Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful. George Bernard Shaw
Idea Transcript
Language Revitalization on the Web: Developing Algonquian Resources Irina Vagner While Algonquian languages face the threat of extinction, recently there have been several attempts at their revitalization on the web. With the advances in web technologies, it has become easy and inexpensive to produce and distribute languagelearning materials. However, not all of the webbased languagelearning resources stimulate language revitalization and respond to the linguistic and cultural needs of the learners. To determine the most effective path in creating online revitalization materials, the current research investigated classroom approaches to teaching the Arapaho language on the Wind River Indian Reservation and examined some of the examples of Algonquian web resources. Classroom observations have indicated that Arapaho revitalization is halted by language ideologies present in the classrooms. Because Arapaho that is taught in schools indexes authority, identity, and social status, native speakers continuously reify and commodify the language, which leads to unwillingly preventing young learners from speaking it. The examination of the Algonquian web resources shows that some of them are guided by the similar language ideologies, whereas others avoid them linking the language to its community and orienting their content to the youth. The development of language revitalization resources on the web, I argue, must account for current language ideologies and reproduce them in a way that assists the revitalization by bridging the gap between the language and the community but also by providing contemporary contexts for language use.