News

This week, our featured video focuses on the Hawaiian language, in honor of Carol Silva, a Hawaiian professor and active campaigner for the revitalization of Hawaiian who recently visited Paris.

Videos

After covering the topics of marriage proposal, dowry, polygamy and adultery in our video series on conjugal relationships in Gabon, we have finally come to two pivotal moments: childbirth, and the coming-of-age ritual of circumcision. Papa Kédine, the patriarch of an Akele community in Gabon’s lake region near Lambaréné, gives us detailed accounts of these two life events. Needless to say, Papa Kédine is as direct as always, and does not bother sugarcoating either the practices or the terminology.

Agenda

For those of you who will be in Asia this July, the 18th International Conference on « Pragmatism and language teaching » starts today, 16 July 2010, at the University of Kobe in Japan. On the conference agenda : language teaching methods, intercultural interaction and multilingualism, with a few seminars dedicated specifically to rare languages.

And for linguists hoping to participate in the 25th « Iowa Culture and Language Conference », held in the United States in November of this year, you only have 2 weeks left to submit your presentation entries, before the deadline on 5 August!

Languages & language families

In French:

African specialists have once again outdone themselves this week. Two new language indexes on Niger-Congo languages are now online!

– Suzanne Ruelland has compiled an index on Tupuri (a language spoken in Chad and Cameroon). Thanks to the quality of its content and its detail, linguists, ethnolinguists, oral literature specialists, anthropologists, psychoanalysts alike will all be more than satisfied with this new language index.

– Régis Ollomo Ella, a young linguist from LACITO (Langues et civilisations à tradition orale) has submitted an equally fascinating survey of Shiwa, a language spoken in Gabon.

In English:

Twelve new indexes on languages from Africa, Europe and Latin America are now available on our English-language website:

– Abruzzian (Abruzzo, Italy)

– Amuzgo (Sierra Madre del Sur, Mexico)

– Aragonese (Aragon, Spain)

– Asturian (Asturias, Spain)

– Aranese (Val d’Aran, Spain)

– Calabrian (Calabria, Italy)

– Cape Verdean (Cape Verde)

– Chichimeca Jonaz (Guanajuato, Mexico)

– Chiquitano (mainly Bolivia & Brazil)

– Chatino (Oaxaca, Mexico)

– Chocho (Oaxaca, Mexico)

– North Chasu (Tanzania)

Meanwhile, as usual…

– The notion of family is once again the focus of our word of the fortnight, with « father ».

– And don’t forget our Soroquiz, which you can always find on our homepage!

We wish you all a great week !

The Sorosoro crew