“Progress Readout” at the musée du quai Branly on October 6th 2009

On October 6, 2009, Sorosoro organized a “Progress Readout” at the musée du quai Branly just a little over a year after the launch of the organization. The event provided an opportunity to review and evaluate activities conducted since 2008 and also featured the launch of the new Sorosoro website and the SorosoroTV “channel”.

The program for the day included linguists, of course, such as Colette Grinevald who captured the audience’s attention by explaining the work of linguists in the field and by quickly sharing the initial Sorosoro filming project in Guatemala. Jean – Marie Hombert, meanwhile, described the mission to Gabon in June 2009 and shared some of the films made with the Punus and Akélés. Finally, Stephane Robert introduced the Sénélangues program, a Sorosoro partner, which plans to document twenty languages over 4 years in Senegal.

The morning was concluded by Claude Hagège who, with his usual passion, spoke of the diversity of the earth’s languages, the manner in which some are now in decline, but also how some are in the process of being revitalized. He also emphasized the need to promote education and awareness in the media about endangered languages in order to improve their chances of surviving and thriving.

Last but not least, President Chirac spoke vigorously of the equality of cultures and languages, and the need to preserve the world’s languages as living languages. He called on States to take the measure of their responsibilities in the preservation of cultural and linguistic diversity and articulated a vision for “a new form of collective consciousness, attentive to diversity and respectful of individual contributions to the common progress of all which outweighs the arrogance of a single way of thinking.”