NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Might 06 (IPS) – A bunch 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 won’t die out.
“This effort goals to maintain Náhuat alive and that’s the reason we deal with the youngsters, for them to proceed and protect this vital 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 undertaking, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language via early immersion. She is one in all two academics who train 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.
Liable 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, based on which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a state of affairs of better 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 Growth of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).
Aside from Mexico, Guatemala is probably 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 probably 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 p.c of those languages are susceptible to extinction except one thing is urgently completed, 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 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 assorted, 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 undertaking goals to revert by specializing in younger youngsters, who can study from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their dad and mom and grandparents and converse it fluently.
López is one in all 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 along 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 exterior the home, as a result of they discriminated in opposition to us, they handled us as Indians however in a derogatory approach, 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 seemed down on us, they’ve discriminated in opposition to us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite trainer 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 undertaking employed them as academics, since that they had no prior instructing expertise, and in a context during which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it harder to search out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the undertaking, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which can be positioned over a wooden hearth 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 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, photos of animals and components of nature, similar to “mistun” (cat), “qawit” (tree) and “xutxit” (flower). The scholars began their first yr within the heart in February, and can spend two years there.
The five-year-olds are probably the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty youngsters.
On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they may go to common college in Spanish, with the chance that they may neglect what they’ve discovered. Nevertheless, to maintain them linked to the language, the undertaking affords Saturday programs the place they start to study grammar and find out how to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, largely women, who began firstly of the undertaking and converse the language fluently, and a few even train 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 can 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 predominant promoter of the Náhuat Cuna undertaking, instructed IPS.
“In three many years I’ve seen how Náhuat has been in decline, and the way the individuals who converse it have been dying out,” harassed Lemus, who can be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the College of Languages and Schooling at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.
Based on 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. Once I began engaged on this there have been about 200 and the quantity continues to shrink,” mentioned Lemus.
The one technique to hold the language alive, he mentioned, is for a brand new era to choose it up. However it won’t be adults, who might study it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it should be a gaggle of kids who can study it as native audio system.
The skilled 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 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 worry of being killed by the federal government forces of Basic Maximiliano Hernández, who that yr brutally cracked down on an indigenous and peasant rebellion demanding higher residing circumstances.
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 develop 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 lifeless language.
However that’s not going to occur in El Salvador, he mentioned.
“Essentially the most practical factor we need 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’ve 60 audio system now, in a number of years we are going to hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new era, and they’ll hold it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he mentioned.
For her half, López desires to proceed working in the direction of this purpose with a purpose to go away the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool trainer mentioned: “I actually like instructing this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I would like the youngsters to study and converse it when I’m lifeless.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
