Language death and hope- Wukchumni (Specific Languages) Language Learning Forum

Language death and hope- Wukchumni
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Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages

iguanamon
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
Joined 5252 days ago
2241 posts - 6731 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

Message 1 of 3

19 August 2014 at 2:21pm | IP Logged

This came to me today via twitter from The New York Times- Who Speaks Wukchumni?. We read about language death in the abstract and it's sometimes hard to put a face on it. Watching the accompanying mini-documentary video of Mrs. Wilcox and her family making the effort to preserve this language did that for me.

NYT- Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee wrote:

...the story of Marie Wilcox, the last fluent speaker of the Wukchumni language, and the dictionary she has created. I met her through the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, an organization that encourages the revival of languages like Wukchumni. Through training and mentorship, it has supported Ms. Wilcox’s work for several years. Ms. Wilcox’s tribe, the Wukchumni, is not recognized by the federal government. It is part of the broader Yokuts tribal group native to Central California. Before European contact, as many as 50,000 Yokuts lived in the region, but those numbers have steadily diminished. Today, it is estimated that less than 200 Wukchumni remain.

Like most Native Americans, the Wukchumni did not write their language until recently. Although several linguists documented the grammar of the Wukchumni language in the 20th century, Ms. Wilcox’s dictionary is the longest work of its kind. Ms. Wilcox has also recorded an oral version of the dictionary, including traditional Wukchumni stories like the “How We Got Our Hands” parable featured in the film. The pronunciation of the language, including intricate accents, will be preserved, which will assist future learners of the language.

For Ms. Wilcox, the Wukchumni language has become her life. She spent more than seven years working on the dictionary and she continues to refine and update the text. Through her hard work and dedication, she has created a document that will support the revitalization of the Wukchumni language for decades to come.

Edited by iguanamon on 19 August 2014 at 2:23pm
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shk00design
Triglot
Senior Member
Canada
Joined 4434 days ago
747 posts - 1123 votes

Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin
Studies: French

Message 2 of 3

19 August 2014 at 3:39pm | IP Logged

Very inspirational video. Trying to preserve a are language requires a great deal of effort and a number
of challenges:

1. Very few native speakers.
2. No written language.
3. Very few new words / phrases to keep up with the modern world.

The number speaks for itself. If people (especially the young people) find it more practical to speak
English because everybody else does, then in a single generation the language would decline and
disappear.

A lot of languages in Africa have no written language and ended up adopting the Latin alphabet. Even
when the words are spelled phonetically, for someone who doesn't know the language to read it
phonetically would try to sound the words as if they were written in English. Without recordings by
native-speakers it would be difficult to get accurate pronunciations.

New words & phrases are constantly invented and added to a language. Suppose the speaker of a
language has to switch to English terms for the new words & phrases so that many French words would
be like le radio, la TV, l'hamburger, le computer, l'e-mail sort of thing then people would have more
tendency to just use English and give up French altogether. How do you say computer in Wukchumni?
How do you say cellphone in that language? It takes a language institute and a lot of academics to
update an old language with new words and phrases.

If an education person in the Chinese court in the 19th century hear words like 手机 (portable phone), 短
信 (text), 电邮 (E-mail), 社交网络 (social network), 上载 (upload), 下载 (download), etc., that person would
have no idea what you are talking about. A word like 状元 (zhuàngyuán) used to refer to people who
were successful taking the state examination to become a government official. In today's context it
refers to people who got high marks in the 高考 (gāokǎo), the university entrance exam taken in high
school. Back in the 19th century when universities did not exist in China, the same word would not be
used in this context.

Language change overtime. New words are added and old ones take on different meanings and use in
different contexts.
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Stolan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4022 days ago
274 posts - 368 votes

Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese

Message 3 of 3

20 August 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged

This is a shame, I really see west coast languages as some of the most "well" languages in the world, but more and
more won't see the light of day as time goes on. I sincerely hope that any revival attempt in the days to come will be
successful. There seems to be little incentive to learn it nor is it usable like Navajo. It's pretty much gone, a fate it
doesn't deserve.

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