language acquisition – Educational Sociolinguistics

Can Language APP Save the Disappearing Indigenous Languages？

Shuhang Li

“Where in the world do you learn Chinese in Cantonese?” The Secretary for Education of Hong Kong, China said that if we learn Chinese in Cantonese in the long run, we need to study whether we will lose the advantage of Hong Kong. The language learning application Duolingo offers courses in Navajo and Hawaiian, but in fact, the number of people who speak these two languages may not reach 30000, which is less advantageous.
Myra Awodey, the chief community expert of Duolingo, admitted that the company had predicted that this was not a profitable project, but she said: “This is just something we feel we must do.” This cheap learning platform has more than 33040 users, and all of them attend free courses. It is hoped that its unique position in the language learning community “can not only protect the endangered language but also make the language spread.” Awodey means that although Duolingo usually offers widely used language courses, it has also received requests for minority language courses. Duolingo’s website shows that more than 20000 users are interested in learning Hawaiian.
The Kingdom of Hawaii was overthrown in 1893, and the use of the Hawaiian language for teaching and learning was banned in 1896. The number of Hawaiian language users declined sharply. Hawaiian was not recognized as the official language of Hawaii until the Constitution of Hawaii was amended in 1978. In the 1980s, the state’s education department established the Hawaiian Research Program and the Hawaiian Language Experience Program. The University of Hawaii also opened related degrees, reopened schools that teach Hawaiian, and established a non-profit organization ‘AhaP ū Nana Leo to revive and spread the language. However, according to a state report in 2020, Hawaiian is still the fifth largest language in the local area except for English, and only 18610 people can speak Hawaiian. The content of the Duolingo Hawaiian language course is developed with the help of Kamehameha Schools, a Hawaiian school network dedicated to developing the Hawaiian alpine ethnic education system.
K, Vice President of Community Engagement Resources, Kamehameha Schools āʻ Eo Duarte said: “The foundation of our ancestors’ adoption of new printing technology in the 19th century ʻō lelo Hawai ʻ I Bring it into this platform, so that traditional skills, literature, and history can be inherited. ” Ekela Kaniaupio Crozier, a member of the development team of the course, has 40 years of Hawaiian language teaching experience. She said: “People always think local people will like and support Hawaiian. The reality is that prejudice still exists, and people still think that learning Hawaiian is a waste of time today.” She added: “Just like using English in Hawaii, we also hope to see the Hawaiian language widely used. Indeed, it is the official language of the state and should have equal status.” Kaniaupio Crozier specifically mentioned that the primary target of the course is Hawaiian aborigines. She thinks it is particularly important for local people to learn their language first: “This is mainly to help us learn our language first, let it return to the owner (Hawaiian)’s heart, and share it.”
The situation of language disappearance and culture disappearance is more serious. It is estimated that 1500 people are transferred to the area in San Juan County, Utah to learn Navajo in an old way. Clayton Long, an educator in Duolingo, spent his childhood in the Navajo culture of the mountain people in the southwest of the United States, hoping that Navajo can be passed on and that hundreds of thousands of young people can get in touch with it through game oriented applications, He said: “We are at a critical moment. If we do not attract any children who want to learn or should learn, we will lose a lot… When you lose a language, you will lose a culture.”
Duolingo has been used to save a language facing extinction. In 2014, Duolingo included Irish Gaelic in the platform for the first time. When the Irish language course was launched in 2014, it was estimated that only 100000 people were parents’ language users. Today, 4 million people have used the application to learn this language. This feat won the public thanks of the Irish President in 2016. If this effort continues, the revival of Navajo and Hawaiian languages is promising.

Questions:
1. What do you think of the way to publicize the vanishing indigenous languages? What are the advantages and disadvantages? (feel free to share your opinions)
2. How to arouse people’s awareness of the protection of indigenous languages of ethnic minorities? You can choose one from school, family, society, and other aspects to talk about (if you want to say more, that would be great!)

References:

Galla, C. K. (2018). Digital realities of indigenous language revitalization: a look at Hawaiian language technology in the modern world. Language and Literacy, 20(3), 100–120. https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29412

Josep, C. (2015). Language revitalization from the ground up promoting Yucatec maya on facebook. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 36(3), 284–296. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.921184

It’s not easy to answer “how are you”…

Yunjie Xue

At the first two months when I had come to Montreal, the most “terrifying” and “dreadful” thing for me was to respond to “How are you?” asked by other nice, friendly people here—And imagine, I had to do it at any time and anywhere!

For sure I understand that is merely a simple and common greeting, but I just cannot get accustomed to it. This question always makes me feel very nervous and think a lot: Does he/she ask how I am going? Oh, he/she is such a kind person concerning about me! Should I say “thank you” and “how are you” back? Actually, I am so pleased now because I have just finished one of my assignments. So should I tell the person about it? But if I tell, it seems like we are going to have a formal conversation. If I don’t tell, what else could I do? Maybe I should give he/her a smile… Don’t call me a drama queen. It is literally what I went through in mind when asked about “how are you” at the very beginning.

Well, I have a knack for languages, but attitudes towards the language/speakers do matter!

By Mansour Ahmed:

In school, Arabic, namely Arabic grammar, which constitutes a chronic headache for most students of Arabic, was my favorite subject. I especially looked forward to sentence parsing and assigning the proper cases and diacritical marks to lexical items. In grade 7, I started learning English. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it just as much, English grammar in particular. Motivated by some German friends, I once decided to learn German all by myself. In three months, I learned so much. My pronunciation was almost native-like, according to them. A few years ago, I decided to add French to the list. Initially, my knack did not fail me (but it began to falter, see below for whys). Perhaps, this is genetically determined because my kids do outstandingly well in languages (Arabic, English, and French) in school. Hence, it may be possible to say that some people have a knack for languages while others don’t. Besides this special gift for languages, which to date has not been fully accounted for and understood by SLA researchers (to the best of my knowledge), it is argued that how well and how fast a second language can be acquired depends on a number of factors/variables, such as motivation, L2 instruction, and attitudes (among others). I will endeavour to tersely illustrate the role of attitudes in L2 acquisition (NB: the attitudes I am talking about here is slightly different from those in VH chapter).

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Factors That Influence Language Acquisition

By Jia Pu

Inspired by one of the class discussions, I’d like to share my first post with you about the factors that influence my acquisition of a foreign language. Before that, I’ll briefly introduce my language biography.

I was born in southeast China, with Mandarin my first language. As the official language, Mandarin is taught by teachers since I entered kindergarten. But in fact, I speak Chengdu dialect more often, especially in my daily life because both my parents are local Chengdunese and they have a deep affection for our dialect. Then later, when I was in elementary school, English became a compulsory course from grade 3. Ever since then, English has always been an important part in my life because under the influence of globalization, Chinese government is making increasingly more efforts to popularize English nationwide.

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Sociolinguistic noticing for language learners

By Melissa J. Enns

Have you ever noticed how effortlessly you switch registers in your first language? Have you ever wondered why it’s easy for you to identify where a character in a story or movie is from based on the way she speaks? Probably not, because mostly, you just know.

It may be easy for you, but second language learners are often at a disadvantage in picking up on these subtleties, and this can be socially and academically problematic. Van Herk (2012) states that “although teachers are aware of the stylistic range that their students might need, their own language ideologies or limited teaching time lead them to focus on the standard end of language” (183). While I agree with his statement, I dislike the truth of it. As teachers, we (hopefully) strive to meet students’ linguistic needs to the very best of our abilities, but failing to give them the tools of sociolinguistic evaluation leaves them disadvantaged socially and academically. Please allow me to explain.

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A reflection of my learning experiences in my teaching approaches

Miss Education

As a teacher, I only wish that I can teach my second language students everything there is to know about English in the little time I have with them throughout the year. But, as Mougeon et al. (2010) research findings state, there is only so much that can be learned about a language (or a vernacular) in a controlled setting like a classroom, and that notions about a language are also taught in other settings such as public environments (the shopping mall, the park, etc.) (Van Herk, G., p. 183).

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