Thursday, March 29, 2007

Podcasting

Hey there. So, over the past couple of days, I've been looking at podcast language stuffs. Specifically chinesepod.com , japanese101pod.com
and a french and spanish podcast too. There's a lot of content in each site and the lesson plans are pretty well put together. So what I was thinking, is, why not do this for endangered languages or languages that might need a bit of help, especially with preserving cultural material like songs and stories? I did a brief look around for ojibwe, cree and inuktitut podcasts and, maybe not surprisingly, there aren't any. Maybe there are recordings out there somewhere, but why doesn't someone arrange to build a site like there are for these other major languages? I'm sure there'd be funding available from concerned governments. It sounds like just the sort of thing that would go over in Canada. Maybe with the CBC or Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs or whatever it's calling itself these days. Although, due to the size of the speaking populations, it's not likely that a podcast site could make a lot of money, but most people learning languages do it for fun if they don't have to. If they're doing it cause they have to, they don't need the podcast, but if it's extracurricular, podcasts are a great way to bring it to the peoples... Imagine learning Cree while listening to your ipod in Bali or something...

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