Our catch phrase is on its way.
Dear Fellow Earthlings,
All told I have discussed the ideas regarding language management propounded by Joshua Fishman in 7 blogs (installlments 165,166,170,181,189,190,191), Today’s blog will be the 8th.
The last 3 chapters of “Reversing Language Shift” have the following titles: Chapter 12 is “The Intergenerational Transmission of ‘Additional Languages for Special Purposes”.
Chapter 13 is “Limitations on School Effectiveness in Connection with Mother Tongue Transmission” .
Chapter 14 is “Theoretical Recapitulation: What is Reversing Language Shift (RLS) and How Can it Succeed?”.
Here I decribe how the tenets of chapters 12 and 13 can be paired synergetically with Jingles tenets, leading to increased robustness of the phonology of the Seneca language. In tomorrow’s installment, I will incorporate the final chapter (Chapter 14) of “Reversing Language Shift” into the mix.
After working through Chapter 12, my conclusion is that gaënö’ can provide a way of physically training Seneca adults to pronounce the Seneca language. If adults can speak Seneca with their children (even though it may be by reading from prepared texts as they do so), then Seneca could gain sufficient health to maintain its cultural boundaries. The key here might be to enable Seneca children for a GIDS degree of “6” (See Installment 191.) – and parents (and other interested community members) with ongoing gaënö’ training so that they can “read in nativelike Seneca” (from prepared texts and utterance lists,in the early stages) to their children. If Seneca is to be revitalized, it cannot remain limited to holy, eternal discourse. Rather it must operate both for traditional believers and for those Seneca not so concerned with such matters.
Longterm prospects for “Intergenerational Continuity” cannot survive only “out of past ‘functionality’ “. At the end of Chapter 12, Fishman points out that although “religious classicals” (faithkeepers) and “languages of wider communication” do have intergenerational continuity in common, the much wider scope of the former calls for mother tongue intergenerational continuity to start from the day a Seneca child is born.
After reading Chapter 13 I can visualize the gaënö’ as being capable of helping reduce the “degree of limitation” – and helping increase the “degree of empowerment“ of the Seneca community. Since the “school can solve it” approach does not work, we need to “jingle” a solution -- more appropriately we need to “ gaënö’ ” a solution! By enabling parents and their infants to start early and start using gaënö’-generated speech motor skills employment techniques identical to those employed by the progressively shrinking numbers of Seneca native speakers, the Seneca community allophonome will regain its robustness. But we have to get physical (that is, to start using gaënö’) immediately!
Steve Walker, Earthsaver and Jingles Creator
© 2013 Steve Walker, The Jingles-The Japan Foundation for English Pronunciation, Summit Enterprises.