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11 October 2007 @ 03:23 pm

Child triglossia: an anecdote
While I was in Algeria, I was watching a cousin's toddler play with one of those toy computers that play a word when you press on a letter. The words, in this case, were in Arabic - Fusha (Classical), of course. Several times she repeated after the machine and then, with a very emphatic tone, added the Darja (Algerian dialect) translation - for example:

Machine: qird (monkey)
Toddler: qird! šadi!

Then she got to "bird" (Arabic ṭā'ir) and came out with the memorable line:

ṭā'ir! u b-əṛ-ṛumiyaa nqulu-lu ḷa ṭa'ir.
(ṭā'ir! And in French we call it ḷa ṭa'ir.)

Gets you wondering, really... how do kids acquire di/triglossia? It's certainly not just a matter of what they learn in school, as this case illustrates.

read more at Jabal al-Lughat
 
 
11 October 2007 @ 03:23 pm

Language learning link
I recently found out just how much downloadable language material - mainly Peace Corps manuals, grammars, and dictionaries - there was on a site called ERIC, including but not limited to Hassaniya, Fulfulde, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Malagasy, Tashelhiyt ("Tashelheet"), Hausa, Ilocano, Sinhala... It seems only fair to spread the word.

read more at Jabal al-Lughat
 
 
 
 
 

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