This week in languages: June 3, 2016

27/05/2016–03/06/2016

Headlines

New Zealand celebrates Samoan Language Week 2016 to commemorate the third most widely spoken language (after Māori and English) in New Zealand. This special week—which  runs from 29 May to 4 June—is the first of seven Pacific language weeks to be observed this year.

over the past week, the new york times joined the associated press in announcing that they would finally decapitalise the words “internet” and “web” in the upcoming versions of their style guides. we at unravel support the move and will go a step farther in decapitalisation…and dehyphenation. read alyssa bereznak’s piece at the ringer to understand why “the end of the great uppercase holdout is laughably late“.

“Oromo is the fourth most spoken language in Africa and the language of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group. It was banned in Ethiopia, however, by dictator Haile Selassie until as recently as 1991, and the Oromo people have a history of persecution. In an attempt to reverse the effects of that history and make the language more accessible to young learners, Toltu Tufa—whose father is Oromo—has launched the first ever publishing company to print children’s books entirely in the language.”

Commentaries and Features

In India, speakers of the fast-vanishing Saurashtrian language are creating homemade films, music and magazines to save the language from extinction. At least 220 languages in India have been lost over the last 50 years, but the Saurashtrian people are fighting back.

In the face of the Anglicisation and colonisation of languages around the world during our lifetimes, how does one negotiate the personal and the political? Iona Sharma ponders them both and speaks about the colonisation of languages such as Hindi and Scottish Gaelic in The Toast. ” It is a language complete in itself, with its own history, literature, poetry and tradition. But more than sixty-five years after Indian independence, it has been surrounded and absorbed by English, so among the Indian middle classes it is no longer a prestige language. It is the vernacular, the language one speaks at home; one does not use it to write to the tax office, nor take one’s degree.”

Given the spread and ubiquity of the English language, is there still a place for the language ascribed to you? “It apparently also stands for our national identity, for a collective pride, for a sense of who we are and our long history. Some people genuinely believe this. I do not.” Irishwoman Rosita Boland comes to grips with the status of the Irish language in her life as she reflects on the census question: Can you speak Irish?

In a bid to “bring poetry to the people“, a non-profit called Mass Poetry is stencilling English-language poetry on Boston’s streets with water-repellent spray. To include the linguistic diversity of Boston, other languages like Portuguese, Haitian Creole, and Spanish are in the pipeline! #rainingpoetry