Sorosoro Blog

Last week Sorosoro started a debate on mother tongue-based education (vs. education in national or foreign language as a means of promoting literacy). We continue now with the example of Zápara indians in Ecuador, confronted with a serious difficulty : the very low number of speakers, 6 in this specific case ! The anthropologist Anne-Gaël Bilhaut describes the situation, do not hesitate to comment and give your opinion !

Videos

Staying in South America, let’s move on now to Guatemala, where José Alfredo Obdulio Perén Gabino names for us the different body parts in Kaqchikel, one of the most widely spoken Mayan languages.

In addition to this first video in Kaqchikel, our English speaking readers will have the opportunity to discover another video (with English subtitles) on insults in the Akele language of Gabon

Agenda

A conference on Mapuches and the Mapudungun language was held on October 28th in Santiago, Chile. Gathered under the topic of « The State of Chile and Colonialism over the Mapuche / Which language for the Mapuche ? », linguists, teachers and activists discussed the issue of the ongoing revitalization of Mapudungun, as well as those of collective rights, land restitution and autonomy of the Mapuche people. Read

The second Symposium on Teaching and Learning Indigenous Languages of Latin America (STILLA) will be held in the fall of 2011 in Indiana, USA. The deadline for receipt of proposals is December 6, 2010, and presentations should deal with both research and the teaching and learning of Latin American indigenous languages. Read

And as always…

Already 30 translations for the word of the fortnight (5969 are still awaited). Please tell us how « chatty » is said in your mother tongue…

and of course an updated Soroquiz available on our homepage…

A beautiful week to all of you,

The Sorosoro crew