After some bad-news stories I thought you might like a break with a good-news one from Cotton Boll Conspiracy:
“The language of the Penobscot Indian Nation has existed for many centuries, at a minimum. Now, the Maine tribe is on the cusp of a dramatic development regarding a dictionary for its Eastern Algonquian tongue.
Efforts to preserve the Penobscot language, a dialect of Eastern Abenaki, received a major boost this week when it was learned that a federal grant has been awarded to allow researchers to assist the tribe in devising a complete Penobscot language dictionary.
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant of nearly $340,000 to help the Penobscot Nation, the University of Maine and the American Philosophical Society preserve the language by creating a comprehensive version of the Penobscot Dictionary, complete with an English index and online database, according to the Bangor Daily News.
It would be the first published Penobscot dictionary.
The Penobscot Nation lives primarily on the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation, near Old Town, Maine, just north of Bangor.
Penobscot, like many Native American languages, has been in decline for well over a century.
Indian students attending schools taught by whites were often punished for speaking in their native tongues. Often, languages other than English began to be spoken only inside the home, with fluency diminishing as older generations died.
Penobscot parents began speaking primarily English to their children sometime around 1880-1900, according to researchers. It is believed the last native speaker of Penobscot died in the 1990s.”
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
outstanding story, sionnach: I remember going to an interview ten years ago for job in ria irish dictionary project and though wasn’t successful, you have to at least admit that for the amount of public monies spent on that one specific Irish dictionary project (no hardcopy produced – only online database) could/should have funded instead over it’s lengthy lifetime a dictionary for american native language(s) when the anniversary of an gorta mór was commemorated: an apt tributary to those first nation peoples who assisted the irish over 150 years ago!
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When one thinks of the several hundred million euros going on overseas aid per annum (some of which of course simply disappears into the ether) and then one thinks about how that could transform the lives of peoples whom the Irish have direct ties or obligations to it is absolutely shameful. Imagine how 50 million euros a year could change the lives of the Choctaw nation in North America, how it could be used for education in their native language, for funding indigenous broadcasting on the lines of TG4. We owe those people a debt, a moral obligation is upon us in ways that we do not owe to such an extent in Africa or elsewhere. There are others.
Then think about funding Irish medium education or learning in the US, Canada, Australia, etc. What of the debt we owe to na Deoraithe? There are potentially thousands of Irish language learners we could tap into if properly funded. Then what of the elderly Irish of London, the men and women who left in the 1950s and ’60s now living in poverty and squalor in English towns and cities. Not everyone had a success story. Many didn’t. They sent home money in the bad times, we abandoned them in the good.
Ach. Today is one of my angry days. I feel like an Irish-born Alan Partridge, “This country…” 😉
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ah sionnach – i twigged having read your postings a great deal would have to rile you up! – though – and you’re on the button of course – truth is the euro millions are wider realpolik: how else was ms creighton or particularly mr gilmore going to guarantee internationalist kudos in the years after the next general election when they’re sending out cvs using stationary generously provided by the oireachtas! -:) p.
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Ah yes, the international CV thing, playing with the big boys, not wanting to be “shamed” in the corridors of power, that is so true. We want to join your club so we will obey your rules however idiotic or inimical to our own well-being. The Irish political elite in a nutshell!
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