Language Revitalization Platform

Project Lead:

Andrew Gorvetzian, Department of Anthropology, UNM, PhD candidate

Affiliations:

Names and affiliations of collaborating partners: Vernan Ramos, Executive Secretary, Asociación Afro-Garifuna en Nicaragua (AAGANIC)

Project Description:

In 2023, the Alfonso Ortiz Center provided a small grant to support a collaboration between Vernan Ramos, a Garifuna language teacher, community member in Bluefields, Nicaragua, and executive secretary of the Afro-Garifuna Asociación en Nicaragua (AAGANIC) and I (Andrew Gorvetzian, a PhD candidate in sociocultural and linguistic Anthropology at UNM). The grant provided crucial support for Vernan’s efforts to continue teaching the Garifuna language in the region by allowing him to purchase a computer, headphones, and other gear to deliver his online classes, support for administrative costs, and a stipend to compensate for his time and effort he put into developing and delivering the classes. Stemming from my participation in Vernan’s language course, my prior work within Garifuna communities, and my own practice as a Spanish instructor, I have designed my dissertation project that proposes the co-creation of a digital language revitalization platform created with, owned by, and open to all Garifuna language teachers that centralizes Garifuna language materials, including YouTube videos, PDFs of Garifuna grammar and dictionaries, and other materials to assist differentiated Garifuna language revitalization projects. This grant would support the development of this digital language revitalization platform, which we seek to co-create alongside partners engaging in Garifuna language revitalization projects in New York City, Los Angeles, Nicaragua, and Honduras. Whereas the earlier version of this project focused on Garifuna language revitalization in Nicaragua, this project seeks to expand in scale and scope by connecting with and contributing to transnational Garifuna language revitalization processes throughout the “Garifuna Nation.”