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发帖数: 18037 | 1 Taiwanese linguist races to save dying language
Photo: AP Children learn their tribal dialect in their aboriginal mountain
village of Piuma, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a dedicated
Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important aboriginal
dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Eighty-year-old Mu'u Ka'angena speaks to a graduate student,
documenting his dying tribal language in the aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain
village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a dedicated
Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important aboriginal
dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Seventy eight-year-old Angai Kamunuana, left, shares a moment with
Taiwan linguist Sung Li-may in his aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain village of
Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, the dedicated linguist is
trying to save the historically important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu,
spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Eighty-year-old Mu'u Ka'angena is seen in the communal bamboo hut
of his aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan,
speaking about the fear of his dying tribal language. In a race against time
, a dedicated Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically
important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from
extinction.
Photo: AP Taiwanese linguist Sung Li-may transcribes the dying Kanakanvu
language spoken by 80-year-old Mu'u Ka'angena in the mountain village of
Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, the dedicated linguist is
trying to save the historically important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu,
spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Eighty-year-old aboriginal Mu'u Ka'angena, center, greets his
fellow villager, 78-year-old Angai Kamunuana, left, in their aboriginal
Kanakanvu mountain village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against
time, a dedicated Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically
important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from
extinction.
Photo: AP Sixty-year-old Angai Ka'angena talks of the gone-by days when the
village was much bigger along the high road above his aboriginal Kanakanvu
mountain village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a
dedicated Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important
aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Storm clouds develop above the aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain
village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a dedicated
Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important aboriginal
dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP SSeventy eight-year-old Angai Kamunuana, left, sits with Taiwanese
linguist Sung Li-may, center, and her graduate student documenting his
dying tribal language in the aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain village of
Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, the dedicated linguist is
trying to save the historically important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu,
spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
Photo: AP Sixty-year-old Angai Ka'angena peers out above his aboriginal
Kanakanvu mountain village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against
time, a dedicated Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically
important aboriginal dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from
extinction.
DAKANUA, Taiwan (AP) — Her eyes lit bright with concentration, Taiwanese
linguist Sung Li-may leans in expectantly as one of the planet's last 10
speakers of the Kanakanavu language shares his hopes for the future.
"I am already very old," says 80-year-old Mu'u Ka'angena, a leathery faced
man with a tough, sinewy body and deeply veined hands. A light rain falls
onto the thatched roof of the communal bamboo hut, and smoke from a dying
fire drifts lazily up the walls, wafting over deer antlers, boar jawbones
and ceremonial swords that decorate the interior like trophies from a
forgotten time.
"Every day I think: Can our language be passed down to the next generation?
It is the deepest wish in my heart that it can be." Kanakanavu, Sung says,
has a lot more going for it than just its intrinsic value. It belongs to the
same language family that experts believe spread from Taiwan 4,000 years
ago, giving birth to languages spoken today by 400 million people in an arc
extending from Easter Island off South America to the African island of
Madagascar.
"Taiwan is where it all starts," says archaeologist Peter Bellwood, who with
linguist Robert Blust developed the now widely accepted theory that people
from Taiwan leveraged superior navigation skills to spread their
Austronesian language far and wide. At least four of Taiwan's 14 government-
recognized aboriginal languages are still spoken by thousands of people, but
a race is on to save the others from extinction. The youngest good speaker
of Kanakanavu, also known as Southern Tsou, is 60, and the next youngest, 73.
"To survive a language has to be spoken," Sung said. "And with this one it
isn't happening." It's a story repeated in the remote corners of the earth,
as younger generations look to the dominant language for economic survival
and advancement, whether it be English or, in Taiwan's case, Chinese.
Aboriginals account for only 2 percent of the Taiwanese population of 23
million. Many young people are leaving Dakanua, a picturesque village in the
south that is home to the Kanakanavu language, to work in the island's
cities.
Sung is clearly revered by Dakanua's tiny cadre of Kanakanavu speakers, who
are happy to spend long hours going over their language with her and a small
group of graduate students she brings to the village from National Taiwan
University in Taipei.
On a recent Saturday afternoon, they sat outside a well-ordered cluster of
whitewashed concrete buildings, painstakingly documenting the proper use of
the imperative and the grammatical subtleties of concepts like "it could be
that" or "it is possible that." In the background the bamboo and palm tree
covered contours of Mt. Anguana protruded through a moving blanket of fog
and mist, and a thin rain fell in the Nanzixian River valley below.
Life here is defined by farming, a reverent belief in Christianity —
Presbyterian and Roman Catholic missionaries converted almost two-thirds of
the aboriginal population in the 1930s and 40s — and chronic concern about
the harsh elements. Five hundred residents in the nearby village of Hsiao
Lin Tsuen were buried alive 3 1/2 years ago when torrential rains unleashed
by a typhoon sent thousands of tons of mud cascading down onto their homes.
Sung started working with aboriginal languages almost by accident. After
returning to Taiwan in 1994 as a newly minted doctor of linguistics from the
University of Illinois, her department head at National Taiwan University
pushed her into the discipline, insisting that Taiwan's majority Chinese
population had to understand more about its aboriginal minority.
"At first I was intimidated," says Sung, now the director of the university'
s Graduate Institute of Linguistics, one of a handful of Taiwanese bodies
seeking the preservation of the aboriginal languages as part of a wide-
ranging effort funded by the government. "I had no idea of how to carry out
my field work among the aboriginals. But over time I got used to it. And I
learned the importance of Taiwanese aboriginal languages in the overall
scheme of Austronesian dispersion."
The deep rooted linguistic seeds the dispersal sowed have now morphed into
dozens of languages — Malay for example, and the Philippines' Tagalog —
that make Austronesian one of the largest language groups in the world.
The dispersion is illustrated by the similarities of the words for "ear."
What linguists call the proto-form — the Taiwanese basis from thousands of
years ago — is usually rendered as "galinga." In modern Taiwanese
aboriginal dialects that becomes "calinga," while in the Philippines it's "
tenga," in Fiji "dalinga," in Samoa "talinga," and in Papua New Guinea "
taringa." Taiwanese aboriginals traveling to New Zealand, for example, are
struck by the close relationship of their own languages to Maori,
particularly when they hear the local version of numbers.
Sung's most recent project was collating a Chinese-English dictionary for
the Seediq language spoken by the tribe of Taiwanese mountain dwellers
memorialized in "Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale," a 2011 film
recounting their rebellion against Japanese occupiers in the 1930s. Last
February she began her work with Kanakanavu, hoping she can preserve the
language before the last speakers die out.
The odds against her are long. Even many 40- and 50-year olds are incapable
of mouthing anything more than a few simple phrases in their native tongue.
Still, frolicking on the neatly cut lawn of Dakanua's deserted bed and
breakfast is a three-year old girl with a runny nose, an infectious smile
and a lovely lilt to her voice.
She is the granddaughter of Mu'u Ka'angena, the man with the leathery skin,
and just within earshot she begins conversing with him in very simple
Kanakanavu. "Did you hear that?" Sung asks. "Isn't it wonderful? She's our
hope for the future." | wh
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: Taiwanese linguist races to save dying language
: Photo: AP Children learn their tribal dialect in their aboriginal mountain
: village of Piuma, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a dedicated
: Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important aboriginal
: dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
: Photo: AP Eighty-year-old Mu'u Ka'angena speaks to a graduate student,
: documenting his dying tribal language in the aboriginal Kanakanvu mountain
: village of Dakanua, southern Taiwan. In a race against time, a dedicated
: Taiwanese linguist is trying to save the historically important aboriginal
: dialect of Kanakanvu, spoken by only 10 people, from extinction.
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