May 30, 2016

Wikitongues

Today I learned about Wikitongues from my son. What an amazing site:
It commenced in 2012 and so far contains many video examples of people using different spoken and signed languages.
The entire video of Christine speaking Shetlandic is compelling. She describes her bilingual childhood, reads some of her poems, and discusses the "politics of language and dialects" (at 5:20) suggesting we shouldn't "let bairns (children) think that their mother tongue is somehow debased language" we should "lift them up and encourage them in bilingualism where they're comfortable." Her comments led me to find more about her: Christine De Luca is currently Edinburgh Makar - poet laureate for the City of Edinburgh who aims to "make people feel good about their mother tongue".
The potential for learning from the people who have donated their voices to Wikitongues is endless.