Take a few minutes to look at the video and take in the sights and sounds of a way of life threatened by extinction. This is the Juma culture in Brazil’s Amazon region. The language, also known as Juma, is a dialect of Kagwahiva, a branch of the Tupii Guaraani family of Amazonian languages. Juma and its phonetics were studied by American missionaries Arne and Joyce Abrahamson, from the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the 1970s.
Once again, begin by closing your eyes and listening to the haunting tones of this song.
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In future, our Thursday morning posts, as mentioned last week, will be dedicated to minority and endangered languages throughout the world, helping raise awareness of this vital area of the work of Translation Commons, and simply enhancing our knowledge of a linguistic diversity that’s often hidden from view.
ProZ.com is in a partnership with Translation Commons to promote and support their important campaigns.
One of the most impressive of those campaigns is the LDI, or Language Digitisation Initiative, which works towards making indigenous languages readable and writeable in onscreen format.
