Editorial
Letters
to the Editor
Commentary
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The
time for giving to a nation in need.
The C-5 Galaxy, the largest airplane made in the United States, arrived
from Puerto Rico with two machines that can purify more than
3,100 gallons of water per hour, as well as sea water at a slower
rate.
“They are responding
to the No. 1 necessity of Venezuela during this crisis, which is potable
water,” said John Maisto, the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela. But it’s
more than water that Venezuela needs today.
The world may never
know the full magnitude of Venezuela’s worst natural disaster this
century; official estimates range from 25,000 to 30,000 dead.
In the hard-hit port
city of La Guaira on Venezuela’s northern coast, hundreds of people
roamed mud-covered streets in search of something to eat or drink. The
worst hit area was a 60 mile stretch along the coast of Vargas, which is
home to about 650,000 people.
Global relief efforts
began as Spain offered a $100 million zero-interest loan, the
Inter-American Development Bank granted a $200 million loan and France
said it was sending 30 tons of food, medicine and supplies along with
technicians who will construct five water purification stations. President
Hugo Chávez asked President Clinton for help to reconstruct bridges,
remove rubble and start on construction project for the tens of thousands
left homeless. It will cost about $10 billion to reconstruct the
infrastructure damaged by the flooding.
Those who wish to
donate money, clothing, canned food,
medicine, toys, etc., may refer to
pages A 5 and B 6-7 for information on the relief process.
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Suggests inclusion
of Hindi
I read with interest
your publication. I am most impressed with your multilingual section. I
noticed, however, that Hindi is missing from your pages. Given the fact
that there are many thousands who speak this language, it would be a good
idea if you could include it in The Bronx Journal.
Avadut Kakodkar
From Universidad
Fermín Toro in Venezuela
We learned about The
Bronx Journal, 168 HORAS and the Multilingual Journalism Program at Lehman
College through the Universidad Central de Venezuela, with which you have
an educational and cultural exchange, a program we understand you also
have with other universities throughout Latin America.
Our university has
about 10,000 students enrolled in three major areas: Communication,
Engineering, and Law. We also have a television station which will become
regional in the next few months. We are interested in being part of this
institutional exchange and would like to initiate proper procedures as
soon as possible.
Incidentally, we have
six videotapes of 168 HORAS which are being aired through our TV station.
Should you be interested in what we do in this area, we have a wide
collection of videos showing
our traditions, music and art.
Prof. Marisela
Gonzalo Febres,
UFTelevision
Universidad Fermín Toro, Barquisimeto, Venezuela
(Translated by The Bronx Journal staff)
Points out error
I noticed that in your
December issue you did not include your website on the front page. I
checked it out and the site is still there. Are you planning to
discontinue this service or was it just an error on your part?
Eugenia Lobo
Note from the
Editor:
It was an error on our
part. We plan to continue The Bronx Journal on the web. As you can see, we
hope, the information is back on the front page.
Covering the Summit
in Cuba
I have been following
with great interest the Summit of Hispanic Presidents in Cuba, and
wondered if The Bronx Journal had plans to participate in this event or
others of this nature, So far, I have seen nothing about this historic
meeting in your newspaper.
Pedro Nolasco,
Miami
Note from the
Editor:
In fact, The Bronx
Journal was invited to join a group of journalists attending the summit
you refer to. Unfortunately, we were unable to go. At the same time, the
journalists proposed the creation of an international group of Hispanic
media professionals, with bureaus throughout the world. The center of this
group, the Organización Hispanoamericana de Periodistas, will be in the
United States, with offices in Miami and New York. The Bronx Journal
will join this group; this will allow us greater presence in the
international arena.
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From the Fingers
of Children
Lynne Van
Voorhis
The Publisher of The Bronx Journal
Who
would have thought that two groups of deaf school children in Managua,
Nicaragua would wind up shedding light on the mysterious process involved
in the creation and development of language?
Certainly not the
Sandinista government, which, when newly-installed some twenty years ago
began a project to educate deaf children by putting them into special
residential schools where the teachers attempted to
impose a “finger spelling” formula on them. When they arrived
at school, the children were able to use only mímicas,
or basic signs of communication developed in their
homes. Because the “finger-spelling” system was based on the
structure of spoken languages and the children had no concept of grammar
or syntax-- or even words--the attempt failed. The teachers were
frustrated because they realized they were unable to communicate with
their pupils, but then they began to notice that the children were not
having any difficulty communicating among themselves.
In fact, once the
children were together, they began to build upon each other’s basic
signs, which, after a while, were no longer just a given child’s
individual manner of expression, but grew into signs understood and used
by the group, and a language was born.
Somehow or other, these
basically uneducated children had managed to create a language, known
today as I.S.N., or Idioma de Signos Nicaragüense, which, when decoded by world-famous
linguists, turned out to be governed by the same universal grammar which
the linguist Noam Chomsky claims structures all languages.
Experts such as Steven
Pinker, author of “The Language Instinct” firmly believes that this
silent language system is proof that “language acquisition is hard-wired
inside the human brain... This is the first and only time that we’ve
actually seen a language being created out of thin air.”
The ability to enrich
the language is seemingly stimulated by interaction among these children.
What we have here is not an improvised way of communicating, but a
linguistic structure. Researcher Lila Gleitman found that these deaf
children developed signs in a consistent manner. “The children formed a
continuing community that allowed their nascent language to grow in
grammatical and semantic structure,” she said.
And while scholars are
witnessing the birth of language and debating just what this all means for
the field of linguistics, the children seem unimpressed by all this
scholarly curiosity. “I can’t imagine why you came all this way to
hear us talk”, said one of them “It’s just our language. What’s
the big deal?”
In fact, it is a big
deal, certainly for the world’s linguists. For the last ten years, they
have had the opportunity to work with a most amazing autonomous laboratory
where the “experts” observe, analyze and learn, but do not control.
But the lessons the children have taught the world extend far
beyond that lab: they have demonstrated that success in education relies,
at least in part, on establishing the right “connections,” and also
that at least as children, we humans need to communicate and are eager to
learn. When learning doesn’t take place, it’s most likely due to
external factors.
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