NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Could 06 (IPS) – A bunch of kids taking part 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 give attention to the youngsters, for them to proceed and protect this essential a part of our tradition,” Elena López advised IPS throughout a brief snack break for the preschoolers she teaches.
López is a part of the Náhuat Cuna mission, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language by early immersion. She is considered one of two lecturers 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.
Vulnerable 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 response to which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a scenario of higher or lesser risk 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).
Aside from Mexico, Guatemala is probably the most linguistically numerous on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Probably the most extensively 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 vulnerable to extinction until 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 certain means of transferring in 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 technology to technology.
And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna mission 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 communicate it fluently.
López is considered one of these folks. She belongs to the final technology 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 method, however we by no means stopped talking it,” stated 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 additionally 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 at all times seemed down on us, they’ve discriminated in opposition to us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite trainer on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, advised IPS.
And he or she added: “I really feel happy and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”
Each López and Cortez stated they have been grateful that the mission employed them as lecturers, since they’d no prior educating expertise, and in a context during which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it tougher to seek out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the mission, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which might be positioned over a wooden fireplace to cook 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 have 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 title, final title and different fundamental greetings in Náhuat.
Later they recognized, in Náhuat, footage of animals and components of nature, equivalent to “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 probably the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty youngsters.
On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they’ll go to common faculty in Spanish, with the chance that they’ll overlook what they’ve discovered. Nevertheless, to maintain them related to the language, the mission presents Saturday programs the place they start to study grammar and easy methods to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, largely ladies, who began initially of the mission and communicate the language fluently, and a few even educate it on-line.
The initiative is promoted by the Don Bosco College 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 essential promoter of the Náhuat Cuna mission, advised IPS.
“In three a long time 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 also be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the Faculty of Languages and Schooling at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.
In accordance with the educational, the final three indigenous languages in El Salvador within the twentieth century have 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,” stated Lemus.
The one option to preserve the language alive, he stated, is for a brand new technology to choose it up. Nevertheless it is not going to be adults, who might study it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it have to be a bunch of kids who can study 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 completely different.
In Mexico, Nahuatl has multiple million audio system within the Central Valley, he stated.
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 12 months 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 turn into a automobile for on a regular basis communication would require a titanic effort by the State, just 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 stated.
“Probably the most reasonable factor we need to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new technology of Náhuat-speaking folks to develop and multiply. If we now have 60 audio system now, in a couple of years we’ll hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new technology, and they’ll preserve it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he stated.
For her half, López needs to proceed working in direction of this purpose to be able to depart the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool trainer stated: “I actually like educating this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I would like the youngsters to study and communicate it when I’m lifeless.”
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