SAVING LANGUAGES.

November 8, 2002 by languagehat 4 Comments

Now, this [“Instructor working with children to try to save the Dakotah language”] and this [a Providence Journal article not available at the Internet Archive, July 2023] (unlike this) show how to keep languages alive. And the Cornish are hanging tough. (Via Pat, Mister Endangered Languages.)

Comments

mark says

November 8, 2002 at 1:47 pm

Aha! So _that’s_ where the anger in the breadbaking quote came from…. The Dakotas.

I have trouble being gentle with dough, I have to admit. Now I know my bread doesn’t work. Too bad-tempered…
Renee says

November 10, 2002 at 2:09 pm

Ah, Mark, I was just about to comment on that! 🙂
I was taught that by Ukrainians. You have to be happy while baking. It’s bread magic, I assume.
pat says

November 10, 2002 at 8:30 pm

There’s something to be said for angry kneading.

Heh.

And I think we need to start some sort of Cornish pep squad… just, you know, schedule something once a week where we all stand up in our chairs and say “GO CORNISH!”

Or something.

🙂
mark says

November 11, 2002 at 4:54 pm

I know what you mean about Go-Cornish-Go. I’ve been cheering them on since I put them in my ‘dead languages’ section and then added a guilty note about “er maybe not…”

If Cornish can revive and survive, so can all those beautiful weights and measures like the Persian ‘batman’, the Arabic ‘tola’, the Japanese ‘tsubo’, the Ottoman ‘oka’, the Hungarian ‘fournail’…

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