá d’assajar de parlar de causas pron interessantas per lo public, mai amb un budget dei mai estequits.

E que vos siatz pensat de l’idèa de tot sotatitolar ?Aquò es un problèma qu’aguèron tanben au Canadà e au País de Galas : quand assajatz de vos ocupar d’una lenga qu’es sovent parlada siegue per una minoritat siegue per 50 ò 60% d’una populacion d’un luòc donat, alòra ò cambian de cadena en se pensant que comprendràn ren, ò assajan de comprene, çò que sovent es un esfòrç fòrça tròp important. La rason per utilizar lo sotatitolatge es de servar aqueu public, de tot segur. Se fau puei demandar s’aquò es important ò non per çò que volèm crear, en termes de coma volèm influençar la situacion. Dau ponch de vista de la cadena de television que, fin finala, esponsoriza l’emission, voudràn lo sotatitolatge perque voudràn servar son public, mai es benlèu contraproductiu se volèm que l’occitan progrèsse, estent qu’es mielhs que lo monde fagan l’esfòrç. S’aviatz vòstra cadena, lei causas serián diferentas. Au País de Galas, comencèron amb un sotatitolatge obligatòri, venguèt puei opcionau per lo monde que volián seguir un programa mai que parlavan pas galés.

Avètz trobat Vaquí fòrça diferent deis autrei programas en lengas minorizadas qu’avètz poscut veire ?Se pòt far un paralèle ambe lo New Brunswick, au Canadà, qu’es la soleta província dau Canadà qu’es vertadierament bilingüa anglés/francés, e aquí pereu, lei memei limitacions s’aplican, lei programas acadians mancavan veraiament d’argent, e doncas semblavan jamai tan bòns coma lei programas anglés. Per lo País de Galas, lei ressorças donadas a la creacion de S4C, la cadena galesa, èran au mens tan importantas senon mai importantas qu’aquelei donadas per la BBC ò ITV, semblava doncas professionau tre lo començament, e aviá, es clar, de brinde. Vòstre programa, es tipic de çò que se fai quora una minoritat se vei coma assiejada, e Vaquí assaja de mostrar que la lenga fai partida de la vida vidanta per un molonàs de monde. Mai se podètz sortir per considerar lei problèmas e lei concepts que son fòra la lenga, es a dire, s’avètz un programa que presenta la lenga, anatz prene un cantaire que canta en occitan, un entreprenaire que fai de cartas de visitas en provençau, e fin finala seretz isolats, en vesent pus que la lenga puslèu que d’èstre en fàsia ambe la societat, e me pense qu’es una trapela qu’es tras qu’aisat de i caire dedins quora avètz lo sentiments que siatz dins una minoritat. Mentre que çò que seriá mai utile seriá de se demandar de qu’afecta lo monde encuei dins lo sud de França, e es aquò que nos va interessar, la tendéncia es de cercar una problematica ligada solament a la lenga, au problema de la lenga.

L’occitan es la soleta lenga europenca parlada per mai d’un milion de personas qu’a pas sa cadena, que ne’n pensatz ?Me sembla qu’es una vertadiera tragedia per vautrei, e me pense qu’i a pas a esitar sus lo fach que lei galés vos dirián que la rason perque lo galés es a viure una renaissença, particularament entre lei joves,es pas solament perque s’apren e s’ensenha dins leis escòlas, es subretot perque ai joves li agrada fòrça la telé, i a una granda chausida de programas, e se pòdon tornar a l’ostau e agachar la telé galesa, aquò refortís çò que se passa a l’escòla, es pus un subject escolar, mai ven una vertadiera lenga de societat. Tot lo monde au País de Galas e au New-Brunswick vos dirà que s’una lenga se dèu desvolopar, se dèu mantenir sa posicion e espandir sei territòris, una cadena de television es indispensabla, e la situacion qu’avètz aquí per l’occitan es una farça.

L’impact d’una cadena de television sus l’avenir d’una lenga es doncas enòrme ?Òc, e çò mai important, es que mentre qu’èra fòrça dificile, en 1982, per lei galés per establir una cadena galesa tot simplament perqué deguèron levar una cadena anglesa per aviar la cadena galesa, encuei lei causas van tan lèu dins lo narrow casting, lo podcasting*, dins la difusion de la televsion per internet, lo satelite, es fòrça mai simple encuei de far una cadena de tv, e còsta ben mens car. Es benlèu dificile per ara que tot lo monde a pas lo satelite, mai lèu la tv s’agacharà sus leis ordenadors, leis ipods etc. e lei possibilitats vènon fòrça mai diversas. Tecnicament en tot cas, ara fau veire s’auretz la volontat politica per o far.

Se deviam establir una cadena de tv occitana, quinei serián leis escomessas màgers ? Onte nos faudriá començar ?Vos fau primier assegurar que çò que faretz serà una cadena qu’interessarà veraiament lo monde, fau identificar lo public, e subretot evitar de tombar dins la trapèla de solament parlar de la lenga. Dèu èstre una cadena coma leis autrei, ambe de serias, de ficcions, de juòcs, d’espòrt, de programas per leis enfants. Fau poder dire : siam una cadena de television, s’atròba simplament que difusèm en occitan, e pas : siam una cadena qu’assaja de martelar qu’aquela lenga es imortanta. D’aguer aquela sofisticacion, aquò es la clau per la reüssida, e se podètz començar una cadena, coma que siegue (privada, associativa, ajudada per lei colectivitats), es tras qu’important qu’aquela cadena dòne enveja e siegue populara, pas simplament militanta.

*Tecnicas de difusion de l’imatge e dau son sus internet e sus lei lectors portables iPod.

Prepaus reculhits e traduchs de l’anglés per Jaume Còsta.

Trois livres d’auteurs anglo-saxons s’intéressent à la langue d’oc, surtout en Provence, et à la façon dont les locuteurs la considèrent. L’état des lieux n’est pas réjouissant, mais pour durs qu’ils soient les constats sont justes : la vénération félibre dessert l’avenir de la langue. Dommage que deux des trois ouvrages soient inédits en français…ou en provençal.

Dau temps que se mòr la lenga nòstra sus sa terra, interessa mai que mai leis anglés e leis nòrd-americans. Tres publicacions recentas s’i interessan, e de tres biais diferents.
Parlam de tres libres seriós que se pausan la question de l’Occitània d’encuei dins totei sei contradiccions. Fau ben avoar que dau ponch de vista nordic Provença demòra una enigma. Es que leis Anglò-saxons considèran normalas lei revendicacions nacionalas, mai que considèran amb aquò que l’avenir de cada pòple, depend d’eu e pas d’un estat, ò deis autrei d’un biais mai generau,. Un Prèmi Nobèl, una reputacion qu’es pus de faire, una realitat geografica establida, una istòria, un potenciau economic, e puei ren darrier per seguir. Non, ren. Quand Marc Abley (Spoken here, ò Parlez-vous Boro dins la traduccion francesa que ven tot just de paréisser) fai sa vòuta dau monde, es naturalament per Provença que comença : « I aviá un còp un escrivan que revieudèt una lenga ». Fau dire qu’arriba d’Australia, lo Marc, e que sa tòca es de parlar dei lengas minorizadas dau ponch de vista dei locutors, pas d’un ponch de vista de lingüista. En Australia, s’acarèt a la realitat de lengas parladas per mens de dètz personas.

Il ne trouve pas de provençalophone à Arles

En Provença sa conclusion es finalament tan marrida qu’en cò deis Aborigènas. Divisions entre movaments occitanistas e provençalistas, visita de cors de lenga catastrofics, manca d’ambicion, societat negada per una autra, pòple que gausa pas dire son nom, tot i es. Un òme de l’Astrada Provençala que i ditz « la lenga provençala es acabat », Sergi Bec que constata : « ieu la lenga la parle mai que mai ai sebeliments ». Una visita interessanta dau Museon Arlatenc, e lo passatge davans lo breç de Mistral que davans i es escrich, en francés : « Visiteur, inclinez-vous devant ce berceau, c’est celui de Frédéric Mistral ».
I a quicòm que fai fauta, se pensa. « Quora moriguèt lo Mèstre, se menèt sa lenga amb eu au Paradís ? ». Basta, n’i a pron. Lei provençaus balhan au monde un espectacle pietadós unic e unenc, lamentable. « Encuei, se lo provençau se vòu revieudar, a besonh de metafòras nòvas, de mòdes de rebellion nòus. Çò que n’a pas de besonh, es de la veneracion d’un poèta que degun legís – una veneracion que (...) crèsta l’òme ». En defòra dau Museon, un vendeire de posters. N’i a pas un que representa Mistral. A la bibliothèque, degun que parla, e lo mesprés a Actes Sud quand demanda se publican de libres en occitan.
Helena Drysdale, ela, fai sa vòuta d’Euròpa en 2001 (Mother tongues), e ela pereu comença ambé Provença. Normau. Per una anglesa, Provença es un sòmi. Per ela, s’agís de mostrar Euròpa a sa familha, un an de temps, en virant dins lei recantons mai isolats d’Euròpa per cercar d’autentic. Amb aquò, es lo passat, totjorn lo passat : i aguèt un reviscòu, i aguèt, i aguèt... « Mai benlèu que l’occitan a fach son temps, benlèu que ara es acabat ? » demanda. « Mai non, avèm una literatura fòrça diversa (...) Kipling, Saint Exupéry, Séamas Heaney son traduch en occitan. I a de gramaticas e de diccionaris a boudre ! » respònd una occitanista. Son perduts fòra de la literatura. « I a quaranta minutas per setmana a la television la dimenjada », ajusta. E l’autor de s’estraçar de rire. Ven puei Pandecosta as Ate. Aquí, nòstra anglesa ris pus. Es pietadós, tornamai. Una fèsta que li foguèt comandada pasmens : « Fin finala, èstre provençau, significa parlar la lenga dei grands, cargar lo vestit dei reire grands ». Qunt imatge balham au monde. Provençaus, sortètz, anatz veire lo monde, e arrestatz de vos escondre darrier lo pretèxt qu’alhors, es diferent, que se pòt pas comparar : una comunautat de destin, se fabrega dau dedins, s’espèra pas d’un govèrn.

Même la littérature de gare s’intéresse à l’occitan

I a pasmens una demanda mondiala d’occitanitat. Quau en Occitània saup, se socita de saupre çò que legisson d’aquesta passa leis Alemands, leis Americans e leis Anglés ? Quau se socita de saupre que lo 16en libre mai vendut sus Amazon Grande-Bretanha es un libre que se passa en Occitània ? E qu’aqueu libre emplega la lenga nòstra sus quasi cada pagina ? A aqueu libre, i dison Labyrinth, de Kate Moss, es pas un cap d’òbra, aurà jamai un Prèmi Nobèl, serà jamai estudiat dins leis Universitats. Pasmens se vend. E conta una istòria que se debana a Carcassona entre lo sègle 12en e nòstre temps : tres secrets, doas femnas, un Graal (ò Gradal, que n’i a que dison qu’es un mòt occitan). Una mena de Da Vinci Code a l’occitana. Amb un lexic occitan-anglés a la fin, e un emplec de la lenga per far parlar lei personatges de l’edat mejana e lei militants per la lenga d’encuei. Lo Capítol 1 comença ansin, sensa traduccion : Carcassona, Julhet 1209. Lei noms dei vilas son balhats en occitan. E l’introduccion explica clarament çò qu’es la lenga d’òc, e que coneis a l’ora d’ara una segonda vida, au mens dins lo canton de Carcassona. Aqueu tipe de literatura agrada gaire au nòstre, es un pauc coma lo MacDo. Aquò empacha pas que tota Euròpa dau nòrd es a s’apassionar per un tròç de l’istòria d’Occitània e a s’assabentar de la lenga nòstra. E aquò lo devèm pas laissar passar, que i a clarament un mercat de crear, aqueu dau torisme occitan e occitanofòn. Imaginatz un començament d’economia basat sus la practica de l’occitan, e una guida dei luòcs que se i parla occitan ? Imaginatz una utilitat economica per l’occitan ? Imaginatz un filme basat sus aqueu roman ?
Lo monde demanda la cultura d’òc. Serà capabla de despassar sei contradiccions per i respòndre ?


Mark Abley, Parlez-vous Boro. 2006 Ed. Boréal. ISBN 2764603991
Helena Drysdale Mother Tongues 2001 Ed. Picador ISBN 0330372815
Kate Moss Labyrynth 2006 Ed. Orion ISBN 0752877321
Nòta: Labyrinth se tròba pas en francés. Foguèt publicat en anglés en genier de 2006 e sortèt puei en alemand.

vocabulari_dos_amorós_que_se_crosan.2.doc


Per leis escolans de 3a, oblidetz pas vòstre trabalh per la rentrada, e per cas qu'aguessiatz perdut vòstra ficha, vos la mete aqui... Siau pas brave ambe vosautrei? :-))) Bònei vacanças pasmens!

Certainly worth a read!

May 2003

From University of California - Riverside

Ancestral language revitalization efforts complete successful first year
Visitors from Northern California tribes observe classes in Luiseño
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (May 14, 2003) -- Scholars at the University of California, Riverside and cultural leaders of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Mission Indians are celebrating the completion of the first year of an ambitious effort to teach tribal members their ancestral language. The work is paying off.
Last week, Native Americans from Northern California visited UC Riverside to observe the Takic Language Revitalization Project in action at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters near Temecula. They watched children learn Luiseño, one of approximately 100 tribal languages native to California. Fully half of those languages are now nearly extinct.

The Native American Languages Protection Act was approved by Congress in the early 1990s, and right now there is a movement to provide additional funding to help revive many of the endangered native languages across the nation. That could help efforts like the one at Pechanga.

The people who observed the language program were from the Paiute Tribe in Bishop, the Tule River reservation near Visalia and individuals representing the Numa Yadoha Program in Bishop. They spent a week at UCR Extension learning teaching techniques that can help in their own efforts to revitalize their native languages.

"I really liked seeing the program," said Carrie Franco, who is learning the Yowlumni language on the Tule River reservation, home to 13 different native tribes. She is studying her ancestral language in order to pass it down to her children and grandchildren. Her cousin, Lucy Rodilez, said she enjoyed watching children at Pechanga sing and understand Luiseño.

The Tule River reservation covers 56,000-acres, including towering redwood trees and elevations of 7,000 ft. Since there are 13 different tribes on the reservations, issues of language revitalization get complicated.

Margaret Valdez, who lives on the Tule River reservation, said her father is Mexican, her mother is Yowlumni and her husband was Navajo. "I have five children and they all understand Yowlumni," she said. She has started to teach her grandchildren. When a language dies, she said, so does the culture.

That is the theory that launched the effort to revitalize Luiseno, according to Gary DuBois, director of Pechanga Cultural Resources. "With the death of ancestral languages, the process of comprehending one's own history and describing the landscape is changed. It becomes impossible to transmit fundamental cultural ways of knowing across the generations."

He said last week that the first year of the program has gone well, in fact better than he expected. "We are concentrating our efforts on the preschool program, and we have waiting lists of Pechanga children who would like to attend the preschool." Recently, DuBois said, the tribe approved a kindergarten program to start in the fall. The adult classes are geared to support the preschool. "It helps family members and tribal members keep up with the children," said DuBois.

Sheila Dwight, director of International Education Programs at UCR Extension, helped assembled a team of language teaching experts to work on the project. And she hosted the group touring the Riverside County language programs this week.

The lead linguist for the project is Eric Elliott, who is uniquely qualified for the task. A Southern California native, Elliott spent five years documenting the endangered Luiseño language working closely with Villiana Hyde, native speaker of the Rincon dialect of Luiseño. His doctoral dissertation at UC San Diego was a 1,700 page bilingual English-Luiseño/Luiseño-English dictionary, the result of thirteen years of research on the Luiseño language. For the past eleven years he has documented the Mountain Cahuilla dialect of Cahuilla, and the Serrano language spoken by one remaining native speaker residing at the Morongo Reservation of Riverside County.

Joel Martin, Rupert Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs at UCR, helped put all of the parties together. His goal has always been to design a program that could be used as a model nationwide.

"We're on our way now," Martin said. "The children are learning so well and the teachers are doing so well. It is very heartening to see how far we've come."

This effort is connected to UCR's proposed Center for California Native Nations, which will help facilitate innovative educational partnerships, coordinate important research related to Native Americans, and share best practices. A new Web site at UC Riverside that offers curriculum ideas for language revitalization, free magazines for children and other resources, is available at www.americanindian.ucr.edu

THE TAKIC LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION PROJECT

Has developed teaching models to revitalize the Luiseño language
Has created successful preschool and adult classes at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters
Has trained tribal members to be teachers in Luiseno
Has taken the model and demonstrated it to national audiences at conferences, as well as accepted visits from observers to see the program in action.
Relevance to UCR
UCR's focus on American Indian Affairs reflects its location and unique positive heritage. Located at the fastest growing and most diverse campus in the UC system, UCR's Native American Studies program consists of more than 40 courses distributed across many departments. A strong concentration of faculty in History supports one of the country's most highly regarded Ph.D. programs in Native American history as well as a new M.A. program. Efforts are underway to offer an M.A. and Ph.D. in Native American Studies as well, tapping full-time faculty in Anthropology, Dance, English, Ethnic Studies, and Religious Studies. UCR's program enjoys institutional support, including the Rupert Costo Library of American Indian History, the Costo Endowed Chair in American Indian Affairs, the Costo Historical and Linguistic Native American Research Center, and a strong Native American Students Program. Near neighbor to more than 30 federally recognized tribes as well as several unrecognized ones, UCR's program supports interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, critically sophisticated, and communally based research. A Web site is available at http://americanindian.ucr.edu/

Contacts:
Russell "Butch" Murphy
Communications Director
Pechanga Indian Reservation
Pechanga Indian Reservation
P.O. Box 1477
Temecula, CA 92593
e-mail: rmurphy@pechanga.org; Phone: (909)676-2768, ext. 202

Gary Dubois
Director, Pechanga Cultural Resources
Pechanga Indian Reservation
P.O. Box 2183
Temecula, CA 92593
e-mail gary@pechanga.org; Phone: (909)308-9295

Joel Martin
Costa Chair of American Indian Affairs
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
e-mail joel.martin@ucr.edu; Phone (909)787-2137

Sheila Dwight
Director, International Education Programs
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
e-mail: sdwight@ucx.ucr.edu; Phone: (909)787-4346


The University of California, Riverside offers undergraduate and graduate education to nearly 16,000 students and has a projected enrollment of 21,000 students by 2010. It is the fastest growing and most ethnically diverse campus of the preeminent ten-campus University of California system, the largest public research university system in the world. The picturesque 1,200-acre campus is located at the foot of the Box Springs Mountains near downtown Riverside in Southern California. More information about UC Riverside is available at www.ucr.edu or by calling 909-787-5185. For a listing of faculty experts on a variety of topics, please visit http://mmr.ucr.edu/experts/.

The Impassioned Fight to Save Dying Languages
More and more voices are speaking up to keep them from being overwhelmed by English and global pressures.
By ROBERT LEE HOTZ, Times Science Writer

LOSING CALIFORNIA'S LANGUAGES Of 100 Native American languages once spoken in California, 50 have been wiped out completely. An additional 17 have no fluent speakers. The remainder are spoken by only a few people. An enlarged version of the map below shows the surviving languages, the areas in which they are spoken and the number of native speakers.

HILO, HAWAII--It was not the teachers bearing baskets of feather leis, the fanfares played on conch shells or the beating of the sacred sharkskin drum that made Hulilauakea Wilson's high school graduation so memorable.

It was this: For the first time in a century, a child of the islands had been educated exclusively in his native Hawaiian language, immersed from birth in a special way of speaking his mind like a tropical fish steeped in the salt waters of its nativity.

It was a language being reborn.

More than an academic rite of passage, the graduation last May of Wilson and four other students at the Nawahiokalani'opu'u School on the Big Island of Hawaii signaled a coming of age for one of the world's most ambitious efforts to bring an endangered language back from the brink of extinction.

The world has become a hospice for dying languages, which are succumbing to the pressure of global commerce, telecommunications, tourism, and the inescapable influence of English. By the most reliable estimates, more than half of the world's 6,500 languages may be extinct by the end of this century.

"The number of languages is plummeting, imploding downward in an altogether unprecedented rate, just as human population is shooting straight upward," said University of Alaska linguist Michael Krauss.

But scattered across the globe, many ethnic groups are struggling to find their own voice, even at the risk of making their dealings with the broader world they inhabit more fractious.

From the Hoklo and Hakka in Hong Kong to the Euskara in Spain's Basque country, thousands of minority languages are clinging precariously to existence. A few, like Hebrew and Gaelic, have been rejuvenated as part of resurgent nationalism. Indeed, so important is language to political and personal self-determination that a people's right to speak its mind in the language of its choice is becoming an international human right.

California once had the densest concentration of indigenous languages in North America. Today, almost every one of its 50 or so surviving native languages is on its deathbed. Indeed, the last fluent speaker of Chumash, a family of six languages once heard throughout Southern California and the West, is a professional linguist at UC Santa Barbara.

More people in California speak Mongolian at home than speak any of the state's most endangered indigenous languages.

"Not one of them is spoken by children at home," said UC Berkeley linguist Leanne Hinton.

None of this happened by accident.

All Native American languages, as well as Hawaiian, were for a century the target of government policies designed to eradicate them in public and in private, to ensure that they were not passed from parent to child.

Until 1987, it was illegal to teach Hawaiian in the islands' public schools except as a foreign language. The language that once claimed the highest literacy rate in the world was banned even from the islands' private schools.

Indeed, there may be no more powerful testimony to the visceral importance of language than the government's systematic efforts to destroy all the indigenous languages in the United States and replace them with English.

No language in memory, except Spanish, has sought so forcefully to colonize the mind. Of an estimated 300 languages spoken in the territorial United States when Columbus made landfall in 1492, only 175 are still spoken. Of those, only 20 are being passed on to children.

In 1868, a federal commission on Indian affairs concluded: "In the difference of language today lies two-thirds of our trouble. . . . Their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted." The commission reasoned that "through sameness of language is produced sameness of sentiment, and thought. . . . In process of time the differences producing trouble would have been gradually obliterated."

Not until 1990 did the federal government reverse its official hostility to indigenous languages, when the Native American Languages Act made it a policy to preserve native tongues.

Policies against indigineous languages were once in effect in many developed nations. Only the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended that government's efforts to force its ethnic minorities to adopt Russian. Policies in other nations aimed at eliminating minority languages such as Catalan in Spain, Kurdish in Turkey, Inuktitut in Canada and Lardio in Australia, to name just a few.

Silencing a language does much more than eliminate a source of "differences producing trouble."

A language embodies a community of people and their way of being. It is a unique mental framework that gives special form to universal human experiences. Languages are the most complex products of the human mind, each differing enormously in its sounds, structure and pattern of thought, said UCLA anthropologist Jared Diamond.

As a prism through which perceptions are reflected, there is almost no end to the variations.

In some languages, gender plays a relatively minor role, allowing sexually neutral forms of personal pronouns, and in others it is so overriding that men and women must use completely different forms of speech. Other tongues infuse every phrase with the structure of ownership, while others make cooperation a key grammatical rule. Some see only a category where another sees the individuals that constitute it.

There are languages in which verities of time, cardinal directions, even left and right--as English conceives them--are almost wholly absent.

"If we ever want to understand how the human mind works, we really want to know all the kinds of ways that have evolved for making sense out of the kaleidoscope of experience," said linguist Marianne Mithun at UC Santa Barbara.

Suffocating in Silence


More than an ocean separates Katherine Silva Saubel on the Morongo Reservation at the foot of the arid, wind-swept San Gorgonio Pass near Banning from the language renaissance underway in Hawaii.

The silence suffocating many languages is almost tangible in her darkened, cinder-block living room. There, in a worn beige recliner flanked by a fax machine, a treadmill and a personal computer, Saubel, a 79-year-old Cahuilla Indian activist and scholar, marshals her resistance to time and the inroads of English.

Saubel is the last fluent speaker of her native tongue on this reservation.

"Since my husband died," she said, "there is no one here I can converse with."

For 50 years, this broad-shouldered great-grandmother has worked almost single-handedly to ensure the survival of Cahuilla.

Her efforts earned her a place in the National Women's Hall of Fame and a certificate of merit from the state Indian Museum in Sacramento. Even so, her language is slipping away.

"I wanted to teach the children the language, but their mothers wanted them to know English. A lot of them want the language taught to them now," Saubel said. "Maybe it will revive."

If it does, it will be a recovery based almost solely on the memories she has pronounced and defined for academic tape recorders, the words she has filed in the only known dictionary of Cahuilla, and the songs she has helped commit to living tribal memory. Tribal artifacts and memorabilia are housed in the nearby Makli Museum that she founded, the first in North America to be organized and managed by Native Americans.

Born on the Los Coyotes Reservation east of Warm Springs, Saubel did not even see a white person until she was 4 years old--"I thought he was sick," she recalled--and English had no place in her world until she was 7.

Then her mother--who spoke neither English nor Spanish--sent her to a public school.

She was, she recalled, the only Indian girl in the classroom. She could not speak English. No one tried to teach her to speak the language, she said. Mostly, she was ignored.

"I would speak to them in the Indian language and they would answer me in English. I don't remember when I began to understand what was being said to me," Saubel said. "Maybe a year."

Even so, by eighth grade she had discovered a love of learning that led her to become the first Indian woman to graduate from Palm Springs High School. But she also saw the other Indian children taken aside at recess and whipped if they spoke their language in school.

In time, the child of an Indian medicine woman became an ethno-botanist.

For linguists as far away as Germany and Japan, she became both a research subject and a collaborator. She is working now with UC San Diego researchers to catalog all the medicinal plants identified in tribal lore.

"My race is dying," she said. "I am saving the remnants of my culture in these books."

"I am just a voice in the wilderness all by myself," Saubel said. "But I have made these books as something for my great-grandchildren. And I have great-grandchildren."

In its broadest outlines, her life is a refrain repeated on many mainland reservations.

"Basically, every American Indian language is endangered," said Douglas Whalen at Yale University's Haskins Laboratory, who is chairman of the Endangered Languages Fund.

As a matter of policy, Native American families often were broken up to keep children from learning to speak like their parents. Indian boarding schools, founded in the last century to implement that policy, left generations of Indians with no direct connection to their language or tribal cultures.

Today, the federal Administration for Native Americans dispenses about $2 million in language grants to tribes every year.

But even the best efforts to preserve the skeletons of grammar, vocabulary and syntax cannot breathe life into a language that its people have abandoned.

Still, from the Kuruk of Northern California to the Chitimacha of Louisiana and the Abenaki of Vermont, dozens of tribes are trying to rekindle their languages.

Mohawk is taught in upstate New York, Lakota on the Oglala Sioux reservation in South Dakota, Ute in Utah, Choctaw in Mississippi, and Kickapoo in Oklahoma. The Navajo Nation--with 80,000 native speakers--has its own comprehensive, college-level training to produce Navajo-speaking teachers for the 240 schools in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah that have large numbers of Navajo students.

Some tribes, acknowledging that too few tribal members still speak their language, have switched to English for official business while trying to give children a feel for the words and catch-phrases of their native language.

Even when instruction falls short of achieving fluency, it can inspire pride that, in turn, translates into lower school dropout rates and improved test scores, several experts said.

Like the Hawaiian students, Mohawk children near Montreal, who are taught in their native language, do better academically than their tribal schoolmates taught in English.

But revitalization efforts often founder on the political geography of the reservation system, economic pressure and the language gap that divides grandparent from grandchild.

As many tribes assert the prerogatives of sovereignty for the first time in generations, some tribal leaders are jarred to discover themselves more at ease in English than in the language of their ancestors.

"Often people who are now in power in Indian communities are the first generation that does not speak the language, and it can be very, very hard for them," Mithun at UC Santa Barbara said. "It is hard to be an Indian and not being able to prove it with language. You have to be a big person to say I want my kids to be more Indian than I am."

When people do break through to fluency, they tap a hidden wellspring of community.

"I was in my own language, not just saying the words, but my own thoughts," said Nancy Steele of Crescent City, an advanced apprentice in the Karuk language.

"It is a way of being, something that has been here for a long, long time, a sense of balance with the world."

An All-Out Effort to Save Hawaiian


The effort to revive Hawaiian today is a cultural battle for hearts and minds waged with dictionaries, Internet sites, children's books, videos, multimedia databases and radio broadcasts. At its forefront are a handful of parents and educators determined to remake Hawaiian into a language in which every aspect of modern life--from rocket science to rap--can be expressed.

Spearheading the revival is a nonprofit foundation called the Aha Punano Leo, which means the "language nest" in Hawaiian.

Inspired by the Maori of New Zealand and the Mohawks of Canada, Punano Leo teachers use the immersion approach, in which only the language being learned is used throughout the school day.

In 15 years, the Punano Leo has grown from a few volunteers running a preschool with 12 students to a $5-million-a-year enterprise with 130 employees that encompasses 11 private Hawaiian language schools, the world's most sophisticated native language computer network, and millions in university scholarships.

It works in partnership with the state department of education, which now operates 16 public Hawaiian language schools, and the University of Hawaii, which recently established the first Hawaiian language college in Hilo.

So far, it is succeeding most in the place where so many other revitalization efforts have failed: in the homes that, all too often, are the first place a language begins to die.

To enroll their children in a Punano Leo immersion school, parents must pledge to also become fluent in Hawaiian and promise that only Hawaiian will be spoken at home.

The effort arose from the frustration of seven Hawaiian language teachers, amid a general political reawakening of Hawaiian native rights, and one couple's promise to an unborn child.

The couple was University of Hawaii linguist William H. Wilson and Hawaiian language expert Kauanoe Kamana, who today is president of Punano Leo and principal of the Nawahiokalani'opu'u School.

The child was their son: 1999 graduating senior Hulilauakea Wilson. Their daughter Keli'i will graduate next year.

"When we married, my wife and I decided we wanted to use Hawaiian when our children were born because no one was speaking it," William Wilson said.

"It was a personal thing for us. We were building the schools for us, almost, as well as for other people. We started with a preschool and now they are in college."

They planted the seed of a language revival and cultivated it.

Like many others, Wilson and Kamana were frustrated that Hawaiian could be taught only as a foreign language, even though it was, along with English, the official language of a state in which the linguistic landscape had been redrawn repeatedly by annexation, immigration and tourism.

It must compete with more than 16 languages today to retain a foothold in the island state, from Japanese and Spanish to Tagalog and Portuguese. Hawaiian ranks only eighth in its homeland, census figures show, trailing Samoan in the number of households where it can be heard.

It was not always so.

Although Hawaiian did not even acquire an alphabet until the early 1800s, the islanders' appetite for their language proved so insatiable that missionary presses produced about 150 million pages of Hawaiian text between 1820 and 1850. At least 150 Hawaiian-language newspapers also thrived.

In 1880, there were 150 schools teaching in Hawaiian. A decade later--after the islands were forcibly annexed by the U.S.--there were none.

As part of a small group of committed language teachers, inspired by influential University of Hawaii linguist Larry Kimura, Wilson and and Kamana vowed to restore the language to a central place among Hawaiians.

"This is the most exciting thing I can do for my people," Kamana said of the foundation's mission. "This is the core of Hawaiian identity: the Hawaiian way. The Hawaiian language is the code of that way."

Updating Old Language With New Vocabulary


Many reviving languages, however, face the new world of the 21st century with a 19th century vocabulary.

"A living language means you have to be able to talk about everything," said Kamana. "If you can't talk about everything, you will talk in English. It is simple."

The task of updating Hawaiian falls to a group called the Lexicon Committee.

Once a year, the committee issues a bright yellow dictionary called the Mamaka Kaiao, which defines new words created to fill gaps in Hawaiian's knowledge of the contemporary world, from a noun for the space shuttle's manned maneuvering unit--ahikao ha awe--to a term for coherent laser light: malamalama aukahi.

This year's edition runs to 311 pages, with 4,000 terms. A is for aeolele: pogo stick; Z is for Zimababue: a citizen of Zimbabwe.

Whenever possible, the new words relate to traditional vocabulary and customs. The Hawaiian word for rap music--Paleoleo--refers to warring factions who would trade taunts. The word for e-mail--Lika uila--merges words for lightning and letter. The word for pager-- Kele' O--echoes the idea of calling someone's name.

Like so many other aspects of the Hawaiian language revival--from translating the state educational curriculum to organizing an accredited school system--the committee has the authority to shape the future of Hawaiian only because its linguists, native speakers and volunteers simply started doing it.

"It exists; that is its authority," said Wilson.

But many of those whose languages are undergoing such resuscitation efforts don't want to accommodate the present.

They worry that grafting new verbs and nouns will violate the sanctity of the ancient language they hope will draw them back into a world of their own.

At Cochiti Pueblo, in New Mexico, where the Keresan language is spoken, the tribal council decided in 1997 that it would not develop a written form of the language. The language itself was a sacred text too closely tied to the pueblo's religion and traditional societies to be changed in any way.

Under the onslaught of new technology and new customs, however, even the most well-established languages are pushed off balance by the natural evolution of words and grammar.

Certainly, the 40 intellectuals of the Academie Francaise in Paris and the Office de la Langue Francaise in Quebec are fiercely resisting the inroads of Franglais, as a matter of national pride and linguistic purity.

But a thousand leaks spring from the linguistic dikes they maintain with such determination, if not from the engineering patter of the Internet, then from the international slang of sports.

Recently, the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris started publishing its three most important scientific journals in English. Earlier this year, the Quebec French office felt obliged to post an officially approved dictionary of French substitutes for English golf terms.

In the same way, many indigenous tribes feel that their native tongues must be made to encompass every aspect of a world that continued to change long after the language itself stagnated.

The vocabulary of Karuk stopped growing naturally more than half a century ago, said Nancy Steele. Even the words for auto parts stopped with the models of the 1930s.

As her tribe coins words today, they reflect the spirit of their language. The new Karuk word for wristwatch, for example, translates as "little sun worn on the wrist."

"If you do not allow a language to be spoken as a living language," Steele said, "it will, in a sense, be a dead language. You have to allow it to be alive and animated."

Schools Funded by Donations, Grants


In eighth-grade science class, Hui Hui Mossman's students are conducting germination experiments.

Down the hall, Kaleihoku Kala'i's math class wrestles with the arithmetic of medians and averages. In social studies class, Lehua Veincent taps the floor with a yardstick for emphasis as his students recite their family genealogies.

And Caroline Fallau is teaching her 13 11th-graders English--as a foreign language.

So the school day hits its stride at the Nawahiokalani'opu'u immersion high school, where 84 teenagers, with only an occasional adolescent yawn, are hitting the books.

But for the sound of Hawaiian in the hallways, computer workstations and classrooms, this could be any well-funded private school in America.

The appearance of prosperity is deceptive.

The Punano Leo schools are sustained year to year by a fragile patchwork of donations, state education aid and federal grants. The lush, well-manicured campus, with its complex of immaculate blue classroom buildings, itself is the work of parent volunteers, aided by an island flora in which even the weeds are as ornamental as orchids.

Several miles away, the younger children are arriving at the public Keukaha Elementary School, which offers both English and Hawaiian immersion classes under one roof.

Those in English classes walk directly to their homerooms, while the Hawaiian immersion students--almost half the school--gather in nine rows on the school steps for a morning ceremony. Chanting in their native language, they formally seek permission to enter and affirm their commitment to their community.

They will not encounter English as a subject until fifth grade, where it will be taught one hour a day.

Running an elementary school with two languages "is a delicate balance and not always an easy one," said Principal Katharine Webster. There is competition for resources and the demand for immersion classes increases every year, while--in a depressed island economy--the education budget does not, she said.

"Teaching in an immersion environment is not easy at all," said third-grade teacher Leimaile Bontag.

"You spend weekends and hours after school to prepare lessons. We often need to translate on our own, find the new vocabulary. It takes hours and hours."

But it is a proud complaint.

Clearly, the teachers are sustained by their love for Hawaiian and the community it has fostered. And it appears to be having a beneficial effect on the native Hawaiian students, who traditionally test at the bottom of the educational system and have the highest dropout rate.

Given the difficulty in comparing the language groups, an objective yardstick of student performance is hard to come by.

But one set of Stanford Achievement Tests taken by sixth-graders at Keukaha Elementary educated since preschool in Hawaiian suggests that they are doing as well or better than their schoolmates.

In tests given in English, all of the Hawaiian-educated students scored average or above in math while only two-thirds of the students in all-English classes scored as well. In reading, two-thirds of Hawaiian-educated students scored average or above, compared to half of the English-educated students.

Getting an Early Start on Hawaiian


In the shade of the African tulip trees, Kaipua'ala Crabbe is leading 22 toddlers in song: a lilting Hawaiian translation of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

Four other teachers and two university students help the children pronounce the Hawaiian lyrics at the Punano Leo immersion preschool in Hilo.

Hulilauakea Wilson, who volunteers regularly at the preschool when he is not attending university classes, helps a little boy tie his shoes. The child climbs onto his lap and listens attentively, not yet sure of the meaning of every word he hears in school.

"Every child reacts differently," said Alohalani Housman, who has been teaching Hawaiian immersion classes for 13 years. "The students might listen for months and not say anything. But all of them soon become speakers."

And so the seeds of a language revival are cultivated.

"It is the language of this land," young Wilson said. "It is like growing the native plants. This is their land. We are the plants of this land too."

The success of the Hawaiian program raises a larger question of longevity: How well can such diverse languages coexist and how much should the majority culture do to accommodate them?

Foundation officials and parents said their embrace of Hawaiian is no rejection of English. They are only insisting on their right to be bilingual, determined to ensure that Hawaiian is their first language of the heart.

"Everybody is so concerned about whether they are going to learn English and whether we are parenting them properly," said Kau Ontai, cradling her 2-year-old daughter Kamalei in one arm.

Her two older children attend the Punano Leo preschool. Her husband teaches the language. She studied it in high school, then achieved fluency as a Punano Leo volunteer.

Hawaiian is the voice of their home, yet the native language they speak marks them as alien to many in their island homeland.

"When we walk through a mall in Hawaii speaking Hawaiian, people are shocked," she said. "They stop us and ask: What about English? We hear Chinese being spoken, Japanese spoken, Filipino spoken. Nobody ever stops them in their tracks and says why are you speaking that?"

"For now, their first and only language is Hawaiian," she said of her children.

She is confident that they will learn English easily enough when the time comes.

"But my husband and I will never look into our children's eyes and speak English to them," she said. "That is something I could never do."

? 2000 Los Angeles Times