Estonian indigenous languages conference “Kohes mi lää?”

Estonian indigenous languages conference “Kohes mi lää?”

In addition to local speakers, foreign researchers will open the topic through the eyes of a bystander at the Estonian indigenous languages conference “Kohes mi lää?”, which will be held on October 7.

Speakers and enthusiasts of Estonian indigenous languages gather at Värska, Setomaa Cultural Center to discuss the current status and future of languages. Keynote speakers at the event will be North American Indian language researcher Indrek Park from Indiana University and educational anthropologist and researcher Kara Brown from the University of South Carolina. At the conference, experiences are exchanged, success and concern stories are told, and cooperation opportunities are discussed. In his lecture, Brown mentions, for example, the program of Võro language nests in the kindergartens of Old Võromaa, which he studied in 2013-1014 and 2018, and asks what affects the language choices of kindergarten teachers and parents.

Seto speaker Rein Järvelill, the representative of the indigenous peoples of the Eastern European region of the Decade of Indigenous Languages in the leadership group, says: “The speaker of the indigenous language got tired of keeping his language, so he switched to the national language, the indigenous language will gone, the culture remained poor and universal. ”

The conference is dedicated to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. It is a series of events announced at the UN General Assembly in New York in December 2019 and led by UNESCO in the years 2022-2032.

Speakers of Kihnu, Kuusalu Beach, Kodavere, Mulgi, Seto,  and Võro provide an overview of what is happening in the language communities. At the conference, indigenous Estonian languages will be spoken, and the English presentation will be translated into written Estonian.