atcprunner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5927 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French, Mandarin Studies: Russian
| Message 1 of 8 02 May 2010 at 4:11am | IP Logged |
Hello, my name is Matthew Armstrong.
I have a friend that speaks Mixteco as his first language. It is Mixteco Alto, and he comes from Mixtepec of Oaxaca (Mexico). I am interested in learning his language. He does not speak English, so I use Spanish as our mode of communication. He is very intelligent,and he is willing to sit with me for an hour or two once a week. Also, he is a coworker.
The problem is, there isn't much I can find on the web about his dialect of Mixteco. As far as I can decipher, most of the other Mixteco dialects are mutually unintelligible.
Of course he is able to tell me what a cat is, and what a dog is. He can give me phrases and sentences; however, this does not help me very much with understanding the "nuts" and "bolts" of the language so that I can create my own new sentences.
I know about the materials on the website for the Summer Institute of Languages. I am just hopeful that there is someone here who can steer me in the right direction.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
-Matthew Armstrong
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buhrahyun Newbie United States Joined 5354 days ago 24 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 2 of 8 04 May 2010 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
This might not give you the nuts and bolts, but there are 4 types of mixteco audiobibles which seem to be free here: http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/ambassador/free-audio-bib le-download
Mixteco Coazospan
Mixteco Jamiltepec
Mixteco Penoles
Mixteco Tezoatlan
If one of these is a match, then at least you'll have tons of audio material with a chance at finding the corresponding text.
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pohaku Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5651 days ago 192 posts - 367 votes Speaks: English*, Persian Studies: Arabic (classical), French, German, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 3 of 8 04 May 2010 at 8:21pm | IP Logged |
I don't have personal experience with the techniques, but I know that field linguists have developed ways of learning languages cold. They may get dropped into the middle of a jungle, for example, and they need to learn to communicate with the natives with little or no information about their language. I've heard that they use dolls and puppets, talk to kids a lot, and so forth. You can go far beyond dog and cat, pantomiming actions, working out color names, using a calendar to get yesterday, today, tomorrow, etc. You're ahead of the game, anyway, since you share Spanish. You might want to investigate that angle if you're up for a challenge like that.
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Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5348 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto
| Message 4 of 8 05 May 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged |
I found a link to a Mixteco course book.
http://www.narcis.info/publication/RecordID/oai:openaccess.l eidenuniv.nl:1887%2F14684
I hope it'll be helpful. :)
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atcprunner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5927 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French, Mandarin Studies: Russian
| Message 5 of 8 05 May 2010 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
I will have my friend listen to these materials. It would be a great gift for him if I had the bible in his native language. I do not think that I would use the bible as a tool for learning though. At times it's difficult enough in English. Thank you for helping me. Didn't think anyone was going to help. Thank you.
Matthew Armstrong.
buhrahyun wrote:
This might not give you the nuts and bolts, but there are 4 types of mixteco audiobibles which seem to be free here: http://www.faithcomesbyhearing.com/ambassador/free-audio-bib le-download
Mixteco Coazospan
Mixteco Jamiltepec
Mixteco Penoles
Mixteco Tezoatlan
If one of these is a match, then at least you'll have tons of audio material with a chance at finding the corresponding text.
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Edited by atcprunner on 05 May 2010 at 2:20am
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atcprunner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5927 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French, Mandarin Studies: Russian
| Message 6 of 8 05 May 2010 at 2:23am | IP Logged |
pohaku wrote:
I don't have personal experience with the techniques, but I know that field linguists have developed ways of learning languages cold. They may get dropped into the middle of a jungle, for example, and they need to learn to communicate with the natives with little or no information about their language. I've heard that they use dolls and puppets, talk to kids a lot, and so forth. You can go far beyond dog and cat, pantomiming actions, working out color names, using a calendar to get yesterday, today, tomorrow, etc. You're ahead of the game, anyway, since you share Spanish. You might want to investigate that angle if you're up for a challenge like that. |
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I have a course for another dialect of mixteco which does help with the grammar, but almost all of the words have to be tweaked. It is like Spanish and portuguese it seems. I believe that I must just take the time to go through that course with him and have him change everything into his dialect.
Thank you.
Matthew Armstrong
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atcprunner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5927 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French, Mandarin Studies: Russian
| Message 7 of 8 05 May 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged |
Danac wrote:
I found a link to a Mixteco course book.
http://www.narcis.info/publication/RecordID/oai:openaccess.l eidenuniv.nl:1887%2F14684
I hope it'll be helpful. :) |
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In fact, your post was very helpful: however, I had already stumbled upon this course, and I have it printed out. Like I said in a previous response to another forum member, it is a course of an "almost" mutually unintelligible dialect.
These marginalized languages desperately need authors to perpetuated themselves.
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atcprunner Pentaglot Newbie United States Joined 5927 days ago 17 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French, Mandarin Studies: Russian
| Message 8 of 8 06 May 2010 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
I have found a resource here http://globalrecordings.net/program/C11291 thanks to the help that I got here, which led me to do further research. I will try to have him write a script for me, and I will place it here for anyone in the future who may want a transcript.
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