Post by Okwes on Jan 31, 2007 10:41:51 GMT -5
Saving the Serrano tongue
Posted by: "SAL CAMARILLo" salcamarillo1@sbcglobal.net salcamarillo1
Wed Dec 6, 2006 4:21 am (PST)
SAN MANUEL INDIAN RESERVATION - A quiet battle is being waged to save the ancestral language of the Serrano Indians. The Serrano language was once spoken by indigenous people throughout the San Bernardino Valley and High Desert. Today, there is only one man whose ability to speak that tongue approaches fluency, said Kaylene Day, a staff linguist for the Serrano Language Revitalization Project. The ultimate goal of the project - an effort of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians' Education Department still in its infancy - is to give tribe members the ability to use the Serrano language in daily conversation. "They want their children and future leaders to be versed in the culture so that identity is strong," education director Erin Kahunawaika`ala Wright said. The last person to be fluent in the Serrano language, Dorothy Ramon, died in 2002. With linguist Eric Elliott, Ramon compiled Serrano lore into the book "Wayta' Yawa'," the title of which
translates to "Always Believe." Ramon's nephew, Ernest Siva, remembers the sounds of Serrano from his childhood. "My mother, she and my older aunt, everyone in the family spoke it," Siva said. Day said Siva is the only person who is almost fluent in Serrano. There are times, Siva said, when he'll use Serrano phrases, though he acknowledged that his aunt's ability to converse in that old language exceeded his own. Siva said Day and others visit him every Thursday to work on the language project. He also teaches Serrano classes at the Morongo Indian Reservation near Cabazon. He is president of the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center - a nonprofit created to preserve and share knowledge of Southern California's indigenous cultures. Preserving the Serrano language, Siva said, "has to do with our identity and our culture. The traditions that we had. It's like living on our land. A lot of us move away, but as you notice, we return to our roots."
Historically, the Serrano language was spoken but not written, Day said. Written Serrano was not used until the 1990s, and part of the language project has been to craft a new Serrano alphabet that is different than the one used in Ramon and Elliott's book. Work to create a new alphabet began around September 2005, Day said. That effort has produced a 47-letter alphabet that uses many common letters as well as symbols not used in English. For example, the ' symbol is used as a letter that symbolizes the sound of a "glottal stop" - much like the sound between "uh" and "oh" in the English phrase "uh-oh," Day said. A curriculum is being developed to teach the tongue to other members of the tribe. At this point, the San Manuels are not telling the public how actual words would be written in the new alphabet. Wright said tribal members are concerned that to do so could lead to the misappropriation of their culture. Wright, a native Hawaiian, said the
"tiki kitsch" that is often used as party decorations is an example of how the San Manuels would not want their culture to be represented. Wright considers the kind of island-themed ornamentations that can be purchased at party supply stores to be a bastardization of Polynesian ways. In Day's view, the most successful effort to revive a language was the reintroduction of Hebrew in modern Israel. The Torah and other Hebrew writings provided a wealth of knowledge for 20th-century speakers. The San Manuels do not have that much material to work with, but Day said there are 15 to 20 hours of recorded Serrano to guide the study of an almost-forgotten language. Siva can also draw on notebooks that he compiled while a USC student in the 1960s. As a student, Siva studied music and traveled to Washington, D.C., to research Luiseno Indian music. While at the National Archives, he got sidetracked and found research on Serrano that he transcribed into his own notes. "I
realized I could read it," he said. Day was drawn to indigenous languages when she studied linguistic anthropology while a student at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. "I discovered American languages when I was in college. They were so different from anything I'd ever seen," she said. "Language loss ... made me sad, how much language diversity we're losing. It's sort of like losing a species."
---------------------------------
What's in a name? The word "Serrano" is actually not part of the Serrano language - it's derived from Spanish. The ancestors of today's San Manuel Band of Mission Indians lived in the San Bernardino Mountains before Europeans came to California. Spanish settlers called tribe members Serranos. The word is similar to "sierra," the Spanish word for mountains. In their own language, the Serranos called themselves Yuhaviatam, which translates to "people of the pines." Source: San Manuel Band of Mission Indians
Posted by: "SAL CAMARILLo" salcamarillo1@sbcglobal.net salcamarillo1
Wed Dec 6, 2006 4:21 am (PST)
SAN MANUEL INDIAN RESERVATION - A quiet battle is being waged to save the ancestral language of the Serrano Indians. The Serrano language was once spoken by indigenous people throughout the San Bernardino Valley and High Desert. Today, there is only one man whose ability to speak that tongue approaches fluency, said Kaylene Day, a staff linguist for the Serrano Language Revitalization Project. The ultimate goal of the project - an effort of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians' Education Department still in its infancy - is to give tribe members the ability to use the Serrano language in daily conversation. "They want their children and future leaders to be versed in the culture so that identity is strong," education director Erin Kahunawaika`ala Wright said. The last person to be fluent in the Serrano language, Dorothy Ramon, died in 2002. With linguist Eric Elliott, Ramon compiled Serrano lore into the book "Wayta' Yawa'," the title of which
translates to "Always Believe." Ramon's nephew, Ernest Siva, remembers the sounds of Serrano from his childhood. "My mother, she and my older aunt, everyone in the family spoke it," Siva said. Day said Siva is the only person who is almost fluent in Serrano. There are times, Siva said, when he'll use Serrano phrases, though he acknowledged that his aunt's ability to converse in that old language exceeded his own. Siva said Day and others visit him every Thursday to work on the language project. He also teaches Serrano classes at the Morongo Indian Reservation near Cabazon. He is president of the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center - a nonprofit created to preserve and share knowledge of Southern California's indigenous cultures. Preserving the Serrano language, Siva said, "has to do with our identity and our culture. The traditions that we had. It's like living on our land. A lot of us move away, but as you notice, we return to our roots."
Historically, the Serrano language was spoken but not written, Day said. Written Serrano was not used until the 1990s, and part of the language project has been to craft a new Serrano alphabet that is different than the one used in Ramon and Elliott's book. Work to create a new alphabet began around September 2005, Day said. That effort has produced a 47-letter alphabet that uses many common letters as well as symbols not used in English. For example, the ' symbol is used as a letter that symbolizes the sound of a "glottal stop" - much like the sound between "uh" and "oh" in the English phrase "uh-oh," Day said. A curriculum is being developed to teach the tongue to other members of the tribe. At this point, the San Manuels are not telling the public how actual words would be written in the new alphabet. Wright said tribal members are concerned that to do so could lead to the misappropriation of their culture. Wright, a native Hawaiian, said the
"tiki kitsch" that is often used as party decorations is an example of how the San Manuels would not want their culture to be represented. Wright considers the kind of island-themed ornamentations that can be purchased at party supply stores to be a bastardization of Polynesian ways. In Day's view, the most successful effort to revive a language was the reintroduction of Hebrew in modern Israel. The Torah and other Hebrew writings provided a wealth of knowledge for 20th-century speakers. The San Manuels do not have that much material to work with, but Day said there are 15 to 20 hours of recorded Serrano to guide the study of an almost-forgotten language. Siva can also draw on notebooks that he compiled while a USC student in the 1960s. As a student, Siva studied music and traveled to Washington, D.C., to research Luiseno Indian music. While at the National Archives, he got sidetracked and found research on Serrano that he transcribed into his own notes. "I
realized I could read it," he said. Day was drawn to indigenous languages when she studied linguistic anthropology while a student at the University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University. "I discovered American languages when I was in college. They were so different from anything I'd ever seen," she said. "Language loss ... made me sad, how much language diversity we're losing. It's sort of like losing a species."
---------------------------------
What's in a name? The word "Serrano" is actually not part of the Serrano language - it's derived from Spanish. The ancestors of today's San Manuel Band of Mission Indians lived in the San Bernardino Mountains before Europeans came to California. Spanish settlers called tribe members Serranos. The word is similar to "sierra," the Spanish word for mountains. In their own language, the Serranos called themselves Yuhaviatam, which translates to "people of the pines." Source: San Manuel Band of Mission Indians