In the 2000s, she spent two years working on a Rosetta Stone software program in the North Slope dialect of Iñupiaq.
(meta data) TITLE: Business & Technology | Alaska natives team with Rosetta Stone | Seattle Times Newspaper (meta data) AUTHOR: Kyle Hopkins 2 captures 18 Jan 2017 - 04 Feb 2019 About this capture COLLECTED BY Organization: Internet Archive These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved. Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors. The goal is to fix all broken links on the web. Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. Collection: Wikipedia Near Real Time (from IRC) This is a collection of web page captures from links added to, or changed on, Wikipedia pages. 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The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20170118135847/http://old.seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2014023901_rosetta25.html Low-graphic or text Today's news index The Seattle Times Company NWjobs | NWautos | NWhomes | NWsource | Free Classifieds | seattletimes.com Winner of Eight Pulitzer Prizes Business / Technology Our network sites seattletimes.com | Advanced Special reports Nicole Brodeur Jerry Large Danny Westneat The Wrap Restless Native Nation/World Business/Tech Boeing/Aerospace NW companies Personal technology Real estate Stock market Brier Dudley Jon Talton Sunday Buzz Plugging In: Tech Forum High School Sounders FC UW Huskies WSU Cougars SU Redhawks Snow sports Other sports Steve Kelley Jerry Brewer Sideline Chatter Music/Nightlife The Arts TV listings Find events & venues Today's events Submit listings Comics/Games Food & Wine Home & Garden Pacific NW Magazine Wine Adviser: Paul Gregutt Seattle guide Washington guide Oregon guide British Columbia guide Travel tools Destinations: Kristin Jackson Travel Wise: Carol Pucci Rick Steves' Europe Letters to the Editor The Democracy Papers Ed Cetera Blog Search job listings Post a resume Career Center Post a job Search auto listings Research Center Sell a vehicle Search for new homes Search all properties Open houses Sell a property Search all rentals Post a rental listing Post a listing Buy ads Online ads Newspaper ads Classified ads Quick links: Traffic | Movies | Restaurants | Today's events | Video | Photos | Interactives | Blogs | Forums | Subscriber Services Contact us Originally published Monday, January 24, 2011 at 7:29 PM Comments (0) E-mail article # Alaska natives team with Rosetta Stone Software company plans program designed to teach North Slope Inupiaq dialect. By Kyle Hopkins Akron Beacon Journal ANCHORAGE, Alaska — And now an Inupiaq language lesson. Qaqasauraq. Noun. The modern Inupiaq term for a computer. Loosely translated, it means "little brain." Ready to learn more? Fire up the qaqasauraq for the latest of three new computer programs designed to teach variations of the fading Alaska Native language. The North Slope Borough and Rosetta Stone software company plan to unveil a program this spring specially designed to teach the North Slope Inupiaq dialect, using the photos and voices of Inupiaq people recorded in Barrow. There are as few as 1,500 fluent speakers of Inupiaq in Alaska, estimates Fairbanks linguist Michael Krauss. Once, it was the primary language of the northern and northwest regions of the state. Barrow-born Edna MacLean, a former Inupiaq professor for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, spent two years working on the Inupiaq program. She translated thousands of words and phrases from English to the North Slope Inupiaq dialect of the Inuit language. The job is nearly done. Soon the program will be available to schools and households. Just in time for Inupiaq language experts like MacLean, 66. "A lot of us speakers are getting older but we sure would like our children and grandchildren to have access to something like this," she said. Like many Alaska Natives who came of age in earlier generations, MacLean was punished in school for speaking her language, she said. "I yelled something in Inupiaq at the girl in front of me and (my third-grade teacher) came over and pulled my ear." Today the ability to speak indigenous languages is a prized skill. MacLean's son, Andrew, wrote and directed an Inupiaq-language movie in Barrow that he later adapted into a feature film that is screening at the Sundance Film Festival. In Kotzebue, where the NANA Regional Corp. has completed two regional Inupiaq dialect teaching programs in partnership with Rosetta Stone, a private Inupiaq immersion school offers classes to students as young as 3 years old. Overall, Inupiaq is healthier than most traditional Alaska Native tongues. Of the 20 Alaska Native languages, one — Eyak — is extinct. Only Inupiaq and Central Yup'ik — the native language of much of southwestern Alaska — are still spoken fluently by more than 1,000 people, Krauss estimates. But the only way to keep languages alive is to teach them to children. And in many cases, Inupiaq is disappearing from homes as new parents raise kids in English-only households, MacLean said. "The language is in danger of becoming extinct after maybe one or two generations," she said. — — — Arlington, Va., based Rosetta Stone sells computer software that teaches more than 30 languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese, by showing people pictures, giving examples of proper speech and rating users on their pronunciation. Like an immersion school, you see and hear only the language you're learning. American Indian groups looking to revive their languages began approaching the company for help in 1999. By 2004, Rosetta Stone set up an endangered-language program to partner with Native groups around the world, said Marion Bittinger, manager of the program. There's now software for learning Navajo, Mohawk and Inuttitut, an Inuit tongue spoken in Canada. Among the two most recent are a pair of Alaska Inupiaq dialects: One for the coastal, Kotzebue region, completed in 2007, and another inland dialect spoken in villages such as Kobuk and Selawik that was finished in 2010. The company doesn't sell the endangered language programs itself. Typically, the software is instead distributed by its partners. In Alaska that means the Aqqaluk Trust, a non-profit foundation NANA created, and the North Slope Borough. "Most typically, the highest priority is to get the software into the schools for use by teachers," Bittinger said. Between the two northwest Alaska dialects, NANA has ordered thousands of copies of the Inupiaq Rosetta Stone programs and began sending free copies to the households of shareholders last year. The company has already shipped more than 800 free copies to shareholder families, some by mail, some simply flown as freight on Bush planes to Inupiaq villages, said Hans Schaeffer of the Aqqaluk Trust in Kotzebue. People and organizations bought more than 150 at $195 each, he said. A 30-year-old Inupiaq whose family is from Kobuk and Kotzebue, Schaeffer said he's tried the software himself. As with the software for the North Slope dialect, the northwest Alaska Inupiaq programs use photos of modern Inupiat and nearby places to teach the language. "There are a lot of faces that I did recognize," Schaeffer said. "So when they come out with a word for like 'daughter,' there's a picture of a gal that I went to high school with." NANA hopes the software raises Inupiaq comprehension rates in the region, where a 2005 survey found that only 14 percent of residents were fluent. According to the Aqqaluk Trust, the survey found that those who did speak the language were mostly 65 or older. E-mail article More Business & Technology UPDATE - 09:46 AMExxon Mobil wins ruling in Alaska oil spill case UPDATE - 09:32 AMBank stocks push indexes higher; oil prices dip UPDATE - 08:04 AMFord CEO Mulally gets $56.5M in stock award UPDATE - 07:54 AMUnderwater mortgages rise as home prices fall NEW - 09:43 AMWarner Bros. to offer movie rentals on Facebook More Business & Technology headlines... 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Edna Ahgeak MacLean
Career.
Beginning in 1963, MacLean worked for the University of Alaska Fairbanks, teaching Iñupiaq and developing their first degree programs in Eskimo languages. She became tenured and was an associate professor at UAF until 1987. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, she wrote, edited and published dozens of Iñupiaq language materials, including an abridged Iñupiaq dictionary in 1981 and an Iñupiaq grammar in 1986. She worked for the State of Alaska Department of Education as a Special Assistant for Rural and Alaska Native Education to the Commissioner of Education from 1987 to 1990. From 1995 to 2005, she was President of Iḷisaġvik College, leading Alaska's only nationally certified tribal college.