Sorosoro Blog

Our debate on mother tongue based education continues : this week Michel Launey paints a clear and unvarnished picture of mother tongue based teaching in French Overseas Departments and Territories. Read

Video

After having spent a few weeks in Guatemala with the Kaqchikels, we head back to Senegal to discover the Baynunk language. To start with, here are the numbers from 1 to 10, given by Fatou Binetou Coly.

Apart from this week’s new video, we recommend to English-speakers a subtitled interview with Théodosie, an Akele from Gabon, in which she describes the decline process of her language.

Language Family Indexes

A big thank you to linguists Catherine Lynch and Marion Cheucle who have made new indexes available :

In French : on Bekwil, a Bantu language from the Niger-Congo Family, spoken in Gabon, Congo and Cameroon.

In English : on the language families spoken in Nicaragua and Honduras

− Maskoian languages

− Matacoan languages

− Misumalpan languages

News

Last Sunday, November 7th, Radio France Culture‘s « Tout un monde » magazine was devoted to « Tuaregs, a fading culture ». Among other subjects, discussions centered on their language, Tamasheq.

In its Wesnesday November 3rd edition, newspaper Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes devoted a long article to the state of Aboriginal languages in Australia, of which only about 20 are left.

Agenda

On November 26th, linguist Saliloko Mufwene, from the University of Chicago, will give a lecture on “The emergence of creole languages : some myths we should no longer promote”, at the Dynamique du Langage (DDL) research center in Lyon, France. Read more

And as always…

The word of the fortnight is still online, everyone’s welcome to translate « Sky » in his or her mother tongue!

And of course an updated Soroquiz available on our homepage…

A beautiful week to all of you,

The Sorosoro crew