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Linguistic Diversity and its Sources

Themes and actions

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Editor : Nina DOBRUSHINA, Brigitte PAKENDORF, Maïa PONSONNET

The Rama Language Project (RLP) of Nicaragua


  Contact person
Colette GRINEVALD

Scientific framework and objectives

This is a very long term project (35 years now) and consists at this time in responding to on-demand requests for support to the revitalization efforts led by community members.
The Rama Language Project (RLP) was initiated in 1985 in response to the demand of the Rama community in the context of the establishment of the Autonomy of the Caribbean Region of Nicaragua and the recognition of its different ethnic groups on the basis of their territory, culture and ethnic language. At the time, Rama, a Chibchan language of the south east of the country and the most minorized language of the country, was already considered as practically disappeared.
The RLP started with an evaluation of its vitality and the discovery of a community of native speakers, which allowed its first linguistic description (NSF, Wenner Grenn), based on a documentation composed of narratives, the recordings of which have been archived at AILLA. A dictionary project followed (NEH, ELDP) which was at the origin of the site http://www.turkulka.net/
From the start, the RLP has been articulated around the needs of the community, between ongoing campaign of revalorization of the language and punctual studies on request: toponymy in Rama for the demarcation of the territory for the Rama-Kriol government (GTR-K), ethnobotanical study for the campaign of adaptation to climate change led by the BlueEnergy NGO, study of traditional cooking for the UNESCO, on top of numerous pedagogical activities until recently, in the Rama communities, as well as the CIDCA research center and the URACCAN university in Bluefields.
This Rama project is one of the bases of the contrastive research of LED TDR on the complexity of such field situations, on the multi-dimentionality of the evaluation of the level of vitality of a language, the complexity of the great variety of speakers of LED, and the dimensions of work ON a language, FOR and WITH its community.

Funding
To Craig from the University of Oregon 1985-96: NSF, NEH, Wenner Gren, CHRLA
To Grinevald from the DDL-Univ Lyon2 since 1996: ELDP, Tromso University, DDL et ASLAN1, MPI de Leipzig, bENicaragua, UNESCO…

Main Publications
As CRAIG (Colette Grinevald Craig or C.G. Craig) As CRAIG (Colette Grinevald Craig or C.G. Craig)
(8) 1992 A constitutional response to language endangerment: the case of Nicaragua, pp. 11-16 in Hale, K. et al. 1992. Endangered languages. Language. 68:1-42.
(9) 1993 Language Shift and Language Death: The case of Rama in Nicaragua, International Journal of the Sociology of Language.93 (1992) , pp. 11-26
As GRINEVALD
(10) 2006 Why the Tiger language and not Rama Cay Creole? Language revitalization made harder. in P. Austin (ed) . Language contact and variation in language documentation. Londres : HRELP SOAS.
(11) 2010 Quarante ans de perspective sur deux langues en danger: le jakaltek popti’ du Guatemala et le rama du Nicaragua, Faits de Langues 35-36, Linguistique de terrain sur langues en danger: Locuteurs et linguistes, Paris, Ophrys, pp. 39-78.
(12) 2013 The Revitalization of a “Treasure Language”, update on the Rama Language Project of Nicaragua, (avec Bénédicte Pivot), in S. Ogilvie & M. Jones (eds.), Language Endangerment: Documentation, Pedagogy, and Revitalization. Cambridge: CUP pp181-197.
(13) 2014 Whose ideology, when and where: Revitalization of Rama (Nicaragua) and Francoprovençal (France)? (avec Michel Bert), in P. K. Austin. & J. Sallabank (eds.), Endangered languages: Ideologies and beliefs, Oxford, Oxford University Press.pp357-385.
(14) 2019 The Role of Autonomy in the Revitalization of the Languages of Nicaragua’s Caribbean Coast (avec Jane Freeland). in L. Barroco (ed). Indigenous Struggles for Autonomy: The Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. 201-228. Lexington Books.


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