|
~International
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
IRIN-International |
Welcome to our home page! |
||||||||||||||||||||
Nawat: v
Grammar v
Texts v
Song Who we are: v
IRIN v
TIT Join us! The Nawat language recovery
initiative: |
Shitechpalewi! Please
help us!
Nawat is now spoken by perhaps a few hundred
people, perhaps only a few dozen – there are no reliable figures. Most of the
speakers, called Pipils, are elderly people who will soon be gone. There
still exists a small number of younger Pipils who have learnt the language
from their parents or grandparents and are interested in working with the old
people to keep alive their ancestral language and culture. A hundred years ago Nawat was still a
thriving spoken language in much of
the west of El Salvador. The Pipils have been victims of such brutal
government-supported oppression and massacres in the past that their ethnic
identity became a threat to their physical integrity. Pipils learnt to
survive by staying out of sight or abandoning outward signs of their customs,
such as use of their traditional dress and their native language. This
explains why few people can speak Nawat today, but it is also the reason why
it is not easy to be certain how many people may still remember the language,
but not want to admit it. Supposedly, times have changed; but keeping quiet
about their native identity and habits has become a standard behaviour
pattern for many Pipils. It is a pattern of behaviour that will
eventually kill the language if it continues. In the mind of many Pipils and
non-Pipils today, being Pipil, and hence speaking Nawat, has no prestige
value whatsoever. For the Pipils, the majority of whom live below the poverty
line, the trouble is that they perceive their language as having no value,
meaning above all no economic
value. Speaking Nawat may also imply a lack of education (most of its
speakers are illiterate). The idea that Nawat may be associated with
school and educational opportunities, or even with the possible acquisition
of even limited wealth, is unfamiliar to Pipils. So is the notion of building
up a useful and positive concept of Pipil identity in which their language
plays an instrumental and uniting role. Welcome to the new
IRIN-International website!
Today a last-minute move is being made to
change things. In this website you can read about the Nawat language, the
people who are involved in the effort to make Nawat language recovery
possible, and what they are doing about it. We invite you to take a look
around. Here you can find out more about the Nawat
language’s background,
study some of its grammar
and vocabulary,
and familiarise yourself with the language through elementary conversations,
short texts and a song. We hope you will also want to read about the Nawat Language
Recovery Initiative (IRIN) and the Office for the Nawat Language (TIT). This
website is offered by an international support group backing the initiative, IRIN-International. In another section you can read about the
work being carried out, such as an important university project to introduce Nawat
classes into schools and provide them with language textbooks; another programme that
offers Nawat courses
for adults within Pipil communities; recent and ongoing progress in
the area of Nawat
linguistics; and several other objectives within the overall recovery plan. Your turn to help
And now we must turn to you to ask for help.
All the projects described here require certain human and material resources.
The quantity of help needed is modest, since in a poor country a little can
be made to go a long way; yet in a poor country even a little money is hard
to find! Projects described here do depend on some local support but this
will be insufficient to pay for plans for 2004. We need your help to help us keep Nawat alive
and maintain the present language recovery plan on track. If you would like more information than you
can find on this site or want to make a suggestion, please write to us. Why not send
us your visitor’s
comments too and allow us to display them to our readers!
Thanks for your visit. You are visitor number [INSERT COUNTER
HERE] to this site. |
Pots llegir aquesta pàgina
en |
|
|
You
can read this page in |
|
|
Puedes leer esta página en |
|
|
Orrialde hau |
irakur
dezakezu. |
|
Podes ler esta páxina en |
|
|
Gallwch ddarllen y tudalen
yma yn |
|
|
Tiweli
tikita ini iswat tik |
(Read this page in Nawat.) |
© 2004 Alan
R. King, Monica Ward and IRIN.