Today is World Digital Preservation Day (#WDPD2019), and here at the Endangered Languages Archive we are celebrating by showcasing our deposits that were funded by the Legacy Material Grant from ELDP. It is estimated that there are 6,500 languages spoken in the world today, and that 50% of them will be gone by the end of the century. Due to globalization, the speed in which languages are shifting and disappearing
The Day of the Dead is one of Mexico’s most iconic festivities. It is celebrated every year from the 31st of October to the 2nd of November, corresponding to the catholic holidays of All Saints (Todos Santos) and All Souls (Fieles Difuntos). The Day of the Dead celebrations as practiced by the indigenous communities of Mexico were inscribed by UNESCO on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of
Today on the ELAR blog, we are featuring ELDP grantee Jean Rohleder’s project ‘Documentation and description of Vamale, an endangered language of New Caledonia‘. Jean’s collection with ELAR focuses on the Vamale language, an almost undescribed language of New Caledonia with around 100 speakers. Jean Rohleder, from the University of Bern, gives us his community and scientific highlights from his research from 2017, 2018 and 2019. Community Highlight: ‘These pictures are from late
Today on the ELAR blog, we are featuring ELDP grantee Joseph Brooks’ project ‘Expanding the documentation of Chini language and culture’. Joseph’s collection with ELAR focuses on the Chini language, spoken by 60 people in inland Madang Province, Papua New Guinea. Joseph Brooks, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, gives us his community and scientific highlights from his research from 2016. Impact on the community and speakers: ‘At this point in time, I
ELDP Archive Support and Development Officer Vera Ferreira joined with ELDP Grantee Alex Garcia and Chouette Films team Anna & Remi Sowa to train participants on language documentation as part of the Vlach Training, that took place in Vienna on the 30th September until the 5th October 2019. On the ELAR blog this week, we give an overview of all the talks and activities that were given throughout the week-long intensive training! On
As a part of the International Week of the Deaf, 23rd September is celebrated worldwide as the International Day of Sign Languages. For this special day, we look at four of our collections from the ELAR archive about signed languages of the world! Kata Kolok Kata Kolok is a sign language used by about 1200 signers in rural Indonesia. It has been in use for over 5 generations of signers and
Earlier this month, ELDP brought participants from 19 countries, working on over 25 languages, to SOAS University of London for the annual week-long intensive training! The first day was kicked off with seminars on Language Documentation and Audio Recording by Mandana Seyfeddinipur and Gema Zamora. We were very pleased to have former ELDP grantee Eric Campbell from UCSB joining us as a trainer. On Day 2, he gave a seminar
On May 27, 2019 a Symposium on Indigenous Languages was organized at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, the oldest and largest university in Bulgaria. The event was part of the calendar of 2019 – the International Year of Indigenous Languages, declared by UNESCO. The symposium was also part of a series of events dedicated to May 24 – the Day of the Cyrillic Script and Bulgarian Language, which is a public
On the ELAR blog this week, we are introducing the DoReCo project (Language Documentation Reference Corpus). DoReCo started in March 2019 and is a French-German collaborative project that brings together spoken language corpora from about 50 languages, extracted from documentations of small and often endangered languages. Matt Stave, postdoctoral researcher at Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage in Lyon, tells us more about the project and its aims. Please can you tell us a
On the ELAR blog this week, we’re featuring videos from Eli Timan’s deposit “Jewish Iraqi spoken language documentation” [0026] [0102]. Eli’s collection contains personal stories, songs and descriptions of life in Iraq in the first half of the 20th century as told by Jewish Iraqi speakers in London, Canada and Israel. A wide variety of topics are covered, including life in Baghdad, schools, marriage, and historical events affecting the life