African Languages and Societies Commons^™

Songs From Imerina: A Creative Study Of The Evolving Craft Of Merina Hainteny In Madagascar, Elly Bookman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

I don’t know much about hainteny. It’s an elusive form to me still, for by nature it’s only a foggy representation of a culture that I can never truly be a part of. And anyway, even many members of the Malagasy population are uncertain of the plethora of possible meanings behind this literature, as I was told on more than one occasion when I discussed my plans to study these mysterious verses.

Luckily, though, I do know poetry, and while hainteny may fall outside any Western parameters set up to define this medium, it nonetheless exists in the same way: …

Endangered ? Yambetta In Its Speech Community, Carolyn Benbow

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project is a study on the village of Yambetta and its efforts to keep its local language of Yambette. It looks into the organisation YALICO and the role of the local language within Yambetta’s speech community. Through observation and interviews, this study found that Yambetta is a living language not in immediate danger of dying out, and that the efforts of the Summer Institute of Linguistics through the local linguistic committee in Yambetta village is improving the chances that Yambetta will continue to be a living language. This was important because around half of the world’s languages are estimated …