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Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

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Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#21

Post by yorwba »

protomyth wrote: post #20
disown wrote: post #4

Isn't the language almost extinct and the community almost wiped out? I remember reading a while back that there are only a few hundred speakers and as more canadians move into the area, the inuit community and language were being endangered. Is there a systematic campaign to preserve the language and/or community? At the very least to set down the vocabulary/grammer/pronounciation/etc?

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it. I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.

It sounds to me more like you already had a tool in mind (ML) and were just looking for some nails ;)

If you approach the problem instead from the language preservation perspective and ask what is necessary to make it succeed, there are essentially two tasks: documentation (recording current speakers' knowledge of the language) and community maintenance (allowing people to keep using the language and teaching it to the next generation).

Documentation basically boils down to making a lot of recordings. Since text is usually nicer to work with, transcriptions are very useful, and in theory ML would be able to help with that, but to train a speech-to-text model, you first need transcribed training data, leading to a chicken-and-egg problem. Making the data easily available and easy to contribute to is more likely to be impactful.

For maintaining a community, ML can be useful by providing all the services that ML offers for speakers of more popular languages: text-to-speech, speech-to-text, predictive smartphone keyboards, machine translation, ... but all of those depend on the language being well-documented already. Otherwise, non-ML solutions are likely to be the only options (so formant-based speech synthesis e.g. with espeak-ng, dumb keyboards, rule-based translators, ...)

To give a specific example, I know of a community of Kabyle speakers who want to be able to use OpenStreetMap with voice navigation in Kabyle, so they've been making a lot of recordings (using https://tatoeba.org as a platform for the documentation part) and also have someone working on a speech-synthesis model (using Mozilla's DeepSpeech, I think). AFAIK, the project is coordinated by Muhend Beqasem, whom you might want to contact if you're interested in what they're doing: https://tatoeba.org/eng/user/profile/belkacem77

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#22

Post by lastofthemojito »

protomyth wrote: post #20
disown wrote: post #4

Isn't the language almost extinct and the community almost wiped out? I remember reading a while back that there are only a few hundred speakers and as more canadians move into the area, the inuit community and language were being endangered. Is there a systematic campaign to preserve the language and/or community? At the very least to set down the vocabulary/grammer/pronounciation/etc?

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it. I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.

Supposedly there's an Inuttitut Rosetta Stone project although I don't see much else about it online. [0]

I tried to get access to the Iñupiat Rosetta Stone at one point but failed even though I have the "unlimited" "all languages" Rosetta Stone subscription. It seems like the tribe manages registration and acts as a gatekeeper. [1] I'm sure it has to do with who funded the project or something, but you'd think for endangered languages you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access language learning resources.

[0] https://www.rosettastone.com/endangered/projects/ [1] http://www.north-slope.org/assets/images/uploads/RS_Request_...

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#23

Post by pierreminik »

howlgarnish wrote: post #19
pksebben wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sorry, but" is a poor substitute for "my bad". The error being pointed out to you is that your tone is dismissive, which this diatribe did nothing to correct. The culture people are trying to cultivate here is one that actively avoids suppressing ideas, and dismissiveness is antithetical to that end. Furthermore, the conversation on linguistic relativism is far from done and dusted. The distinction you make between…

Correct, I'm dismissive because I don't think the article is saying anything particularly interesting or even correct. You're welcome to disagree, which is why we're arguing here in the comments section :) As far as I tell (it's not my story after all), the author appears to be asserting that Inuktitut is somehow uniquely in tune with nature in general (dubious) and that we could change the way the Western world acts…

There's a joke in Greenlandic, closely related to Inuktitut, about polysemy. The joke stems from Greenlandic having very little polysemy when it comes to hunting, nature, practicalities and activities, while European languages is quite a bit more polysemic in nature.

I don't know how well this joke translates into English but it works very well in Danish. Here it goes:

> A Danish police officer gets called on the radio by a Greenlandic hunter who has been in an accident. The hunter tells that his partner have fallen into the water and have been pulled up again but might have died from the freezing water. The officer tells the hunter to "make sure he is dead". Over the radio the officer hears a riffle shot and the hunter replies: "There, he's dead now for sure".

The design of Inuktitut and Greenlandic is very in tune with nature but I agree that it doesn't mean you can absorb it's qualities into other languages. That said, doesn't mean you can't learn anything from them, as the author fo the article claims.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#24

Post by zeestar »

protomyth wrote: post #20
disown wrote: post #4

Isn't the language almost extinct and the community almost wiped out? I remember reading a while back that there are only a few hundred speakers and as more canadians move into the area, the inuit community and language were being endangered. Is there a systematic campaign to preserve the language and/or community? At the very least to set down the vocabulary/grammer/pronounciation/etc?

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it. I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.

I responded. I must be on ghost mode.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#25

Post by dorchadas »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #22
protomyth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it. I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.

Supposedly there's an Inuttitut Rosetta Stone project although I don't see much else about it online. [0] I tried to get access to the Iñupiat Rosetta Stone at one point but failed even though I have the "unlimited" "all languages" Rosetta Stone subscription. It seems like the tribe manages registration and acts as a gatekeeper. [1] I'm sure it has to do with who funded the project or something, but you'd think for e…

> but you'd think for endangered languages you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access language learning resources.

For a lot of Native Americans/First Nations peoples, it's actually a highly contentious issue. Some of them don't want outsiders, with no connection to the culture or the group, coming in and learning it just to prove they can, especially when children of the group haven't had the opportunity to learn it because of colonialism and other, often horrible, things.

The Hopi are known for this, and actually decided to forego teaching the language at a school because they couldn't guarantee Navajo students wouldn't sign up for it.

So, really, there's a lot more involved than it just being an 'endangered language' that everyone should have the right to learn and that they should want everyone to learn. There's a lot of ethnolinguistic and postcolonial issues involved as well.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#26

Post by lastofthemojito »

dorchadas wrote: post #25
lastofthemojito wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supposedly there's an Inuttitut Rosetta Stone project although I don't see much else about it online. [0] I tried to get access to the Iñupiat Rosetta Stone at one point but failed even though I have the "unlimited" "all languages" Rosetta Stone subscription. It seems like the tribe manages registration and acts as a gatekeeper. [1] I'm sure it has to do with who funded the project or something, but you'd think for e…

> but you'd think for endangered languages you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access language learning resources. For a lot of Native Americans/First Nations peoples, it's actually a highly contentious issue. Some of them don't want outsiders, with no connection to the culture or the group, coming in and learning it just to prove they can, especially when children of the group haven't had the opportunity to…

I remember when I first read about the Treaty of Wangxia being shocked that one of items in the treaty was that China would revoke a law that made it illegal for outsiders to learn Chinese. [0]

The very idea that it could be forbidden to learn a language seemed nonsensical to me at first, although upon reflection, it must have been a good way to keep foreign ears from prying too much (I believe China's ban on foreigners learning Chinese was more about counterintelligence and less about wanting Chinese speakers to have some deep, authentic connection with the culture).

I hate stuff like that hostility between Hopi and Navajo people though. If anything, learning a neighbor's language tends to bring people together!

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Wanghia

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#27

Post by cmonagle »

disown wrote: post #4

Isn't the language almost extinct and the community almost wiped out? I remember reading a while back that there are only a few hundred speakers and as more canadians move into the area, the inuit community and language were being endangered. Is there a systematic campaign to preserve the language and/or community? At the very least to set down the vocabulary/grammer/pronounciation/etc?

The decline of Inuktut wasn't principally caused by displacement or natural population decline, but rather the residential school system that attempted to completely assimilate young Inuit (and other indigenous) kids. Children were systematically removed from their communities and sent to English (sometimes French) religious boarding schools. They were physically punished for speaking their mother language. [0]

Inuktut is mostly stable, though "vulnerable," and strongest in Nunavik (the region in the article), I suspect because the somewhat-devolved region employs it as the primary language of instruction. [1]

[0] Excerpt from the Truth and Reconciliation commission's report: http://wordalive.wycliffe.ca/stories/what-residential-school..., also https://www.clo-ocol.gc.ca/en/timeline-event/indian-resident...

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/inuit-inuktitut-stats-c..., https://www.kativik.qc.ca/school-board/

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#28

Post by dorchadas »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #26
dorchadas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you'd think for endangered languages you'd want to make it as easy as possible to access language learning resources. For a lot of Native Americans/First Nations peoples, it's actually a highly contentious issue. Some of them don't want outsiders, with no connection to the culture or the group, coming in and learning it just to prove they can, especially when children of the group haven't had the opportunity to…

I remember when I first read about the Treaty of Wangxia being shocked that one of items in the treaty was that China would revoke a law that made it illegal for outsiders to learn Chinese. [0] The very idea that it could be forbidden to learn a language seemed nonsensical to me at first, although upon reflection, it must have been a good way to keep foreign ears from prying too much (I believe China's ban on foreign…

> I hate stuff like that hostility between Hopi and Navajo people though. If anything, learning a neighbor's language tends to bring people together!

I tend to agree, but I also respect the wishes of the various groups. They've undergone experiences at the hands of colonizers that I can't begin to imagine, and if they want to try to preserve something of their culture so that it stays in their culture, and not just let any outsider with a passing interest learn it, I support them in that. Though I do wish more were like the Cherokee Nation, which offers free online courses for anyone across various levels of Cherokee, also integrating culture and such.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#29

Post by schoen »

yorwba wrote: post #14
schoen wrote: post #6

The practice of drawing conclusions about people or their cultures based on properties of their language has been controversial since at least the original Sapir and Whorf stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy If you admire or appreciate a culture, you might argue that the culture's values or history or distinctive outlook are directly reflected in grammatical features or vocabulary of an associa…

Your comment is a very good counterpoint to Sapir-Whorf-hypothesis-like opinions, but unfortunately it's also so general that it could've been posted on any article about language and culture, since you don't reference any specific content. The submitted article doesn't talk about grammar and morphology or other typological features, so criticizing it on the grounds that there's no relationship between typology and g…

That's fair, thanks for the reply.

Re: Inuttitut, a language shaped by humility, poetry, and the land

#30

Post by protomyth »

yorwba wrote: post #21
protomyth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every tribe is working very hard on language preservation and some are getting much better results than others. Some have been lost, but the folks in Alaska are putting a lot of effort into it. I asked a question on HN for a grant that was directed about using ML to aid in language preservation. I didn't get any responses. We were trying to expand the tools available.

It sounds to me more like you already had a tool in mind (ML) and were just looking for some nails ;) If you approach the problem instead from the language preservation perspective and ask what is necessary to make it succeed, there are essentially two tasks: documentation (recording current speakers' knowledge of the language) and community maintenance (allowing people to keep using the language and teaching it to t…

It sounds to me more like you already had a tool in mind (ML) and were just looking for some nails ;)

Well, like all people looking to get grants, I had a pot of money we could get but we had to use a tool to do it. Welcome to grants in 2020 where ML is one thing that gets funded and language preservation is not funded but actually needed as COVID seems to be removing a fair number of people who know the language.

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