ktravula – a travelogue!

Why The Interest in the Mother Tongue?

I wrote a guest post for the We The Humanities blog, on February 21, 2016, to commemorate the UNESCO International Mother Tongue Day 2016. I had participated as a curator on the twitter handle for the same collective this time last year.

Here is an excerpt from the piece:

The responses (and criticisms) I’ve always got point to the universality and inevitability of English (and French, and Mandarin, and any other foreign language but a local one), and their success in the world as a cultural vehicle, as the reason why we shouldn’t bother with our own languages since that is merely a quixotic adventure with no economic and pragmatic importance. As I shared with the audience during my curation week at We The Humanities, my experience teaching Yorùbá to eager and willing students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, who paid good money to acquire a piece of knowledge that others in Nigeria take for granted, has convinced me otherwise – not just of the viability of the language and its cultural value but also of an otherwise sad reality that over many generations from now, Yorùbá students may have to travel to America to acquire the knowledge of the language.

Read the rest here on the We The Humanities blog.

Why The Interest in the Mother Tongue? was published on February 25th, 2016, with the tags , , under the Academic, Linguistics category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Kola Tubosun joins “WE THE HUMANITIES” Platform as Curator

PRESS RELEASE

25/02/2015, Lagos, Nigeria—Kola Tubosun: linguist, teacher and writer at Whitesands School, Lagos, Nigeria, will be joining the international humanities Twitter account, We the Humanities, as next week’s guest curator.

@wethehumanities is a rotation-curation account which offers a central platform for discussion and news of the humanities in all its forms. It is open to anyone working in or with the humanities in any form, and hopes to follow the success achieved by the science platform, @realscientists.

IMG_0395Kola is a linguist and aspiring lexicographer with years of work in language teaching and language documentation under his belt. He will be tweeting about mother tongue use, language endangerment, and particularly a subject that is dear to him: Yoruba language use in Nigeria. He is currently building a multimedia dictionary of Yoruba names at www.yorubaname.com . Kola can be found on twitter at @baroka, and on his blog at KTravula.com

Co-founder Jessica Sage (@academicjess) comments: “The We the Humanities project engages with people from around the world, exposing them to humanities research, experience and ideas they perhaps didn’t know existed.  Each week a new academic or practitioner takes over the account, tweeting about their work and provoking conversations about the diversity and importance of the humanities.  We really look forward to Kola Tubosun running the account this coming week, and in particular his take on linguistics, second language use, and Yoruba language.”

We the Humanities, which is now in its second year, has attracted tweeters from across six continents, ranging from professors to Masters students and from museum curators to musicians.  The discussions engage with more than 2400 followers from across the world, including everyone from lifetime specialists to the mildly curious. The account has developed to include a blog and events listings, housed at http://www.wethehumanities.org.

Kristina West (@krisreadsbooks), co-founder of WtH, adds: “We encourage anyone working within the humanities who might be interested in curating the account to get in touch through the website. We aim to create a vibrant, international community to raise awareness of the diversity, relevance and challenges that encompass what is called the humanities.”

~ends~

Contact details:

Jessica Sage, We the Humanities: tel: +44 (0)7731840380, e-mail: j.sage@reading.ac.uk

Kristina West, We the Humanities: tel: +44 (0) 7525 009744, email: k.j.west@pgr.reading.ac.uk

 

About We The Humanities:

 

A rotation-curation Twitter account showcasing the creativity and diversity of the humanities and reiterating the fact that the humanities are more widely important than current public funding suggests.

 

Like most things on Twitter, it began with a seemingly innocuous tweet.  On 5th January 2014 @academicjess asked a few people “Does anyone know of a humanities equivalent to @realscientists & if not would you be interested?” and it snowballed from there.

 

It is currently just being administrated by Jessica, Kristina and Emma Butcher (@EmmaButcher_).

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed at the @wethehumanities Twitter account are those of the weekly guest editor and not those of the administrator or previous/subsequent curators. The views expressed on the blog are the views of named posters and not those of the administrators.  

 

 

 

Kola Tubosun joins “WE THE HUMANITIES” Platform as Curator was published on February 27th, 2015, with the tags , , , , , under the Linguistics, Literature, News category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.