NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Could 06 (IPS) – A gaggle of kids collaborating 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 is not going to 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 necessary a part of our tradition,” Elena López instructed 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 certainly one of two academics who educate it to youngsters 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 idea of indigenous cultures and territories turns into extinct with it,” says the report Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, in line with which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a state of affairs of better or lesser menace or danger.
In Mesoamerica, which incorporates Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 75 indigenous languages are spoken, says the research by the Fund for the Growth of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).
Excluding Mexico, Guatemala is essentially the most linguistically various on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Probably 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 various nation in Latin America, with between 241 and 256 indigenous peoples and between 150 and 186 languages.
Round 25 p.c of those languages are liable to extinction except one thing is urgently accomplished, 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 shedding their utilization worth…households are more and more interrupting the pure intergenerational transmission of the languages of their elders, and a sluggish however positive means of shifting 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 diverse, the report factors out, such because the interruption of intergenerational transmission, when the language is not handed on from era to era.
And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna venture goals to revert by specializing in younger youngsters, who can be taught from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their mother and father and grandparents and communicate it fluently.
López is certainly one of these folks. She belongs to the final era of audio system who acquired it naturally, as a mom tongue, talking it from a really younger age together with her mother and father 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 exterior 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 in addition 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 instructor on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, instructed IPS.
And he or she added: “I really feel glad and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”
Each López and Cortez mentioned they had been grateful that the venture employed them as academics, since that they had no prior educating expertise, and in a context through which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it harder to seek out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the venture, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which can be positioned over a wooden fireplace to prepare dinner corn tortillas. She additionally offered baked items, and continues to bake bread on weekends.
López additionally labored making comales and making ready native dishes, which she offered in her neighborhood. Now she prefers to relaxation on the weekends.
All just isn’t misplaced
When IPS visited the Náhuat Cuna preschool in Nahuizalco, the three-year-olds had been performing an train: they stood in entrance of the remainder of the category of about ten youngsters and launched themselves by saying their first identify, final identify and different fundamental greetings in Náhuat.
Later they recognized, in Náhuat, footage of animals and parts of nature, reminiscent of “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 youngsters.
On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they are going to go to common faculty in Spanish, with the chance that they are going to neglect what they’ve discovered. Nevertheless, to maintain them related to the language, the venture affords Saturday programs the place they start to be taught grammar and methods to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, principally ladies, who began in the beginning 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 will even be reopened quickly.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán is house to 99 p.c 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 principal promoter of the Náhuat Cuna venture, instructed 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,” harassed Lemus, who can be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the Faculty of Languages and Training 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 had 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 strategy to maintain the language alive, he mentioned, is for a brand new era to select it up. But it surely is not going to be adults, who may be taught it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it have to be a bunch of kids 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 just isn’t the identical because the Nahuatl spoken in Mexico, and in reality the spelling is totally different.
In Mexico, Nahuatl has a couple of million audio system within the Central Valley, he mentioned.
In El Salvador, in 1932, the Pipil folks stopped talking their language in public for concern of being killed by the federal government forces of Basic 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 turn out to be a car 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 lifeless language.
However that isn’t going to occur in El Salvador, he mentioned.
“Probably the most practical factor we wish to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new era of Náhuat-speaking folks to develop and multiply. If we now have 60 audio system now, in a number of years we’ll hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new era, and they’re going to maintain it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he mentioned.
For her half, López desires to proceed working in the direction of this objective so as to depart the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool instructor 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 lifeless.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
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