Native Mexican People

Can texting help save languages?

MEXICO CITY In southern Chile, young speakers of Huilliche, a language that's in peril of extinction, produce hip-hop videos and post them on the Internet.

Across the globe in the Philippines, teenagers think it's "cool" to send mobile phone text messages in regional languages that show signs of endangerment, such as Kapampangan.

Technology, long considered a threat to regional languages, now is being seen as a way to keep young people from forsaking their native tongues for dominant languages. YouTube and Facebook, as well as Internet radio and cellphone texting, are helping minority language groups stave off death.

Linguist Samuel Herrera said he was elated to find teenagers zapping each other with text messages in Huave, an endangered language spoken only by about 15,000 people in the Tehuantepec region of Mexico, along the Pacific.

"This really strengthens the use of the language," said Herrera, who runs the linguistics laboratory at the Institute of Anthropological Research in the Mexican capital.

Dr. Gregory D.S. Anderson, the director of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in Salem, Ore., agrees. Somewhere between the ages of 6 and 20 or 25, he said, "people make a definitive decision whether to break with the language."

"If the language isn't being used by their peer group, then they reject it categorically," he said.

Technology as simple as text messaging can draw them back.

"That's exactly the hook for young people. They live in text, and they are the key stakeholders and the ones who may or may not pass it down to their own children," Anderson said.

The "cool" factor is helping to resuscitate Chulym, a nearly moribund Turkic language that's spoken by a dozen or so people in a pocket of remote Central Siberia, said Anderson, who's working to revive the language.

By offering teenagers in the community access to technology, "we have seen a significant increase in the desire among young people to try to learn the language from old people," Anderson said.

Anderson and his colleague, K. David Harrison, a Swarthmore College linguist, say hip-hop music is an effective tool to get young people interested in their ancestral tongues.

They've posted hip-hop songs on a dedicated Enduring Voices YouTube channel in languages such as Huilliche, the endangered Chilean language, and Hruso-Aka, which is spoken in a remote northeastern corner of India.

The Ethnos Project » Blog Archive » ViTu: a system to help the ...

This paper (excerpted below) by Mónica Isabel González Arribas, Emilio Sánchez Sánchez, and Edgar de los Santos Ramírez was presented at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011) that just took place in Vancouver, BC.

Abstract

ViTu is the entire development of a system focused on appreciating and highlighting the culture and traditions of native Mexican communities. It also contributes towards preserving and regaining the lost Mexican roots of the Mexican-Americans living in the United States. To achieve this, a culture, customs and traditions storage device of the Mexican village of San Jeronimo Silacayoapilla, was created. The main objective of this system is to encourage people to love and be proud of their cultural roots through technology. We are confident that this project will not only highlight the lifestyle of the native communities in Mexico but it will raise awareness on the importance of sharing, celebrating and appreciating our differences.

Authors

Mónica Isabel González Arribas edgarinteractivo “at” gmail.com

Introduction

Since the beginning of colonization, poverty has prevailed in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, and as a result of this, migration is still a current issue in the state. Over the years, the migration of Oaxacans to the United States has risen due to the state’s large economic poverty [1]. Oaxaca, traditionally, has one of the biggest migration indexes in Mexico.

During the migrants’ initial period of integration when they try to be part of the American culture, they tend to forget and change their traditions and culture, leaving behind their Oaxacan roots.

The Mexico-born population living in the United States reached 11.8 million people, in June 2006. [2]. Nowadays, there are approximately 2 million Oaxacans living in the USA, being California the US state with the largest Oaxacan population. [1]

Much to our surprise, Oaxaca has the largest number of indigenous migrants in the country, which is approximately 16.95% (See Figure 1) of the total population of Oaxaca [3].

The Mexican State of Oaxaca is divided into eight regions of which the Mixteca region has the largest migration index. The Silacayoapilla town is an example of this phenomenon, as more than 50% of its population lives in the United States. Although a significant number of its own residents have migrated, its present community still wishes to recover or preserve its culture and traditions. It is these residents’ wishes that helped us to realize that we can celebrate our differences and connect cultures through the recovery of the Oaxacan traditions that may have been lost.

The Mexican people, their struggle for freedom

Hearings

Hearings before the Committee on the territories of the House of representatives on House joint resolution no. 14 approving the constitutions formed by the constitutional conventions of the territories of New Mexico and Arizona

The cultural complex, contemporary Jungian perspectives on psyche and society

Ethnic Studies: Chicano, and Native American studies