Community response
Education
The Yucuna language is like any other language and that transmittion is the main key to keeping the verbal language around. Just like if someone was learning Spanish,English or French adults speak to their kids in any social setting like their home and even in schools.
However being surrounded by more than language makes it more necesary for kids to learn the Offical language and indigenas languages.According to ONIC "For marriages in Yucuna communities kids are able to speak two different languages incase they marry between different indigenas people." For example two people could get married and one could speak Yucuna and the other could speak Spanish or another indigenas languge and these kids now can speak both languages to communicate
Like I said above any language is taught by school and the comunity. For example growing up in the United States from Kindergarden we start by learning basic grammer like colors, animals, and numbers. As well as the alphabet and pronouncing the letters. This is the same for many industrial countries around the world. Which in many cases helps the literacy in many places which keeps any language around longer.
Yucuna survival
Some teachers that have the ability to Speak Spanish and Yucuna known as ethno-linguistic education.Which is basically teaching young kids starting at age 5 Spanish and Yucuna. From how anyone learns from just reading books and speaking with other kids in class. As the children move up grades they learn more about the billingul diccionary( words and grammer) of both languages. For example there is a book called " if you can read Spanish, you can read Yucuna"(ONIC). Just like in the United States in elementary school, they learn the grammer,alphabet, and history of their country/region. When I read this I felt that this was one of the many ways the community was trying to keep the language alive. Since even in other parts of the world many schools are located near the boarder and like Yucuna many students learn not just the history of Colombia but the Yucuna grammer.
why should this language be saved?
For one our world is a metling pot and everytime we lose a language it does effect people all over the world. For example
- Since the Yucuna indians are apart of the Arawakan family, and as we know now the Arawakan tribes were the first people to meet Christopher Colombus
- Another reason is it shows us another way of life
To go long with lose of world culture, many of the worlds first languages have disappeared and we don't really think about it until it's too late. As well as many of these languages are actaully really similar to main cultures like Western and Modern societies. Since the geographic location like many endangered languages are near a dominate language, in all parts of the world they will eventually show a connection between them.
For example one could in a way play the dots between many similar languages. For example Family language trees share a single starting point and if one root of the tree dies away the tree is no longer complete and unless we restore every part, the language of any part of the world will vanish. Even if we try and relive a language like Yucuna unless, even though we do, we have recordings who knows if we are even saying the right sounds and pronounce the correct way to speak.
Yucuna to me personally being in South America and being near a language I love, and value, And learning more about Spanish culture in all parts of the world, I am still able to see similarities. Even people who are near Colombia, maybe be in fact part of the Arawakan or may even be Yucuna Native. For me personally Haven taken a DNA test It didn't show that I am guatamalen or Mexican, it showed Native American. So this leads me to belive that people in this area just don't have enough information, to say that the language is endangered.
So if schools in this area would teach about Natives, like we talk about in schools here in the United States, would this language be able to make a comeback? If Big countries and major languages would even recognize or celebrate, a Holiday, would this get the word out. If the Arawakan areas would celebrate Indigenous People's day all around the world not just in Western colonized parts of the world would every indigenous language gain a speaker?