Language loss and climate change in Shishmaref
**blowing dust off blog**
It’s been a while, but this article on CNN reminded me to post here. It’s on the effect of climate change on an Inupiat village named Shishmaref in northern Alaskan. Shishmaref, like several coastal villages in Alaska, is rapidly falling into the sea due to increased water levels, melting sea ice, and erosion. I think what makes the article good is that it’s not so one-sided as most similar articles. It explores many aspects of the village’s impending slide into the ocean, including the effects on the Inupiaq dialect spoken there. There are also some short audio clips of Shelton Kokeok speaking the Shishmaref dialect. The article’s take on language loss isn’t perfect, of course, because it assumes the language loss is entirely due to climate change, but it’s the first time I’ve seen an article on climate change address language issues. If anyone knows of others, please drop a line.
Yup’ik election follow-up
As a follow-up to my post about voting in Alaska Native languages, here’s an article about how the elections went with the state-mandated translation support. (Yes, it’s now over a month out of date, but my blogging activities have been on the back burner. Maybe even on a burner in an outbuilding in a neighboring town.)
Anyway, the gist of it is that while the efforts were well-intended, they weren’t without problems, at least for Yup’ik (the article doesn’t mention anything about voting materials in other Alaskan languages). Mistranslations and translations that ignored rather important dialectal differences meant voters weren’t always sure what they were voting for. An example given in the article is this:
The state’s translation for the predator control initiative used the word “takukaq.” In one Yup’ik dialect, that means “brown bear” but in a coastal dialect, it means “seal,” the lawyers said.
“As a result, voters on the coast (a predominately Yup’ik-speaking area) read a ballot that indicated seals would be shot because they had been consuming too many moose calves and were depleting the population — a nonsensical prospect,” lawyers wrote in a motion filed in U.S. District Court last week.
In spite of the problems, I applaud the state for trying to meet voters’ needs in indigenous languages. After the court decision, they were on somewhat of a constrained timeline to get materials out in time for elections. I also hope improvements can be made. Still, it’s not like there aren’t wording mistakes or ambiguous verbiage on ballots in other languages, so it’s not too surprising that it happens in Yup’ik, too.
More baffling are readers’ comments on the article, many of which demand that Yup’ik speakers just “learn English already” or go back to their own country. Sigh… apparently they missed the part about Yup’ik being an Alaska Native language, or the quote from the Native American Rights Fund.
Linguistics Halloween costume
My blog stats tell me someone found my blog while searching for “linguistics halloween costume.” Now I’m dying of curiosity – who was looking for a linguistics Halloween costume, and did they find anything? Or did they come up with something of their own, such as:
- the Floating Tone
- the Masked Morpheme
- Dr. Linguistics
- Captain R-less
On a related note, yesterday a student who couldn’t remember my name called me Miss Linguistics. Sounds like a good superhero/Halloween costume idea to me.
Quyaanna, Tatqaviñ
Iñupiaq revitalization lost one of its best teachers on Friday when one of the most dedicated Iñupiaq teachers and translators, Ruth Tatqaviñ Sampson, passed away unexpectedly. My sincerest condolences go out to her family.
I only met Tatqaviñ last year, when I took a distance ed conversational Iñupiaq course from her, but she was truly an amazing teacher. Always there for her students with kind, patient feedback and a gentle humor. She also had a gift for accommodating multiple dialects in her class.
Ruthie was not only a teacher but a tireless translator, author, and editor. Many of the existing Iñupiaq books for children were written or edited by her, and she was instrumental in getting Iñupiaq Rosetta Stone software produced. One of her edited texts available online is Maniiḷaq, a collection of elders’ recollections of Maniiḷaq, the Iñupiaq prophet. The list just goes on and on.
Piḷḷuataqtutin, Tatqaviñ, you did a good job. You certainly left big shoes to fill, but I know your students and colleagues will keep up the good work.
Since when is Aleut Eskimo?
A lot of people on various linguistics listserves are talking about an article on BBC, Why you should avoid ‘mingqutnguaq’, on the always popular “how many words do the Eskimos have for snow?” topic. The article brings nothing new to the table, really, but this is the part that really stood out to me:
Yup’ik has three dialects: Central, Siberian and Alutiiq there [Alaska].
There are also two other Eskimo languages apart from Yup’ik: Inupiat and Aleut, and that means plenty of ways of referring to snow and ice.
Really? Central Alaskan Yup’ik, Siberian Yupik, and Alutiiq are dialects of the same language? That’s news to me. The journalist apparently went to the trouble of consulting a Yup’ik dictionary by the Alaska Native Language Center, but didn’t think to check his other language information. See a list of Alaska Native languages here on the ANLC’s website. (Another minor quibble is that the language name is Iñupiaq, not Iñupiat. Iñupiat are the people who speak Iñupiaq.)
While it’s perhaps not too strange that the author confuses dialect and language – after all, the division is subjective at best and often political (yes, Scandinavia, I’m looking at you) – the strangest part is that the author refers to Aleut as an Eskimo language. Aleut is not Eskimo. The language family is called Eskimo-Aleut for a reason: Aleut (which is Unangam Tunuu in Aleut) doesn’t fall within the Eskimo group. Culturally the Aleut people are distinct from Eskimo peoples as well. Journalists are fond of writing about Eskimo words for snow, but it would be nice if they got their basic facts straight.
