Today’s post is something of a recipe for making old dictionaries new again. I’ll explain how a 35 year old old, single-copy typewritten dictionary is living a new life as a digital database. The language of this dictionary is Kagate – A Tibeto-Burman language of the Central Bodic branch, spoken in Nepal. I met some … Read more
Three things to think about/do.. 1. Creeping towards constitutional recognition Section 127A Recognition of languages The national language of the Commonwealth of Australia is English. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages are the original Australian languages, a part of our national heritage This is what was proposed in a report on recognising Aboriginal and … Read more
Over at the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project we have started a new series of web posts called ELAP in Focus where we present stories about our former MA and PhD students, and the interesting lives they are leading since studying at SOAS. The first story about a former MA student is by Takashi Nakagawa … Read more
In time for the holiday season and the approaching New Year the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) has reorganised its online store to make it easier for customers to find what we have available, as well as allowing us to expand our range of publication offerings. Our publications are now categorised into “Special Offers”, … Read more
Tuesday 13th December saw the launch at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS of the archival deposit of Great Andamanese language materials submitted by Anvita Abbi, who is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor in the Endangered Languages Academic Programme. This deposit is a unique record of this highly endangered language which has just 5 remaining … Read more
Canberra is breath-taking at the moment, and I am just catching breath between marking and Langfest … it starts today with the French Studies conference. Tomorrow=Monday, dictionary-making, with AUSTRALEX, and a keynote by Sarah Ogilvie, the soon-to-be-director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre. Wednesday brings New Zealand and Australia together with the combined mega-conference of … Read more
The 2012 grant application round for the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages project opens on 17th October 2011. The closing date for receipt of applications is 16th January 2012. ELDP provides grants for: PhD Scholarships (3 years, but no fees are covered), Postdoctoral Fellowships (2 years), Major documentation projects … Read more
Back in March I wrote about Kevin Scannell’s website called Indigenous Tweets that tracks use of minority and indigenous languages on Twitter. Scannell has now extended his coverage to blogs that post in what he calls “indigenous and minority languages”, that is, what some people might consider “small” languages. His site tracks blogs hosted at … Read more
(with corrections from Ed Garrett, 2011-09-22) In April this year I wrote a post called “Who uses digital language archives?”. This post is a short update on the current situation for the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at the School of Oriental and African Studies. ELAR was established in 2005 as part of the Hans Rausing … Read more
The failure of language revivalists to get people to accept a standard language (here the Swiss language Romansh Grischun) is the topic of a sad little article by Deborah Ball in the Wall Street Journal. (Reprinted in The Australian 3/9/2011 but without the interesting graphics). Google led me to an earlier article on the same … Read more
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