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
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
On the ELAR blog this week, ELDP grantees and ELAR depositors Andrew Harvey and Richard Griscom give an introduction to the Rift Valley Research Network, a group of researchers interested in the linguistic and cultural diversity of the Rift Valley. The Research Network was established to make it easier to share research, to help form new collaborations, and to provide a space to learn from each other. Please could you give
Two Ghanaian scholars have been supported by American Friends of SOAS (AFSOAS) to attend ELDP language documentation training at SOAS later this year. Kenneth Bodua-Mango and Ida Sodoke Assem are graduate students who intend to pursue PhDs focusing on the documentation of Animere, a highly endangered Ghana-Togo Mountain language (Kwa; Niger-Congo). It is spoken in the towns of Kecheibi and Kunda in the Nkwanta South district of Ghana’s Oti region.
On 16-17 July 2018, representatives from four different central Tanzanian ethnic groups met in Babati to discuss the changes currently experienced by their communities and the effects on their languages and cultures, as well as potential ways to combat any negative changes. These groups included the Gorwaa and Ihanzu, who had been invited by ELDP grantee Andrew Harvey, a linguist and ELDP grantee who is documenting these languages and R. Lindfield,
We’re pleased to announce that “Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages” will be published in hardback and e-book on 5 September 2019. The anthology of 50 poems will be published by John Murray Press and has been edited by Chris McCabe, national poetry librarian at Southbank Centre’s National Poetry Library. Chris also launched the Endangered Poetry Project in 2017 to collect poetry written
ELAR is collaborating with the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA) at Mahidol University, Thailand to set up a digital archive for the long-term preservation and dissemination of indigenous linguistic materials and cultural heritage in Thailand. The small-scale digital archive will focus on developing measures to preserve cultural heritage and linguistic diversity by local scholars and community themselves, building capacity at a local level. The project will
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2019, we asked our depositors to share stories of amazing women they have worked with in communities around the world. Many of these contributions are collected here – scroll through and learn more about women around the world who are supporting and leading language documentation and revitalisation projects. Anu Jebisow (contributed by Vijay D’Souza, Documentation and Description of Hrusso Aka Language of Arunachal Pradesh) Anu
Today on the ELAR Blog, Swintha Danielsen shares on a community event she hosted at a local school during her fieldwork in Bolivia. To learn more about Swintha’s work, visit her deposit on the ELAR catalogue. In Urubichá, Guarayos, Bolivia, Swintha Danielsen hosted a contest at the local school for the best story writers in the Guarayu language. On July 16th the stories were handed in, and on July 21st,
Last month, ELDP held a one-week long fall school on theory and methods in modern language documentation focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region from October 10th-17th. The school was held in collaboration with and hosted by the Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (ZAS) in Berlin, Germany. Today on the ELAR blog, we are sharing some of the participants’ feedback on the training: The Fall School of Documentary Linguistics equipped