1 / 41

Extreme Literacy Developing an orthography for an unwritten language

Endangered Languages Week 2011 , UTA. Extreme Literacy Developing an orthography for an unwritten language. Dr. Michael Cahill SIL International. Many/most endangered languages are unwritten Literacy is one factor that may help in preserving them

essien
Download Presentation

Extreme Literacy Developing an orthography for an unwritten language

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Endangered Languages Week 2011 , UTA Extreme Literacy Developing an orthography for an unwritten language Dr. Michael Cahill SIL International

  2. Many/most endangered languages are unwritten • Literacy is one factor that may help in preserving them • SIL has done a lot in this area

  3. Aren’t all languages written? • Nope • 6909 languages are estimated (see ethnologue.com) • 1500-2000 of these are unwritten

  4. Why bother? Can’t they all learn English? • Literacy is one of the factors that helps preserve an endangered language • Identity – your language is you! • Scientific knowledge

  5. What’s an “orthography”? • Alphabet or other symbols • Spelling rules • Word divisions • Punctuation

  6. Alphabet or…? • Most languages use an alphabetic system, with consonants and vowels • Some use syllabaries - a symbol is a syllable. Cherokee: Ꮜ sa   Ꮞ se   Ꮟ si   Ꮠ so Ꮡ su

  7. Alphabet – or…? • A few languages use a logographic system, where a symbol is a whole word. Chinese: 河 hé “river“ 貓 māo "cat” • We’ll be focusing on alphabetic systems today

  8. Which letters to use? • Basic concept – one letter per “sound” • Not just a phonetic sound: “pool” vs. “spool” [phul] [spul] • Two “p” sounds phonetically, but we think of them as one. No difference in meaning.

  9. [phul] [spul] • Two “p” sounds phonetically, but psychologically, ONE sound. No difference in meaning. • This psychologically real sound is called a phoneme.

  10. Hindi • [pəm, phəm] are two different words! • [p, ph] makes a difference in meaning. • Both English and Hindi have phonetic [p, ph ] • Psychologically, ONE sound in English, TWO sounds in Hindi • One phoneme for English, two for Hindi

  11. Back to the alphabet… • For English, one “p” phoneme, and so all we need is one “p” letter. • For Hindi, two “p” phonemes, so we need two “p” letters • But there’s more besides linguistics!

  12. Practicalities… • Develop materials for reading: • Primers • Variety of materials (500 pages?) • Devise teaching strategies • Train trainers = teachers • All this assumes the local people are in favor of literacy…

  13. from the Koma ABC book

  14. Why do Komas read? • Bible reading • Privacy of letters • Town signs

  15. NON-linguistic factors Government policies • The Bureau of Ghana Languages used to disallow all tone marks in orthographies. • In 1979, Cameroon established a unified alphabet. New orthographies must conform. • An orthography should be acceptable to governing authorities

  16. Sociolinguistic Factors “All orthographies are political”

  17. Dialects • Konni (Ghana): Main dialect has /h/Nangurimahas /ŋ/: hɔgʊ́ vs. ŋɔgʊ́ ‘woman’ • Can one orthography serve all dialects? • Uni-lectal – choose the prestigious dialect • Konni orthography uses <h>, Nangurimapronounces it as [ŋ].

  18. More on Dialects • Multi-lectal –orthography has elements of several dialects; one group is not favored • But it doesn’t represent the actual speech of anyone. • European languages, Nynorsk, Dagaare

  19. Attitudes toward other languages • Local people may want the orthography to “look like” a major language In Ghana,<r> is in most orthographies, (whether a phoneme or not!) under the influence of English.

  20. More attitudes • People may want the orthography not to look like another language. Ghana: Konkombas use <ln> word-finally. The related Kombasspell it <nl>. Guatemala: Existing orthographies used <qu, c>, but a Mayan resurgence wanted <k>, to distinguish it from Spanish.

  21. Groups and orthographies • Sometimes orthographies become attached to a certain group: “You’re an evangelico, I’m a Catholic, so I support this one.” Religious groups, political groups, clans, etc. • Include all stakeholders in orthography planning and decisions • Examine previous orthographies, and who designed, supports, and uses them

  22. Choice of entire scripts More than just individual symbols • Cyrillic vs. Arabic vs. Roman-based Давлки -- ألفبائي --- dabigu • Line drawings vs. photographs vs. SignWriting for signed languages • Sometimes good to publish with 2 or even 3 scripts in the same book!

  23. An orthography is an expression of a people’s identity. People accept or reject an orthography based on sociolinguistic factors. If a group doesn’t want to use an orthography, it doesn’t matter how linguistically sound it is. “What the people want” is not just one more factor; it is the most critical factor in acceptance of an orthography.

  24. Educational factors Transferability to other languages • Latin America: <qu> and <c> used for /k/, and punctuation <¿ ... ?> as in Spanish. • Ghana: How to consistently represent /tʃ/ in Ghanaian languages? Obvious to some that it should be <ch>, obvious to others that it should be <ky>. It depended on the language of transfer (and identity): English or Akan?

  25. Readability • Want good visual discrimination, little “cluttering” Extreme examples: n ņ ɲ ɳ ŋ too many symbols resemble each other

  26. Readability á ã́ ä̂ ā̃̋ too many stacking diacritics Font selection: Sans-serif is better for beginners

  27. Practical Production Factors Fonts! • A past problem: what can a typewriter or local printer do? 28 years ago, I ordered “custom keys” on a new manual typewriter (ŋ, ɔ, ɛ)

  28. Unicode fonts are ‘best practice.’ • RESOURCES: (http://scripts.sil.org, http://www.sil.org/computing/catalog/index.asp#fonts )

  29. Phonetically-based Unicode-compliant fonts Doulos SIL: like Times New Roman [ðɪsɪz ə fəˈnɛɾɪklibeʲstfant] Charis SIL: designed for readability [ðɪsɪz ə fəˈnɛɾɪklibeʲstfant]

  30. Andika– designed specifically for new literacy materials – no seraphs ɛ, ɔ, ə, ʊ, ŋ, á, à, ã

  31. Non-Roman scripts Arabic-based ﱀﰐﲏﮒﮊﭗﭫﮑﰿﭖﭬﳐﻶخضﱙ Myanmar-based Abyssinica (Ethiopic)  Thai Dam ꪘꪲꪦꪴꪠꪱꪘꪱꪍꪬꪲꪓꪜꪱꪔꪳ

  32. “ Without literacy, our language was in the process of being exterminated...He who loses his mother tongue is just a slave to him who is of the lowest class...But now, even if I die today, I will die happy, because my children have a language which will endure and that they can call their own.” JosuéKoné, Miniyanka speaker, Mali

More Related