A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.
For those who have the time or the courage to check this blog today, this picture from my collection. Again very amateurish, but it’s the real thing. I took the scintillating Eiffel Tower from a bateau-mouche.
Thank you for being around, and I hope you will have an enjoyable day.
I came across this excellent article this morning, the Featured Story of the Natural History Magazine. It reminded me of the research I did for a previous post on Francophony.
The author, Sarah Grey Thomason, the William J. Gedney Collegiate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan and former president of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, tells us that at least half of our planet’s 6,000 languages will be lost by the end of this century. Of course, if you speak one of the major languages, there’s no need to worry, these are probably to stay. Although I might say that one can never tell what the future has in store for us.
‘Losing a language’ may have different meanings. This article points to the fact that not all ‘dead’ languages are really dead, as in totally extinct. Latin is given as an example here. It is widely thought to be a dead language, because hardly anyone speaks it actively now. But it is not dead the way the language featured in the article will become extinct when the last person to speak it dies. Latin is very much alive, through the Romance languages descended from it.
But the most challenging implications are that if you are a member of a Native American tribe, the chances are that your children have been taught in English, and that they will speak it. So your language becomes extinct when you die.
This reminded me that within UNESCO, the question of linguistic diversity, including teaching and learning in native languages, is taken very seriously. In Africa alone, it is estimated that between 1,200 and 2,500 languages are competing, and surveys have found that very young children acquire better skills, and achieve better grades later, when they have been taught in their native languages. It is a policy issue for countries with a varied ethnic profile, where different languages are used. Yet, contrary to the view we might have from the North, it is essential for the future of literacy and development of those countries.
Reflecting upon certain articles I am reading on the Net these days, I’ve come to two realizations:
1- my blog is only partly accessible to the visually-impaired, so I have decided to try and find a way to correct this, if I can;
2- although it’s easy to slow down and use the festive mood as an excuse to stop connecting, I’ll try and continue to blog over the next few days. After all, not everyone is celebrating Christmas, whatever the reason.
So I sifted through my photos and came up with this one that I really like. It’s a picture of my Christmas tree, taken a couple of years ago, but I still like it very much, so I’m sharing it (to a certain point: if you like it too, please backlink to it, don’t steal it!)
And now I’m off to do my Christmas shopping. I hate being in crowds and most of the year I’m able to avoid Saturday shopping.
Enjoy!
