Native Language Loss Research Articles

Midwifery and Medicinal Plants in the Mazahua and Otomi Indigenous Group of the State of Mexico

The purpose of this study was to analyze midwifery practice in the Mazahua and Otomi (MO) indigenous community and its relationship with the persistence of the native language and the use of medicinal plants. A semi-structured survey with qualitative and quantitative information was designed and validated. Data were collected from the students enrolled in the Intercultural Health Degree at the Intercultural University of the State of Mexico, their parents, their grandparents, and people from their community of the MO ethnic group. The variables mother tongue and births attended by midwives among both MO and non-indigenous people were correlated with three generations (grandparents, parents, and grandchildren). In the MO indigenous group, births attended by midwives and mother tongue concerning the three generations were lost in proportions of 25.5% and 17.05%, respectively. There are 23% more midwife-attended births in the MO community than among non-ethnic people. The medicinal plants most used by the MO indigenous group are “too” (Montanoa tomentosa Cerv.) and “lengua de vaca” (Rumex crispus L.). As regards family economy, 79.3% of the adults surveyed consider that there is a saving of between 25% and 75% with midwifery practice in the MO community. There is a generational correspondence between the loss of native language and midwifery practice.

Cultural divergence in Sujata Bhatt’s poem “Search for My Tongue”

This research paper deals with the culture object in Sujata Bhatt’s poem “SEARCH FOR MY TONGUE”. Sujatha Bhatt was born in Gujarat and immigrated to the United States. The persons who admire poetry are aware of what’s going around the world which gives muse to write poems, and sometimes they write poem that connect those to their culture. The present study depicts the life of immigrants who experience the specific tension. Like the speaker Sujata Bhatt, they try to adjust their life in a new country, without forgetting where they come from(native). Sujata also explores how immigrants must often negotiate between supposedly irreconcilable cultural identities, their own, and that of dominant culture which they belong. It also slides on how the dominant culture can threaten to erode an immigrant’s identity. People migrate primarily for social and economical reasons that causes a wide gap between the culture and traditions they follow. Being an Indian, the poet tells her trauma of adapting herself to a new culture. “Search for my tongue” is a poem by Sujata Bhatt, here, the poet includes English and Gujarati lines. Bhatt herself as an immigrant explores how hard it is to adapt to a new culture. The pressure of assimilation and the association between the language and identity fades the native culture. The poet tells her second language overtakes her mother language, the loss of native language would be a loss of her heritage and sense of self- identity which can diminish the culture. Towards the finish of the poem, she witnesses herself, that her primary language had a quality to tie a bunch on her second, going to be her local language appears to have revived her. The euphoric finish of the poem reaffirms the association between language, personality, and self articulation proposing that by utilizing her native language, the speaker has recovered a piece of herself from migration and absorption. She likewise proposes other immigrants, to build up another far off character that incorporates both of their social and cultural experiences.

The Lakota Language Project at Red Cloud Indian School: Turning the Tide of Native Language Loss

In response to the widespread loss of Lakota language and culture on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, Red Cloud Indian School developed the first comprehensive K-12 curriculum for learning Lakota as a second language. Created in collaboration with the American Indian Studies Research Institute (AISRI) at Indiana University, the Lakota Language Project (LLP) was first implemented during the 2008–2009 academic year and completed in 2014–2015. A new grant allowed the school to develop literary materials in Lakota and extend the use of Lakota throughout the school community. An evaluation of the LLP, utilizing a mixed methods design, began in the fall of 2010 and ended in summer of 2018. Key findings from the evaluation are that the LLP enhanced students’ interest in learning about Lakota history, culture, and spiritual practices; facilitated an increase in students’ proficiency in learning the language; and positively impacted both academic engagement and good behavior.

The Lakota Language Project at Red Cloud Indian School: Turning the Tide of Native Language Loss

The Lakota Language Project at Red Cloud Indian School: Turning the Tide of Native Language Loss

Transmission of Environmental Knowledge and Land Skills among Inuit Men in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada

The transmission of environmental knowledge and land skills was studied among Inuit men in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. A list of 83 skills important for safe and successful harvesting was generated with 14 active hunters and elders, and examined with a sample of 47 men. This research found that land skills continue to be transmitted most often from older to younger generations through observation and apprenticeship in the environment. However there is a difference in the rate of skills transmission among generations, with average transmission rates lowest among younger respondents. Some skills were transmitted well among younger respondents including general hunting and camp-related skills, but others such as traveling on the sea ice and traditional navigation skills were not. Loss of certain skills and incomplete transmission of others were related to the absence of skills teachers, loss of native language, and changes in the educational environment.

Coping with socially sensitive topics discourse on interethnic marriages among elderly members of the Serbian minority in Hungary

Drawing on the field research conducted in the Serbian community in Szigetcs?p, Hungary, the paper examines interlocutors? oral discourse on interethnic marriages. Until the Second World War, the Serbs in Hungary, rural communities in particular, mainly practised endogamy. In the post-war era, however, they tended to be among the minority groups with the highest rate of exogamic marriages. Conse?quently, the interviewees established discourse links between ?interethnic marriages?, ?loss of native language? and ?fear of identity loss?. The analytical focus is on the interlocutors? internal dialogism between the authoritative word of the ancestors and autobiographical assertions.

Reclaiming the Gift: Indigenous Youth Counter-Narratives on Native Language Loss and Revitalization

In the beginning . . . Elder Brother and Younger Brother were instructed through visions by the breath-giver to teach . . . the newly created people [how] to live. All the instructions were in the native language. The people lived happily for many years. . . . Something bad happened and there was a battle among the peaceful people. The head chief then commanded that there would be many languages. . . . The people migrated and divided into different language groups. Lucille J. Watahomigie, "The Native Language Is a Gift" (1998, 5) These reflections by Hualapai educator Lucille Jackson Watahomigie eloquently capture the mutually constitutive relationship between language and identity. "It is said that when the languages were created, language identified the people—who we are, where we came from, and where we are going," Watahomigie adds (1998, 6). This sentiment is widely shared among Native speakers. "My language, to me, . . . that's what makes me unique, that's what makes me Navajo, that's what makes me who I am," Navajo artist and educator Fred Bia maintains (McCarty 2002, 179). "When people spoke Dakota," William Harjo Lonefight states, "they understood where they belonged in relation to other people, to the natural world, and to the spiritual world" (Ambler 2004, 8). Reflecting on the resources within his Native Cheyenne, Richard Littlebear notes that "embedded in this language are the lessons that guide our daily lives. We cannot leave behind the essence of our being" (2004, 20). Yet this most ancient of gifts is in peril of vanishing forever, as fewer and [End Page 28] fewer young people are socialized through the ancestral language each generation. Linguists estimate that prior to European contact, some 300 to 500 Native languages were spoken by the peoples indigenous to what is now the United States and Canada (Krauss 1998; McCarty and Watahomigie 2003, 84–86; Zepeda and Hill 1992). More than 200 of those languages remain—testimony to the resistance and resilience of their speakers—but only 34 are still being naturally acquired as a first language by children (Krauss 1998). Put another way, fully 84 percent of all Indigenous languages in the United States and Canada have no new speakers to pass them on.1 Even those languages with a substantial number of child speakers are slipping away, as the residue of a genocidal and linguicidal past and the modern influences of English media, technology, and schooling take their toll.2 When even a single language falls silent, the world loses an irredeemable repository of human knowledge. The great linguist and language advocate Kenneth Hale, who spoke some seventy-five languages himself, put it this way: "Every language lost is like dropping a bomb on the Louvre" (Ambler 2004, 9).3 To speakers, the loss is more intimate, personal, and irretrievable. "If a child learns only English, you have lost your child," a Navajo elder states (McCarty 2002, 181; McCarty and Zepeda 1999, 207). "It is language that carries the nature and character of who we are and how we relate with one another . . . and to all things we experience in life," a Pueblo leader relates; "[o]nce we've lost that, we have lost everything" (Suina 2004, 300). Pecos and Blum-Martinez add that in many Native communities, the tribal language remains "the only viable means for sacred communication" (2001, 75).4 In the epigraph that begins this article, Watahomigie refers to the Native language as a gift. "When you are given a gift—especially one that is alive—it must be cherished, nurtured, and treated with respect to honor the giver" (Watahomigie 1998, 5). Similar metaphors can be found in tribal language policies: "The Yaqui language is a gift from Itom Achai, the Creator of our people," the Yaqui Tribal Language Policy begins, "and, therefore, shall be treated with respect" (Zepeda 1990, 250). When such a gift...

Understanding changes in elementary Mandarin students’ L1 and L2 writing

The study focused on five elementary Mandarin-speaking students’ development as writers over a two-year period in US classrooms. Mandarin speakers who came to the US in 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grades demonstrated some language loss in their Chinese writing. We found differences in terms of sentence complexity, character complexity, rhetorical features, and voice in students’ writing between Year 1 and Year 2. Students’ native language loss was mitigated by their initial writing competence, support at home, and opportunities to write in Chinese at school. Four of the five students’ English writing made dramatic improvements in grammar and punctuation, sentence complexity, rhetorical style and voice over the two years. The fifth student, whose writing did not improve, had few opportunities to write in his new school setting. Our findings suggest that the amount and quality of writing opportunities in each language affect students’ writing development.

Cognitive, Language, and Educational Issues of Children Adopted from Overseas Orphanages

Within the last two decades over 200,000 children from overseas orphanages have been adopted in the USA. Research findings and clinical experiences about language, cognitive, and academic issues of internationally adopted post-institutionalized children in the cultural context of North America are discussed. Theoretical conceptualizations of Vygotsky and Feuerstein serve as the major paradigm in psycho-educational and remedial components of the cultural issues of international adoptees. Native language attrition and dynamics of English language acquisition are considered in the context of transculturality. The specificity of cumulative cognitive deficit (CCD) in international adoptees is linked to prolonged institutionalization, lack of cultural mediation in early childhood, and profound native language loss. The issue of remediation is examined with an emphasis on cognitive education in the context of acculturation.

When learning a second language does not mean losing the first: bilingual language development in low-income, Spanish-speaking children attending bilingual preschool.

This article discusses two investigations which explored the bilingual language development outcomes of comparable groups of low-income, Spanish-speaking, Mexican American children who either did or did not attended a bilingual (Spanish/English) preschool. Study 1 is a replication of a study by Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, and Espinosa, involving a new sample of 26 children who attended bilingual preschool for one year and 20 control children who remained at home. Study 2 represents a 1-year, longitudinal follow-up of Rodríguez et al.'s, sample of children during and after the children spent another year at home or in the preschool. In both investigations, standardized, objective measures of three components of children's language proficiency (productive language, receptive language, and language complexity) in English and Spanish were obtained at the beginning and end of the academic year. Contrary to fears that have been expressed by some that early exposure to English would lead to children's native language loss, the results of both studies offered no evidence of Spanish proficiency loss for children attending bilingual preschool. Children who attended bilingual preschool, compared to those who remained at home, showed significant and parallel gains in Spanish language development as well as significant and greater increases in English language proficiency over time. Results are discussed in terms of the need for more systematic research to be conducted in this area to inform policy and practice in the early education and development of language-minority children.

Indigenous Community-based Language Education in the USA

Nearly two million American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians reside in the USA, representing over 500 tribes and 175 distinct languages. The uniqueness of tribal communities notwithstanding, all indigenous peoples in the USA share a history as the targets of federal policies aimed at eradicating their languages and lifeways. The legacy of those policies has been Native language loss and sociocultural dislocation, even as indigenous students have experienced considerable failure in English-only schools. Here, we argue that indigenous language education must be historically situated and as such, viewed as both an affirmation of self-determination and an act of resistance to linguistic oppression. Drawing on published accounts and first-hand testimony, we present several cases that illustrate the role of indigenous language education programmes in strengthening indigenous languages and promoting indigenous language and education rights. We conclude with an analysis of the continuing problems these community-based initiatives face, their promise and limitations as agents of language renewal, and their role as catalysts for linguistic self-determination and educational reform.

Art and the Conditions of Exile: Men/Women, Emigration/Expatriation

Art and the Conditions of Exile: Men/Women, Emigration/Expatriation

Language and Culture in Learning: Teaching Spanish to Native Speakers of Spanish

Part 1 Theoretical Advances: Culture and Language - The Ethnographic Approach to the Study of Learning Environments, H T Trueba Native Language Loss and Its Implications for Revitalization of Spanish In Chicano Communities, E Hemandez-Chavez. Part 2 Practical Advances - Redefining the Content and Process of the Curriculum: Language Acquisition Theory and Classroom Practices in the Teaching of Spanish to the Native Speaker, B J Merino & F Samaniego The Role of Chicano Literature in Teaching Spanish to Native Speakers, A C Demersesian Folk Art in the Classroom, B C Hocker An Introduction to Computer-Assisted Spanish Language Learning, N Gonzalez-Edfelt Part 3 Case Studies of Curriculum and Program Innovation: Tapping a Natural Resource - Language Minority Students as Foreign Language Tutors, R Quintanar-Sarellana, T Huebner & A Jensen Using Expert Teacher Knowledge to Develop Curriculum for Native Spanish-Speaking Secondary Students, F A Samaniego, B J Merino & the Fellows of Espanol para Triunfar/Spanish for Success II.

English Literacy in the U.S.: National Policies, Personal Consequences

This article examines the relationship between U.S. national policies on literacy, available literacy programs, and individual lives. Beginning with a discussion of the expanding role of English literacy in U.S. immigration policies, this article examines the pressures to become literate in English with consideration given to the resources that are available to do so. In the second section, language use in immigrant families is discussed with a focus on native language loss and the consequences of this loss for intergenerational relationships. The article concludes with suggestions for an approach to literacy in which the links between national policies and personal lives are made explicit. The authors make recommendations for policy and practice that take into account the plurality of literacies and the possibilities for nurturing families and communities through the development of native and second language literacy resources.