Belarusian: a Language Once Again Finding its People

/
Belarusian: a Language Once Again Finding its People

If you meet a Belarusian on the street and ask them their primary language, the majority will most likely tell you it’s Russian. As a proud international student from Belarus, I always take a deep breath and prepare my conversation partners for a mini-history lesson about a very interesting dynamic of bilingual life in Belarus.

Belarus, as a land-locked country in Eastern Europe, has two national languages: Russian and Belarusian. Belarusian or “biełaruskaja mova” is an East Slavic language, which has many similarities to Ukrainian and Russian. Most Belarusians can read, speak, and write in Belarusian, but they do not choose it as the language of everyday life. But why? …

Read More

A Virtual Internship - With Enthusiasm!

/
A Virtual Internship - With Enthusiasm!

When Dasha Davidouskaya came to the United States for school, she did not know she’d be facing a global pandemic and the most contentious US election cycle in memory. She did not know that the internship she would later take on with SIL LEAD in Washington, D.C. would have to be done virtually. Dasha was as blindsided as the rest of us, but has rolled with these (seemingly unending) punches with grace and enthusiasm…

Read More

The Guy Who Fades into the Background

/
The Guy Who Fades into the Background

Asked what he sees as his role at SIL LEAD, our Communications Consultant Josh Barkey responds, “I just see my role in SIL LEAD as more The Guy Who Fades Into the Background.” But while Josh never gets in the way of telling SIL LEAD’s story, we felt it important to pull him out of the background for just a moment, so you can catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

“I grew up barefoot in the Amazon jungle, catching and eating piranhas before they could catch and eat me,” says Josh Barkey on his Facebook mini-bio.

Josh is an artist who consults for SIL LEAD. We consider ourselves privileged to have him on our team, not only as the communications professional who maintains our website and does our copywriting, but also as a friend.

Read More

Introducing SIL Africa Learning & Development’s New(ish) Website!

/
Introducing SIL Africa Learning & Development’s New(ish) Website!

If you’ve never visited the continent of Africa yourself, you may have some misconceptions about it. Perhaps you didn’t even know it was a continent (not a country)!

Africa is the second largest and second most populous continent on the planet. It’s a place of endless variety and well worth knowing about, filled with not just the pyramids and elephants you’ve seen on television, but also bustling urban centers where innovation and business continue to grow in leaps and bounds.

One great way to explore the many countries of Africa is through their beautiful and varied languages. And there’s no better organization for gaining insight into those languages than our friends over at SIL Africa Learning & Development…

Read More

Bloom: It’s Not Just for Books

/
Bloom: It’s Not Just for Books

Learning is such an involved and mysterious process that coming up with good, simple tools that work for beginners is far more complex than it might first seem. If you’re a parent contemplating helping your children learn at home for the first time because of the Coronavirus, you may find yourself facing a dizzying selection of worksheet options—each one of them the product of years of research.

But for the parents of children in some language communities, finding good learning tools is just as (or more) challenging than finding good childrens’ books.

This is why our Executive Director, Dr. Paul Frank, has created a suite of Bloom templates for various kinds of non-book educational materials and uploaded them to the Bloom library. These templates were originally created for the SIL LEAD’s Afghanistan project last fall, but like all Bloom templates they can be adapted and transformed to suit the needs of any language community…

Read More

Information That Saves Lives

/
Information That Saves Lives

Do you hate going to the doctor?

Imagine you went to the doctor’s office and she held up a strange-looking medical instrument and said, “Hello friends. I want to give this opportunity now. It can die like a mosquito, but it can also save your life.”* You would probably be more than just confused—you’d be scared. And the next time you felt sick, you might avoid the doctor altogether (and tell others in your community to do the same).

This is a problem that millions of people all over the world experience every time they go to the doctor, or some well-meaning healthcare provider attempts to give them vital, life-giving information…

Read More

Ten Essential Elements of an Effective Orthography Workshop

/
Ten Essential Elements of an Effective Orthography Workshop

Guest Post by Dr. Mary Morgan

An orthography is defined by Google as “the conventional spelling system of a language.”

But what do you do if you want materials in a language that does not yet have a conventional spelling system? Well, you have to create one. Although I’ve had several decades of language experience in Mexico and Niger, a few years ago I found myself in just this situation when I was asked to facilitate an orthography workshop in a small Asian country.

Due to cultural sensitivities about my work in this region and the fact that the exact location is not germane to the story, I have chosen to maintain geographical anonymity. But I will use this workshop to highlight ten essential elements in a workshop dedicated to developing an effective and acceptable way to write a language that has not been used in writing for very long…

Read More

For Children Like Himself

/
For Children Like Himself

Half a century ago, Robert Waliaula was born into a family that would grow to include eight children, in a small village in rural Western Kenya. Robert’s father was a small-scale farmer and his mother was an elementary school teacher. But even though their family farm was very small, all the children had to help keep it running. They planted and tended vegetables and drove their handful of livestock to water and grazing grounds.

Resources were limited.

Nonetheless…

Read More