Category: Documentation Software & Tools
Introducing DoReCo: Language Documentation Reference Corpora
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, […]
Extracting .wav from .mp4 with ffmpeg
Today on the ELAR blog, we are sharing another post from ELDP grantee, Nick Williams on extracting .wav from .mp4 with ffmpeg. Nick works in Indonesia researching Kula, an endangered non-Austronesian language spoken in the eastern highlands of Alor. In addition to concatenating and converting our original video files, we also need to extract the audio files. […]
Combining .mov files with FFmpeg (on a Mac)
Today on the ELAR blog, we are sharing a post from ELDP grantee, Nick Williams on combining .mov files with FFmpeg (for Mac users). Nick works in Indonesia researching Kula, an endangered non-Austronesian language spoken in the eastern highlands of Alor. Video version: https://youtu.be/c1YWg-5LCYw I am currently working as a postdoc on a project focused on video documentation […]
Linguistic map making: Drawing polygons
Hedvig has written on how Ethnologue has become even more restricted than it already was, and what resources are out there that could be used instead. One of the things I miss from Ethnologue are its maps – although at least recently it was still possible to access most of these, by downloading them instead […]
ELAN: making tier(s) out of search results
Here is another guide for how to do something practical in ELAN. Previously, we relayed Eri Kashima’s guide for sensible auto-segmentation with PRAAT and ELAN (time saver!). (For all posts about fieldwork on this blog, see this tag.) This time: how to take your search results and make the matching annotations into new separate tier(s). […]
Video Documentation of the Barayin language
Today on the ELAR blog, Joey Lovestrand discusses his use of video in his language documentation work on the Barayin language in Chad. When I first went to Chad in 2010 and began working with speakers of the Barayin language, the idea of video documentation seemed unreasonable. I didn’t have the funds for the equipment […]
Elan/Praat Machine Segmenting
Today on the ELAR blog, Eri Kashima shares her tried and true segmenting shortcuts for depositors working with ELAN and Praat. Read on for a step-by-step walkthrough of her process: My number one hated stage in transcription work is segmenting. I would sit there fuming while manually segmenting the recordings I made before I could even […]
FLEx Tips for New Language Documenters
FieldWorks Language Explorer (FLEx) is a program that has built upon previous software designed for documentary linguists (perhaps some of you remember ToolBox)? As a result, FLEx is a very useful and powerful lexicon building tool. For those of you who have found our beloved FLEx but need a few hints to get you started, […]
Reasons you should use video in language documentation
At CoLang this year I was invited to come and talk with the group in the Recording and using video in language documentation class. I shared some of my favourite reasons why I always try to use video in a language documentation project, which gave me a chance to mention some of my favourite research on gesture, and talk […]
Helpful Tips for New ELAN Users
This week on the ELAR blog, Sarah Dopierala (MA Language Documentation and Description, SOAS) gives linguists who are new to ELAN five quick tips for using the software. It is a fact well-observed that some of us are more tech savvy and some of us – not so much. For a documentary linguist trying to make […]