Thursday, November 17, 2005
On Language 11/16: Verbatim magazine celebrates 30th volume
Delectable journal Verbatim is thriving in `no-man’s land’
‘On Language‘
Chicago Tribune
November 16, 2005
By Nathan Bierma
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Verbatim has nearly 1,500 subscribers in the U.S. and about 300 overseas, McKean says. A U.S. subscription for four 30-plus-page issues per year costs $25. The magazine is printed on light beige paper with handsome brown type.
McKean says the magazine has succeeded by targeting a general audience but not watering down its subject matter.
“It’s geared toward laypeople, but I belong to the Council of Editors of Learned Journals,” McKean says. “It’s not literary, not scholarly—it’s kind of a no-man’s-land.”
And yet, the magazine has found its niche as a serious general interest magazine on language, McKean says: “It’s a good place to be. Once people find us, they hold on with both hands.” ...
McKean muses about what [a] centennial issue might contain.
“Robot slang. Martian English. How will skull-phone texting change lunar English? Idioms of the methane beings of Titan. I can see us doing that.”
ELL students with disabilities
From the ColorinColorado newsletter:
English language learning students with disabilities
With the number of ELL students in U.S. schools continuing to rise, what are the educational implications for these students who also have disabilities that affect their educational achievement?
The U.S. Department of Education commissioned a report - A Descriptive Study of Services to LEP [Limited English Proficient] Students and LEP Students with Disabilities - that surveyed schools and districts nationally to identify characteristics of and services provided to ELLs. One portion of the study focused on the services offered to the subpopulation of ELLs who are also students with disabilities, the instructional services received by these students, and on these students’ participation in standards and assessment systems.
Select findings of this study include:
* From 1987 to 2001, there was an increase from 3.3 percent to 14.2 percent in the proportion of students with disabilities who do not primarily use English at home (U.S. Department of Education, 2002).
Bible Translated into Gullah
GOD SPEAKS IN GULLAH: GULLAH LANGUAGE TRANSLATION OF AMERICAN BIBLE SOCIETY CELEBRATED
November 17, 2005—The American Bible Society is celebrating the conclusion of a 26-year project to translate the New Testament in Gullah, a creole language created by slaves from West Africa who devised it from indigenous African languages and English. The announcement of the translation, De Nyew Testament, was made at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in South Carolina, a key center of Gullah culture. The new translation went on sale to an excited crowd during the Heritage Days festival, following a special presentation to leaders of the Penn Center, a partner in the process, and to those who had contributed to the final product.
More than a quarter of a century ago the Sea Islands Translation Team was assembled under the auspices of two Wycliffe Bible Translators consultants. The team’s first effort, Luke’s Gospel, was published by the American Bible Society in 1994 to great appreciation among Gullah speakers. The team consisted of Gullah speakers who painstakingly worked their way through the New Testament, with assistance from translation experts, finding appropriate wording to express the message of the Bible in easily understandable ways. This was a joint effort of the American Bible Society, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), Wycliffe, the United Bible Societies and the Penn Center
Here is a sample from John’s Gospel 1.1 from De Nyew Testament, compared with the King James Version: