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HOST:
Welcome to AMERICAN MOSAIC, in VOA Special English.
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This is Doug Johnson. On our show this week:
Music by the Fiery Furnaces.
A question from a listener who wants to know how many languagesare spoken in America.
And, a progress report on a huge memorial to Chief Crazy Horse.
Crazy Horse Memorial
HOST:
On September sixth, a celebration took place in the state ofSouth Dakota. September sixth is the anniversary of the death of theAmerican Indian chief Crazy Horse. It is also the birthday of theartist who started work on a huge memorial. Shep O’Neal has more.
ANNCR:
In nineteen forty-eight, Korczak Ziolkowski began to cut alikeness of Crazy Horse into a mountain. The Polish-American artistwas asked to carve the statue by Chief Henry Standing Bear of theLakota Indians.
Crazy Horse was a young leader ofthe Lakota. He was a hero to his people. He died in eighteenseventy-seven. Crazy Horse had gone to an Army commander to protesta broken promise by the government. The promise was to let hispeople choose where to live. Soldiers arrested Crazy Horse. Asoldier stabbed him when he tried to escape.
Korczak Ziolkowski died in nineteen eighty-two. His wife, Ruth,and seven of their ten children have continued his work. Visitorspay to see the monument even before it is finished.
The huge statue is at the top of Thunderhead Mountain in theBlack Hills of South Dakota. The head was completed in nineteenninety-eight.
The Ziolkowski family says more than eight million tons of rockhas been taken off the mountain. They are now working to carve thehead of a horse on which the chief will sit. The family expects thefinished statue to be more than one hundred seventy meters tall andone hundred ninety-five meters long. It is already considered thelargest mountain sculpture in the world.
The family has established the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation.This group is also working to improve the education of NativeAmericans. The foundation has completed a building to show Indianarts. Other plans include a university, medical center and historycenter to be built near the statue of Chief Crazy Horse.
HOST:
On Sunday at this time, learn about another Indian chief, Rain inthe Face, on PEOPLE IN AMERICA. And listen Monday to THIS ISAMERICA. We tell about the opening in Washington of the NationalMuseum of the American Indian.
Languages Spoken in the United States
HOST:
Our VOA listener question this week comes from Jijiga, Ethiopia.Abdikader Gahnug Muhumed asks about the number of languages spokenin the United States.
More than three hundred languages are spoken in this country. Themost recent report comes from the Census count of the population inthe year two thousand.
Of more than two hundred sixty million people over the age offive, eighty-two percent spoke only English at home.
Spanish is the most commonly spoken foreign language in theUnited States. The two thousand Census found that twenty-eightmillion people spoke Spanish or Spanish Creole at home. The secondmost commonly spoken foreign language is Chinese, with two millionspeakers.
More than one million six hundred thousand people said they spokeFrench at home. And more than one million three hundred thousandreported speaking German.
Italian, Tagalog and Vietnamese also have more than a millionspeakers each. More than half a million people reported speakingArabic, Korean, Polish, Portuguese or Russian. Nearly five hundredthousand spoke Japanese at home. And more than four hundred thousandspoke African languages.
Persian and Hindi each had more than three hundred thousandspeakers. There were two hundred sixty thousand speakers of Urdu.
Also in the last Census, close to four hundred thousand peoplereported speaking Native American languages at home. The largestnumber speak Navajo. Reports say more than one hundred fiftylanguages are still spoken by American Indians. Others includeOjibwa, Dakota, Choctaw, Apache, Cherokee and Yupik.
The Fiery Furnaces
HOST:
The Fiery Furnaces are out with their second album, to a lot ofpraise from music critics. Steve Ember has our report on thisbrother-and-sister group.
ANNCR:
Eleanor and Matt Friedberger grewup near Chicago, Illinois. Matt is older than his sister. Theirinterest in music led them to perform and record together when theyboth moved to New York City. They got the idea for the name of theirband from a Bible story and the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” Theletters F.F. also represent their names: Friedberger andFriedberger.
The Fiery Furnaces became well known in New York from performingin clubs. Then, last year, they recorded their first album,”Gallowsbird’s Bark.” Ten months later they released their secondone. “Blueberry Boat” opens with a ten-minute song called “QuayCur.”
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“Blueberry Boat” is currently the most popular record amongAmerican college students. Music critics say the Fiery Furnaces areunlike any other group performing today. Their songs are long andtell stories. Like this one, “My Dog Was Lost But Now It’s Found.”
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Eleanor and Matt Friedberger are already working on a thirdalbum. Eleanor will sing with their eighty-year-old grandmother. Fornow, the Fiery Furnaces will perform across the country. We leaveyou with the title song from “Blueberry Boat.”
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HOST:
This is Doug Johnson.
This program was written by Nancy Steinbach. Paul Thompson wasthe producer. And our engineer was Rob McLean.
I hope you enjoyed AMERICAN MOSAIC. Join us again next week forVOA’s radio magazine in Special English.