Tag: lexicography

Pluarlistic globalism and endangered languages.

I finally finished watching this over breakfast this morning. Something interesting from a linguistic perspective is that they don’t seem to use any English words in their Cherokee despite heavy contact, perhaps because they go to lengths to create new words for new things (see 35:00). This is not the strategy taken elsewhere, such as in Louisiana and the Maritimes (although Quebec tries to do this at least officially).

First Language, The Race to Save Cherokee by Neal Hutcheson on Vimeo.

Also, I think the quote at the end is particular fitting given the current social and political climate throughout the West. He positions the idea of a strong local culture within a broader context that doesn’t necessarily need to reject larger over-arching cultures or even global interconnectedness:

“If we consider what it actually means to be a pluralistic society, then that means we’re gonna have to make space for people who speak different languages, who think different ways, who have different cultures, inside of a national culture or a global culture, and so all the movement has been in the opposite direction towards globalization, towards homogenization, you know? What does it mean to change the process and open up space for a plurality of different small cultures working together? How can we truly accept and respect those people and allow them some measure of autonomy with their educational system and the language that they speak?” –Hartwelll Francis de West Carolina University, ma traduction

Cajun French flash cards.

I don’t know if I’ve talked about the flash card program Anki on here before but I know I’ve professed my love for it to practically all of my friends who are students. I started using it just for language classes but soon realized I could use it for basically every class in some way which was perfect for studying on the move because you can pull up cards on your phone and it will sync them with your computer.

It’s not like traditional flash cards in that it doesn’t show you every card every day. You can limit how many new cards you see each day as well as how many old cards. Even better, each time you get a card correct, it takes pops up less and less often in your old card pile. Eventually, you won’t see a card that you know really well for maybe a year but those cards that you get wrong every day keep showing up every day. All of this can be adjusted as well.

I had been making a deck for my Cajun French class and ended up with a pretty significant number of cards. I thought about sharing the deck with classmates but then I realized I could share it with the whole interwebs. Anki allows users to share their decks with other users through its website. I couldn’t find a Cajun French deck already posted so I cleaned mine up a bit and posted it at https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1735265721.

The description on the Anki site has all the details. If anyone is interested in using it but can’t quite figure out the program, feel free to contact me.

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