The Lingit researcher Jeff Leer observed the gestures that elders would make while telling stories when he was a child.
” style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”When she was talking and talking about a sitting person on the floor, she would say, “You know — you’d grab your index finger on the right and hold it up straight and then bend it around half way,” Leer said. “So it appears to be bent at around 90-degree angle. .”
Making use of old recordings Lingit experts in the field such as Leer are compiling and documenting hand gestures that are used by the birth speakers, which have significance in relation to the language.
Leer is the leader of the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Tlingit Gesture System program. He has engaged in research on Lingit for over 60 years.
He attended American Sign Language classes in Chicago and, when he returned to write stories with his fellow older people, such as Elizabeth Nyman, in the 1990s and 1980s, he began to consider it an integral component in the Lingit language.
It’s a span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”I began paying close at the gestures she was making, as well as taking notes and writing them down,” he said.
Roby Littlefield was recording the gestures, as well. A man who was an elder known as Franklin James told her these gestures were commonly used by hunters and didn’t wish to make any noise, or if they were in the bay from one another, close enough but not in shouting distance.
“He demonstrated to me how he lifted one arm in the air. On the other hand moved his hand towards the palm of the arm. This was a sign that the tide was increasing,” she said.
Littlefield has been a teacher in Juneau she teaches Lingit to students in middle school up to the college level. she believes that these gestures can help students to learn the language.
span style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”There’s numerous different learning styles that people are naturally comfortable with when learning a new language. One of them is physical movement that can help to embed the word in the brain of your” Littlefield said. “So when you are learning the word you want to learn or even a complete sentence then you make that physical movement or face expression which will lock the word into your memory for a long time .”
Leer told me that since he began recording gestures, he’s recorded around 100 gestures, but Leer isn’t sure if the number is finished.
It is possible to use the style=”font-weight 400 ;”>”I’m certain there are a lot of other gestures that exist,” he said. “And what we’d like to accomplish is to discover the people who are aware of and using these gestures and to add them to our collection of Lingit gesture system. .”
Leer explained that this system of gestures could let students make use of lesser English as a way of filling gaps in the classroom.
“The idea is to build this Lingit gesture system to become a sign language, so that it can be used in the classroom to teach Lingit in schools without resorting towards English,” he said.
Sealaska Heritage Institute is sponsoring the program using funds for reparations by the Presbyterian Church’s apology recently made for members of the Lingit community.
SHI announced in a press release they are planning to study whether they have similar gestures or associations within the Haida as well as the Tsimshian dialects, Xaat Kil and Sm’algyax.
