Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages Review

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Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages ReviewIn Wulai, the aboriginal village I live in, the cutoff is in the twenties. Those over thirty speak Tayal (also Atayal; an Austronesian language of Taiwan) as their first language. Those under twenty understand it pretty well, but rarely speak more than a few phrases. I make a point of speaking to children in my rudimentary Tayal, so they can practice ¡V and show off - without the embarrassment of being caught making a mistake. I nag parents to encourage their children to speak Tayal: if you don't, a tradition of over six thousand years will die with you. Several tribal elders have asked me to teach them how to write Tayal in roman letters. Children are elated to see their grandparents struggling with pen and paper, and this encourages them to repeat what their elders are saying. The administration started Tayal classes in Wulai Elementary, but I hear funding is being cut now that the Party feels one hour of Tayal a week is not going to bring them votes. Tayal is losing ground to Mandarin. What is to be done?
What is to be done? Spoken Here is practically a handbook for me, of things I can try, things I can avoid, in my personal crusade to impress Tayal on the next generation. The author is alert to cant, dogma, and dead-end thinking, so the reader can see the fallacies of certain viewpoints. The writing is fluid and informative. His sympathy to the speakers of these languages makes their plights come alive.
I wish books like this came with a CD. Looking at the word Tayal, did you have any clue that it is pronounced dah-YEN? If I write a Tayal word such as qsnuw or mksingut, does that give you any idea of how to pronounce it? I would love to hear what Yuchi, Wangkajunga, or Mohawk actually sound like (although a friend who has been there told me Welsh sounds like angry geese). I have listened to a couple Australian Aboriginal languages by tracking down their websites, which raises my main ¡V albeit minor - complaint about this book. In the Sources, he tells us things like "see the Web site of the Maori Language Commission" or "All these organizations have web sites." It would have burdened him very little, and given the book completeness, if he had taken the trouble to provide the http addresses for those sites!Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages Overview

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