Editorial

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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Letters to the Editor

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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