Training Language Activists to Support Endangered Languages

Abstract

Training speakers of Mayan languages to be linguists is described over a forty-year period. Most Mayas who have participated in such training have been language activists as well, thus combining activism with being or becoming linguists. Three different phases in training are described, starting with extra-scholastic training in Guatemala before the civil war, its evolution after the war, and the shift to university training, especially graduate training, in the last fifteen years. The different components of the training programs are discussed, in particular how collaborations between a non-speaker linguist and speaker linguists developed and expanded. Linguistics training adds the analytical and scholarly aspects of language study to language activism, which is itself community based.