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Nilotic Languagae

13 mil. Nuer~ many fled in war

60 languages in S. Sudan

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PROTECTING WAR ORPHANS AND OTHER VULNERABLE CHILDREN IN SOUTH SUDAN

Mary Grace, UOCO-USA Liaison

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Though many schools are free, very few families can afford the mandatory supply and uniform costs, so school attendence is quite low. Of course, orphans are left to the streets and must depend on the kindness of the community.

Compounding illiteracy, fully 98% of rural women in South Sudan are illiterate. This means mothers are unable to read to their children...Indeed, I saw no books, and only a few toys made from the viscous mud.

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WE HOPE!

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There are more than 20,000 child soldiers needing help.

Photos from: yahoo.com news.sky.com news.vice.com:

MOST CHILD SOLDIERS ARE ORPHANED AND VULNERABLE. MANY WERE FORCED TO LEARN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE IN THEIR “WORK.”

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My little friend Khan and I would go visit the MSF Field Hospital every afternoon and just chat or play a card game called Swish with these young men as they recuperated from war, or cattle raids gone wrong.

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Neologisms increase domain protection: As English influences increase there are new concepts and novel nouns needed for things such as “sugar,” “gas” and “umbrella.” According to my survey these words were not conceptualized in Nuer before the influx of English speakers. Many words are being integrated to the lexis as “borrowed words.” However one neologism in the landlocked Nuerland is the word for island, “wunbarkرw (Nyawai, 2020).”

It is pretty funny that many Nuer do not have a word for umbrella. It rains there half the year but I only saw about four umbrellas the whole summer.

As part of my paper, I used Gabriela Perez’ list of ways to maintain language with school children. All her ideas are good and I offer specific ways to integrate different activities into the school day and the compountd.

As an example, # 14. Documentation: audio and video language recording; linguistic analysis for the development of grammars and dictionaries. Though Nuer is well codified, there are increasing needs for neologisms and creative domain preservation. It would be fun to engage the classrooms in developing new words which “sound” Nuer. Once chosen, the students (with the guidance of the school staff) could write to the local village administration to ask that some of their words be considered for integration into the lexicon for general use.

I am checking to see if there is a local Nuer radio station.

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In my short stays in South Sudan, I learned of several natural cures. Our text authors explain that in at least two Aboriginal Australian tribes, people connect names of some foods they relish with the tree or shrub near which they are found. “ Language is deeply linked to nature and culture. As languages disappear, information is harder to retain, and it gradually disappears, too (Wilson, 2017, p. 373).” Wisdom lost.

PLANT LIFE AND MEDICINAL-CULTURAL CONNECTIONS TO LANGUAGE

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THANK YOU FOR CARING

HANDS OF HOPE COMMUNITY SCHOOL (UOCO)

THIS FLOOD ZONE IMAGE IS FROM LEER, NOVEMBER 2020

warorphancaremary@gmail.com

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WORKS CITED

Gabriela Pérez Báez, R. V. (2019, May 22). Global Survey of Revitalization Efforts: A mixed methods approach to understanding language revitalization practices. Language Documentation & Conservation , 13, pp. 446–513.

Kach, T. G. (2020, October). Nuer Survey of Language Use an Appreciation. 2. (w. s. Mary Grace, Interviewer)

Nyawai. (2020, Oct.). Nuer Survey of Language Use and Appreciation. 4. (p. f. Mary Grace, Interviewer)

Omondi, S. ( 2017, Sep. 15). WorldAtlas.com. Retrieved from World Atlas: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-languages-are-spoken-in-south-sudan.html

Photo in the garden, on slide #9, is James. A very kind and intelligent man, who was always so kind to me.

UNICEF. (2018, July 06). UNICEF - Every Child. Retrieved from 3 in 4 children born in South Sudan since independence have known nothing but war –: https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/children-born-south-sudan-independence-nothing-war

Ventura, J. (2018, July 11). 10 EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT THE NUER OF SOUTH SUDAN. Retrieved from The Borgen Project.

Wilson, J. H. (2017). Language Change. In J. H. Wilson, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (5th ed., p. 243). New York, New York, USA: Routledge.