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NAHUIZALCO, El Salvador, Might 06 (IPS) – A bunch of youngsters collaborating in an immersion program in Náhuat, the language of the Pipil individuals and the one remaining pre-Hispanic language in El Salvador, are the final hope that the language won’t die out.
“This effort goals to maintain Náhuat alive and that’s the reason we concentrate on the youngsters, for them to proceed and protect this necessary a part of our tradition,” Elena López informed IPS throughout a brief snack break for the preschoolers she teaches.
López is a part of the Náhuat Cuna undertaking, which since 2010 has sought to protect and revive the endangered indigenous language by means of early immersion. She is certainly one of two lecturers who educate it to youngsters between the ages of three and 5 at a preschool middle in Nahuizalco, a municipality within the division of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.
Prone to disappearing
“When a language dies, the premise of indigenous cultures and territories turns into extinct with it,” says the report Revitalization of Indigenous Languages, in accordance with which the five hundred Amerindian languages nonetheless spoken in Latin America are all in a state of affairs of better or lesser menace or threat.
In Mesoamerica, which incorporates Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, 75 indigenous languages are spoken, says the examine by the Fund for the Improvement of the Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean (FILAC).
Excluding Mexico, Guatemala is essentially the most linguistically numerous on this group of nations, with 24 native languages. Essentially the most extensively spoken is Ok’iche’, of Mayan origin, and the least is Xinca, of unknown origin.
Brazil is essentially the most ethnically and linguistically numerous nation in Latin America, with between 241 and 256 indigenous peoples and between 150 and 186 languages.
![A picture of some of the children learning Náhuat in the town of Nahuizalco, in western El Salvador, through an early language immersion program, in an effort by Don Bosco University to keep the endangered language alive. Teacher Elsa Cortez sits next to them. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala / IPS](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2024/05/aa.jpg)
Round 25 % of those languages are prone to extinction until one thing is urgently performed, the report warns. It’s estimated that Latin America is house to greater than 50 million individuals who self-identify as indigenous.
“These languages are shedding their utilization worth…households are more and more interrupting the pure intergenerational transmission of the languages of their elders, and a gradual however positive means of transferring in the direction of the hegemonic language is noticed, with audio system making Spanish or Portuguese their predominant language of use,” the report states.
The causes of the hazard of the disappearance of those Amerindian languages are assorted, the report factors out, such because the interruption of intergenerational transmission, when the language is now not handed on from technology to technology.
And that’s precisely what the Náhuat Cuna undertaking goals to revert by specializing in younger youngsters, who can study from Náhuat audio system who did obtain the language from their mother and father and grandparents and converse it fluently.
![Two children pretend to purchase and sell fruits and vegetables speaking in Náhuat, as part of the teaching exercises at Náhuat Cuna in western El Salvador, a preschool for new generations of Salvadorans to learn the nearly extinct Amerindian language. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala /IPS](https://static.globalissues.org/ips/2024/05/aaa-1.jpg)
López is certainly one of these individuals. She belongs to the final technology of audio system who acquired it naturally, as a mom tongue, talking it from a really younger age along with her mother and father and grandparents, in her native Santo Domingo de Guzmán, additionally within the division of Sonsonate.
“That is how I used to be born and grew up, talking it at house. And we by no means stopped talking it, amongst my sisters and brothers, however not with individuals outdoors the home, as a result of they discriminated towards us, they handled us as Indians however in a derogatory manner, however we by no means stopped talking it,” mentioned Lopez, 65.
Certainly, for causes of racism and classism, indigenous populations have been marked by rejection and contempt not solely from the political and financial elites, but additionally by the remainder of the mestizo or mixed-race inhabitants, which resulted from the combination of indigenous individuals with the Spaniards who began arriving in Latin America within the sixteenth century.
“They’ve all the time seemed down on us, they’ve discriminated towards us,” Elsa Cortez, 43, the opposite instructor on the Nahuizalco Náhuat Cuna, informed IPS.
And he or she added: “I really feel happy and proud, at my age it’s a luxurious to show our little ones.”
Each López and Cortez mentioned they had been grateful that the undertaking employed them as lecturers, since they’d no prior educating expertise, and in a context during which discrimination and social rejection, along with ageism, make it harder to seek out formal employment.
Earlier than becoming a member of the undertaking, Cortez labored full time making comales, that are round clay griddles which can be positioned over a wooden hearth to prepare dinner corn tortillas. She additionally bought baked items, and continues to bake bread on weekends.
López additionally labored making comales and making ready native dishes, which she bought in her neighborhood. Now she prefers to relaxation on the weekends.
All isn’t misplaced
When IPS visited the Náhuat Cuna preschool in Nahuizalco, the three-year-olds had been performing an train: they stood in entrance of the remainder of the category of about ten youngsters and launched themselves by saying their first title, final title and different fundamental greetings in Náhuat.
Later they recognized, in Náhuat, photos of animals and components of nature, similar to “mistun” (cat), “qawit” (tree) and “xutxit” (flower). The scholars began their first yr within the middle in February, and can spend two years there.
The five-year-olds are essentially the most superior. Collectively, the 2 teams totaled about twenty youngsters.
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On the finish of their time on the Cuna, they are going to go to common faculty in Spanish, with the chance that they are going to neglect what they’ve discovered. Nonetheless, to maintain them related to the language, the undertaking affords Saturday programs the place they start to study grammar and learn how to write the language.
There’s a group of 15 youngsters, principally ladies, who began in the beginning of the undertaking and converse the language fluently, and a few even educate it on-line.
The initiative is promoted by the Don Bosco University of El Salvador, and supported by the municipalities the place they function, in Nahuizalco and Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The Santa Catarina Masahuat department may also be reopened quickly.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán is house to 99 % of the nation’s few Náhuat audio system, who quantity round 60 individuals, Jorge Lemus, director of El Salvador’s Náhuat/Pipil Language Revitalization Program and primary promoter of the Náhuat Cuna undertaking, informed IPS.
“In three a long time I’ve seen how Náhuat has been in decline, and the way the individuals who converse it have been dying out,” burdened Lemus, who can be a professor and researcher of linguistics on the College of Languages and Training at Don Bosco College, run by the Salesian Catholic order.
Based on the educational, the final three indigenous languages in El Salvador within the twentieth century had been Lenca, Cacaopera and Náhuat, however the first two disappeared by the center of that century, and solely the final one survives.
“The one one which has survived is Náhuat, however barely, as there are maybe simply 60 audio system of the language. Once I began engaged on this there have been about 200 and the quantity continues to shrink,” mentioned Lemus.
The one method to hold the language alive, he mentioned, is for a brand new technology to select it up. However it won’t be adults, who may study it as a second language however will proceed talking Spanish; it should be a gaggle of youngsters who can study it as native audio system.
The skilled clarified that, though they arrive from the identical linguistic trunk, the Náhuat spoken in El Salvador isn’t the identical because the Nahuatl spoken in Mexico, and in reality the spelling is totally different.
In Mexico, Nahuatl has multiple million audio system within the Central Valley, he mentioned.
In El Salvador, in 1932, the Pipil individuals stopped talking their language in public for concern of being killed by the federal government forces of Basic Maximiliano Hernández, who that yr brutally cracked down on an indigenous and peasant rebellion demanding higher dwelling situations.
At the moment, society was dominated by aristocratic households devoted to espresso cultivation, whose manufacturing system plunged a big a part of Salvadorans, particularly peasants and indigenous individuals, into poverty.
Lemus argued that for a language to make a decisive comeback and grow to be a car for on a regular basis communication would require a titanic effort by the State, just like the revival of the Basque language in Spain, Maori in New Zealand and even Israel’s resuscitation of Hebrew, which was already a useless language.
However that’s not going to occur in El Salvador, he mentioned.
“Essentially the most real looking factor we wish to obtain is to maintain the language from disappearing, and for the brand new technology of Náhuat-speaking individuals to develop and multiply. If now we have 60 audio system now, in a number of years we are going to hopefully nonetheless have 50 or 60 audio system, from this new technology, and they’re going to hold it alive within the communities and proceed talking it,” he mentioned.
For her half, López needs to proceed working in the direction of this aim with a view to go away the nation her legacy.
Talking in Náhuat, the preschool instructor mentioned: “I actually like educating this language as a result of I do not need it to die, I need the youngsters to study and converse it when I’m useless.”
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service