NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Could 06 (IPS) – A bunch of youngsters taking part in an immersion program in Náhuat, the language of the Pipil folks and the one remaining pre-Hispanic language in El Salvador, are the final hope that the language won’t die out.
“This effort goals to maintain Náhuat alive and that’s the reason we concentrate on the kids, for them to proceed and protect this essential a part of our tradition,” Elena López informed IPS throughout a brief snack break for the preschoolers she teaches.
López is a part of the Náhuat Cuna venture, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language via early immersion. She is one in every of two academics who educate it to kids between the ages of three and 5 at a preschool heart in Nahuizalco, a municipality within the division of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.
Susceptible to disappearing
“When a language dies, the premise of indigenous cultures and territories turns into extinct with it,” says the report Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, in response to which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a state of affairs of higher or lesser menace or threat.
In Mesoamerica, which incorporates Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 75 indigenous languages are spoken, says the examine by the Fund for the Improvement of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).
Apart from Mexico, Guatemala is essentially the most linguistically numerous on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Essentially the most broadly spoken is Ok’iche’, of Mayan origin, and the least is Xinca, of unknown origin.
Brazil is essentially the most ethnically and linguistically numerous nation in Latin America, with between 241 and 256 indigenous peoples and between 150 and 186 languages.
Round 25 % of those languages are prone to extinction except one thing is urgently achieved, the report warns. It’s estimated that Latin America is house to greater than 50 million individuals who self-identify as indigenous.
“These languages are dropping their utilization worth…households are more and more interrupting the pure intergenerational transmission of the languages of their elders, and a sluggish however positive strategy of transferring in the direction of the hegemonic language is noticed, with audio system making Spanish or Portuguese their predominant language of use,” the report states.
The causes of the hazard of the disappearance of those Amerindian languages are assorted, the report factors out, such because the interruption of intergenerational transmission, when the language is now not handed on from technology to technology.
And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna venture goals to revert by specializing in younger kids, who can be taught from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their dad and mom and grandparents and communicate it fluently.
López is one in every of these folks. She belongs to the final technology of audio system who acquired it naturally, as a mom tongue, talking it from a really younger age together with her dad and mom and grandparents, in her native Santo Domingo de Guzmán, additionally within the division of Sonsonate.
“That is how I used to be born and grew up, talking it at house. And we by no means stopped talking it, amongst my sisters and brothers, however not with folks outdoors the home, as a result of they discriminated in opposition to us, they handled us as Indians however in a derogatory manner, however we by no means stopped talking it,” mentioned Lopez, 65.
Certainly, for causes of racism and classism, indigenous populations have been marked by rejection and contempt not solely from the political and financial elites, but additionally by the remainder of the mestizo or mixed-race inhabitants, which resulted from the combination of indigenous folks with the Spaniards who began arriving in Latin America within the sixteenth century.
“They’ve all the time appeared down on us, they’ve discriminated in opposition to us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite trainer on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, informed IPS.
And she or he added: “I really feel happy and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”
Each López and Cortez mentioned they have been grateful that the venture employed them as academics, since they’d no prior educating expertise, and in a context by which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it harder to search out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the venture, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which might be positioned over a wooden fireplace to cook dinner corn tortillas. She additionally bought baked items, and continues to bake bread on weekends.
López additionally labored making comales and making ready native dishes, which she bought in her neighborhood. Now she prefers to relaxation on the weekends.
All is just not misplaced
When IPS visited the Náhuat Cuna preschool in Nahuizalco, the three-year-olds have been performing an train: they stood in entrance of the remainder of the category of about ten kids and launched themselves by saying their first title, final title and different fundamental greetings in Náhuat.
Later they recognized, in Náhuat, photos of animals and parts of nature, resembling “mistun” (cat), “qawit” (tree) and “xutxit” (flower). The scholars began their first 12 months within the heart in February, and can spend two years there.
The five-year-olds are essentially the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty kids.
On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they may go to common college in Spanish, with the chance that they may overlook what they’ve discovered. Nonetheless, to maintain them related to the language, the venture provides Saturday programs the place they start to be taught grammar and easy methods to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, largely women, who began at the start of the venture and communicate the language fluently, and a few even educate it on-line.
The initiative is promoted by the Don Bosco University of El Salvador, and supported by the municipalities the place they function, in Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The Santa Catarina Masahuat department may also be reopened quickly.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán is house to 99 % of the nation’s few Náhuat audio system, who quantity round 60 folks, Jorge Lemus, director of El Salvador’s Náhuat/Pipil Language Revitalization Program and major promoter of the Náhuat Cuna venture, informed IPS.
“In three many years I’ve seen how Náhuat has been in decline, and the way the individuals who communicate it have been dying out,” confused Lemus, who can also be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the Faculty of Languages and Schooling at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.
In keeping with the educational, the final three indigenous languages in El Salvador within the twentieth century have been Lenca, Cacaopera and Náhuat, however the first two disappeared by the center of that century, and solely the final one survives.
“The one one which has survived is Náhuat, however barely, as there are maybe simply 60 audio system of the language. After I began engaged on this there have been about 200 and the quantity continues to shrink,” mentioned Lemus.
The one technique to preserve the language alive, he mentioned, is for a brand new technology to select it up. However it won’t be adults, who might be taught it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it should be a bunch of youngsters who can be taught it as native audio system.
The professional clarified that, though they arrive from the identical linguistic trunk, the Náhuat spoken in El Salvador is just not the identical because the Nahuatl spoken in Mexico, and actually the spelling is completely different.
In Mexico, Nahuatl has multiple million audio system within the Central Valley, he mentioned.
In El Salvador, in 1932, the Pipil folks stopped talking their language in public for worry of being killed by the federal government forces of Common Maximiliano Hernández, who that 12 months brutally cracked down on an indigenous and peasant rebellion demanding higher residing situations.
At the moment, society was dominated by aristocratic households devoted to espresso cultivation, whose manufacturing system plunged a big a part of Salvadorans, particularly peasants and indigenous folks, into poverty.
Lemus argued that for a language to make a decisive comeback and change into a automobile for on a regular basis communication would require a titanic effort by the State, much like the revival of the Basque language in Spain, Maori in New Zealand and even Israel’s resuscitation of Hebrew, which was already a useless language.
However that isn’t going to occur in El Salvador, he mentioned.
“Essentially the most life like factor we need to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new technology of Náhuat-speaking folks to develop and multiply. If now we have 60 audio system now, in just a few years we are going to hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new technology, and they’ll preserve it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he mentioned.
For her half, López needs to proceed working in the direction of this purpose so as to depart the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool trainer mentioned: “I actually like educating this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I would like the kids to be taught and communicate it when I’m useless.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service