ᓄᖃᕆᑦ

ᓄᖃᕆᑦ is “stop,” as now found on stop signs in the Canadian territory Nunavut.

This month, the Official Languages Act came into force in Nunavat. According to the text of the law:

• “The Inuit Language, English and French are the Official Languages of Nunavut,”
• “To the extent and in the manner provided under this Act, the Official Languages of Nunavut have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in territorial institutions,” and
• Priority must be given to “the revitalization of Inuinnaqtun.”

Read more in “Nunavut Official Languages Act Comes into Force.”

Canadian Conservative government pro-language

Yesterday, the Conservative Party of Canada won a majority government for the first time in its eight years of existence.

James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, announced today that funding for the CBC will be maintained at the current level or increased. He said, “[The CBC] is essential for respect for all of our official languages and all of the regions of the country — broadcasting in aboriginal languages in the North.”

The CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a public television and radio broadcaster. Among its services is CBC North, which operates in the Canadian Arctic. Their programs include broadcasts in:

• Cree (cre)
• Dene Suline or Chipewyan (chp)
• Dogrib (dgr)
• Gwich’in (gwi)
• Inuktitut (iku)
• Inuvialuktun (ikt)
• North Slavey (scs) and South Slavey (xsl)

CBC Radio 3 provides free music, with a category for Aboriginal artists, though a casual glance at a few pages revealed only music in English. The CBC also has a bilingual program titled “Legends,” recording traditional oral stories.

News in Brief: Promoting Aboriginal Languages Month, Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Linguistic Diversity Index

March is Aboriginal Languages Month in Canada, and the Northwest Territories Literacy Council has put together a booklet to help, particularly for languages in the Northwest Territories. The nine aboriginal languages of the NWT are: Chipewyan (chp); Cree (cre); Gwich’in (gwi); Western Canadian Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun, and Inuinnaqtun (all ikt); North Slavey and South Slavey (scs and xsl), and Tåîchô or Dogrib (dgr).

Volume 2 of the Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity series is scheduled to be released this month by Oxford University Press. Titled “The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts,” it is edited by Joshua Fishman and Ofelia Garcia. The 37 new essays look at such issues as language versus dialect, government policy and the case of how Canaanite was supplanted by Hebrew (hbo) in ancient times. See also volume 1.

David Harmon and Jonathan Loh have developed an index of linguistic diversity (ILD). They have given presentations on their index as well as published a paper. The paper is in Language Documentation & Conservation, and may be downloaded from the 2010 volume 4 page. This news inspired by the article “Language Diversity Index Tracks Global Loss of Mother Tongue,” which has a lot of information on the topic and endangered languages in general.