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Tlingit speakers and educators are fighting to keep that language alive. As those at Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) put it, creating new speakers will be key in accomplishing this.
In fact, the Native institute has just introduced a new Tlingit language card program as part of this mission.
The program is a set of flash cards and audio CDs to help gain efficiency in the alphabet. They use pictures as well as an online interactive tool to help kids learn the Native language.
Tlingit Curriculum Specialist Linda Belarde said the tool is important because new speakers are needed for a language to survive. As for Tlingit, she said there just aren’t that many birth speakers left.
“One of things I say to young people is that with every obituary, there goes another Tlingit speaker,” Belarde said.
Belarde said there’s been a lot of interest in the cards so far, mostly from language teachers. She said that while the cards are designed for kids, they can be useful for older language learners.
“Language carries the point of view of a way of looking at the world so it’s just really important that we can keep Tlingit alive and Haida and Tsimshian,” Belarde said.
SHI President Rosita Worl also believes the language must be kept alive as part of the culture. However, while kids may learn the language, it may never again be used as a first language.
“I don’t know if we can ever completely restore it but we will always hear the voices of our ancestors on this land,” said Worl. “It may never again be our first language but we will always hear it.”
She said this idea was even a theme at a recent celebration.
Worl said learning the language is critical and the children should learn to read it and make the sounds. She said SHI has worked to raise awareness of this and has language programs in 10 Southeast communities.
Worl said a big push in this idea came around 12 years ago when SHI trustees met Hawaiians and learned about their language restoration programs. She said some of those trustees were even brought to tears at hearing those children speak their native language.
She said that was the point when SHI decided to make language revitalization its highest priority, shifting the institute to go from preservation-only to action-oriented.
However, Worl said educators, families and others must get involved to keep Tlingit going. SHI can help provide the tools but can’t save the language alone.
“Our philosophy is that you’ll never save the language and culture from 1 Sealaska Plaza. It has to be community-based,” she said.
She said the new card tool is a “little milestone” toward this, but lots more are needed.
Belarde said there are a number of written resources to help keep the language going, including books. She said tools like the cards are helpful for reading these and to speak it as well. She said learners have to know what the characters they’re reading sound like.
“A problem is we don’t hear Tlingit on TV or radio. Hearing it is often the first part of learning,” she said.
She said the audio part is mostly done in classroom settings today but that wasn’t always the case. She said KTOO even used to run “Tlingit hours.”
The Tlingit alphabet itself is unique with 50 characters to learn. Four of those sounds aren’t found in any other language.
Most of the English letters do have Tlingit counterparts, but not all. Sounds for letters can differ too.
“The good news about the Tlingit alphabet is it’s consistent. Once you memorize a sound, every time you see it written it’s the same sound,” Belarde said.
More information is available from the SHI website, www.sealaskaheritage.org.
• Contact reporter Jonathan Grass at 523-2276 or at jonathan.grass@juneauempire.com.
Comments (13)
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When fishing in Bristol Bay I heard KDLG in Dillingham run a morning show with a Yupik man who taught a different word every day. I got to practice while mending nets with the fishermen from up north.It would be nice if KTOO did something like this for the public,it helps getting folks aware of the differing cultures around them.It also lets you talk in code when you're outside!
Thanks!
Thanks to Linda Belarde and Sealaska Heritage!
I am remembering those wonderful Spots Walter Soboleff did for years at KTOO where he would speak in English, then Tlingit for a few minutes about a variety of subjects. I miss them-- they are all housed at Sealaska Heritage now.
I would guess that all KTOO needs .....
Is someone to volunteer, every week, to put on a Tlingit show. It's how all the other programs are run, including a Spanish hour and a half on Thursdays.
While I agree that language is important, I think it has to be INTERNAL - why doesn't the Tlingit community put together a co-op preschool like the one at Northern Lights, to teach Tlingit to kids? Why doesn't Sealaska hold Tlingit language nights on a regular basis for adults? Why doesn't Sealaska have it's own lending library and Tlingit story hour, or offer to hold a Tlingit story time at the local library on the weekend? I'm sure the library would host for an hour. The cards are a good start - but they want teachers to buy the cards, and teach Tlingit in public school. Someone else can't do it for you - you have to be willing to do the hard work yourself.
Radio station
I was under the impression that we have or soon will have a Native radio program. That seems to be an ideal place for regular Tlingit language programs.
There's always hope
“I don’t know if we can ever completely restore it but we will always hear the voices of our ancestors on this land,” said Worl. “It may never again be our first language ....”
I'm not sure how many people are familiar with the history of Hebrew and modern day Israel but it too was on the verge of extinction and now it's alive. It'll never be the language our ancestors used but then again we aren't our ancestors neither. If the Tlingit people want it to survive, we'll make it happen and encourage it's usage. It won't be easy.
A friend of mine from the Kuskokwim delta region told me that a couple years ago a student graduated from UAA and gave an entire speech in Yupik. That boy was caucasian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiU1c4Ph6Wk
This is how it survives.
I would LOVE to learn
I would LOVE to learn Tlingit.... How does an adult, white woman get these materials??
JNUKara..Try UAS
Look under AK Languages on the schedule. They offer beginning, intermediate, and advanced Tlingit at the university. You might even be able to take a lifelong learning tax credit for it.
Thanks Swimmergirl - I have
Thanks Swimmergirl - I have long been interested in learning the Tlingit language!!
Reality checks in
I sincerely hope that the Tlingit language will continue to be used. Every language in the world is somewhat like a computer program in which people see things, understand the world around them and communicate their thoughts to others.
Yet forty years ago when I arrived in Juneau, the Auke Bay elementary school was even then promoting the Tlingit language. But the principal of the school at the time, a very good person in my opinion, said that as a school they only had so many hours in a day to teach students what their parents and community wanted them to learn.
Parents, teachers and the community have to come to an agreement over what they want taught in schools in the limited time available. What is most important? Science, math, English, history, the environment, health, social behavior, values we hold dear???
From my experience around the world, simply recognizing the reality, if we want students to learn a language that appears to be most useful for them in the future, perhaps we should be teaching Mandarin Chinese, Spanish or stressing English as a world-wide language. But if we want students to know where they and their ancestors have come from and how they saw and see the world, indigenous languages are most important. Or perhaps computer languages, the languages of technology, the language of mathematics as used internationally are most important.
In my opinion, the principal at the Auke Bay school was a "realist." He just said that teachers have just so many hours in the classroom each day, and in extra-curricular activities. We can't expect the schools to do or teach everything. It is up to the community to sort out all the things that we think young people need to learn and then proceed.
Tlingit is a great language, like many languages. But where does it fit in the big picture of helping the young people learn about and understand the world in which they will be living? Who should be teaching it and where?
Choices have to be made.
It's a neat language, and it will be sad to see it go extinct...
I had the interest a long time ago, was taught privately once a week, and Belarde is right about how learning this language also teaches a viewpoint of the world.
I remember being impressed upon by my teacher and her husband about the cultural points behind each word even though I was at the time more interested in just learning the sounds. I was poked in the forehead and told that to speak Tlingit I would have to think like a Tlingit. I never did learn that as I didn't stick with it much beyond six months or so.
Anyway, languages always came easily to me as a kid and I learned a few, but my favorite non-English word of all time is a Tlingit one, "ts'ítskw." I've always liked the sound of it. It can refer to any small songbird and I still say it aloud whenever I see one.
Mike
Lingit tuntatanee
Mike and others. Tlingit, like any other language, once you go beyond the sounds and phrases, opens up a whole different world to one's mind. In your writing "ts'itskw" the ending " -kw" indicates small. You can add it to "Aa .." meaning "lake" and it becomes "Aake' " - little lake as in Auke Bay - the bay with a little lake behind it. "Tlein" means "big" in a general sense, and up the Taku river is "Aa-Tlein" the "Big lake" or today "Atlin." The people from the "little lake" often went up the river to the "big lake." It explains not only place names, but history and relationships.
I am certainly not a great linguist. There are people in Juneau today who are much better linguists. Many years ago, I took classes in linguistics from Mike Krauss - and absolute genius in languages, then more classes in field linguistics in Kentucky. At a meeting years ago I mentioned to Mike that no one in Juneau was teaching linguistics, I was going to teach an introductory course. He gave me one of his highest recommendations " Well, its better than nothing."
I know very little about Tlingit as a language, but as with the many other languages I have studied, it opened my mind to seeing the world in a different light.
When I hear people say that the arts and humanities are a "waste of time," that engineering or business are a much better course to follow in life. Perhaps they are right, if a person just wants to make money and have a "successful career." But if one wants to enjoy life to its fullest studies like languages, history, art and sciences may be the way to go.
Commentaters you have me "turned on."
I grew up in a family where my father was fluent in Norwegian and French, my mother was fluent in German. It was a home in which we learned that there are different ways of seeing and explaining things. I spent years studying Latin (like five years) then French, Greek, Norwegian, Lunda ( and African language) Spanish, Japanese, Yupiq and Tanana Athabascan. Every time I tried to learn a new language, it expanded my mind.
I think letting people have an opportunity to learn our local indigenous languages such as Tlingit or Haida is a fine idea.
Maybe it isn't something that the school system needs to include in its curriculum because they have many other things they need to teach. But as a local community, living in what was in the past was, and in a way still is, Lingit Aani, learning Tlingit seems a great idea.
schools should teach it
Well Wally, Native languages in Alaska are dying at an alarming rate because the education system of the State of Alaska and the United States as a whole felt the need to wiped them off the face of the earth, which it almost had done. The Sealaska Heritage Institute is trying to keep an interest in it but it's not easy and they can't do it alone.
My good friend, Rest her soul, Chief Marie Smith Jones of the Eyak nation was the last of her ethnicity to speak Eyak until her death in 2008. Every time I heard her do a prayer in Eyak she would almost cry. I'm sure it was because it reminded her of the past and she knew no one in the world could understand her. She felt lonely. I knew her for fifteen years.
Most Alaskans don't understand Native people but trust me, we understand you because we speak your language. If others spoke ours, perhaps race relations would improve. I lived in Anchorage for 20 years and I know racism is alive and well in Alaska. I've been learning one of my languages (Lingit, I'm also Swedish and if I lived on their soil I'd learn it) for 15 years and it hasn't been easy because I have no one to talk to on a day to day basis. Even living here in SE, it isn't easy because the majority of the population could care less because they have no education on it. It should be taught in the PUBLIC school system because it is relevant to today.
I'm sorry Wally, but keeping our language alive shouldn't be reduced to a hobby.