International Mother Language Day fan page on facebook

I think about this fan page over and over again. It comes alive once a year, only to "sleep" again until the next 21st February. Many people caring about their mother language. Well, there was a time when we reached near 10,000 people with a group. We then were 15 admins and also there the main activity was around International Mother Language Day. The group was then deleted by facebook for whatever reason.

But why do we care only once a year? Why don't we care every day or at least once a week?

When one of the languages of this world gets lost, loads of wisdom gets lost with it. Wisdom not only about words, but also about living, medicine, plants and so much more. Is language loss and biodiversity loss correlated? What if everything from poisoning our planet to using materials that pollute our environement is correlated as well?

What if we start to preserve each day a bit? A bit of a language, a bit of our planet? Hmmm ....

Image from Pixabay:
https://pixabay.com/illustrations/letters-school-learn-alphabet-abc-3704026/

Open Nursery - Slideshows to learn languages

How to get languages to kids (and not only).

Well when my kids were approx. 3 years old I wanted them to be exposed to a certain kind of terminology in German, because many of the "kid's words" were not part of our daily language. They are twins and therefore of course prefer to play one with the other and mom was was called when it was about eating, drinking, going to the bathroom etc. Then I created slideshows with all kinds of words that were interesting to them and I noted that this worked really well. The photos I then used cannot easily be published in a slide show (because of the licenses that others used – GFDL is not suited at all for photos) and therefore I now just took what my two produce(d) at school.

I created a slide show where the intro still needs to change, but I already wanted to show you an example and ask you to help with the translation and the recording of the words. It is really not much: just 10 objects, some colours and 10 short sentences. They can be recorded in "one rush" using audacity (I can cut them) and you need to use OpenOffice.org since I use a presentation I then transfer into single jpg files from where I create the slide shows.

The contents are available under cc-by-sa which means that also your translations will be under that license.

I already talked with SJ from the OLPC project and yes: the videos will be available for OLPC.

You can have a look at the sample slideshow here:

http://www.youtube.com/iiterinternational

I did not upload the file to be translated since I would like to avoid that maybe two of you do the same language (so I will send it to you by e-mail). Btw.: it would be nice to get the recording of the English terms from a native speaker – I did it myself in that trial part. Over time I would like to see American, European, Australian etc. English, because indeed there is a difference.

For now, since this video is part of the Open Nursery project which will be introduced during our conference about less resourced languages in Cherasco, Piedmont, Italy, I am concentrating on less resourced languages, but: all languages are welcome. I will just create the ones that belong to the less resourced languages first.

During the next days I will create a second slide show which shall include the numbers from 1 to 10 in combination with the words I used for the first slide show.

Like I already said: the introduction will be different, I just added it so that one sees that there will be an introduction.

As for the programme of our conferece, you can find it here:
http://gopiedmont.i-iter.org/contn%C3%B9/programme-international-day-31st-may-english-language

Some notes on the Open Nursery project can be found here:
http://eng.i-iter.org/content/open-nursery

Anybody is welcome to join us. Besides that the event will be also available via web-tv.

Well, so now I hope you will help to translate these videos. They will be made available in various places – so if you wish to host them as well: that would be really great.

This is being posted in various groups and sent through various mailing lists, so sorry if you get it more than once.

Thank you for your attention and I hope to read you soon!

Cheers, Sabine
*****
Sabine Cretella
CCO – Vox Humanitatis
s.cretella [at] voxhumanitatis.org
skype: sabinecretella

Cooking and languages???

There is one strange thing that lately happens to me and I am wondering why that is. Up to some time ago I mainly cooked Neapolitan style, that is the way I learnt to cook when I came to the Amalfi Coast. Then you simply could not find many ingredients, but anyway: I had never learnt to cook how my mom and my grandma did. The strange thing is that it is some time now that I am considering my original language, the one spoken in Rodach, that is Mainfränkisch (well, a dialect of it). And its some weeks now that I am changing way to cook ... without even knowing what I do, I mean it is automatic. And the taste, well my family confirms this, is exactly the same the things my mom and my grandma cooked. Well yes, I saw my grandma hundreds of times doing things and in the past I already did some stuff I learnt from her like marmelades, peas in glasses (don't really know how you call this in English - well: vegetables that are treated to be there in winter when you don't have other stuff).


Now I am wondering why I am changing my way of doing things. Yes, I am changing myself, that's true as well, but: is it the dealing with that language that brings things back? Or could the reason be another one: it's almost two years now that I saw my mom for the last time - well this Saturday it is two years now. Now: there's nobody around anymore who can cook that stuff in my family. Do I automatically do it? Or maybe is it a combination of both, my mom not being here anymore and the language?