General News

ELAR update update

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In the past month (since my previous update post) the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS has been moving ahead with leaps and bounds. We now have 66 deposits available on our website, with six more having been added on Monday this week. There are now 41,690 files available online, amounting to 2 terabytes (2,000 … Read more

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Is Toolbox the linguistic equivalent of Nietzsche’s typewriter?

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There is an aphorism (apparently derived from Maslow 1966) that goes “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. For some documentary linguists reliance on the Toolbox software program means that everything linguistic looks like an interlinear gloss. Toolbox (developed originally in 1987 as Shoebox by the Summer Institute of Linguistics) … Read more

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Another one bites the dust (with apologies to Queen)

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The situation with projects focussed on the documentation and support of endangered and minority languages is starting to look, well, endangered, if not downright moribund. Apparently, Unesco shut down its project on endangered languages within the intangible cultural heritage area towards the end of last year. Volkswagen Foundation held its last DoBeS grants committee meeting … Read more

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New Guinea Between the Wars

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Michael Waterhouse will be presenting a talk on New Guinea between the wars at the State Library of NSW on 21st March based on his recently published book “Not a Poor Man’s Field. The New Guinea Goldfields to 1942 – An Australian Colonial History”. It will be accompanied by a film taken by his grandfather … Read more

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APLL5 conference registration open

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Registration is now open for the 5th Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics conference (APLL5), to be held 4-5 May 2012 and sponsored by SOAS, Oxford University Linguistics and Surrey Morphology Group. The full programme will be available on the conference website later this week. Preregistration for the conference and (optional) conference dinner can be … Read more

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7th European Australianist workshop

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Candide Simard (ELAP) is organising the 7th European Australianists workshop 2012 which will be held at SOAS on 3-4 April. The purpose of the workshop is to provide a venue for the presentation and discussion on current research on Australian languages. As in previous workshops a theme is suggested: ‘Contact phenomena in Australian languages’. However, … Read more

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3L Summer School in Lyon, France, July 2012

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The fourth International Summer School of the 3L Consortium (Lyon, London, Leiden) will be hosted by the LED-TDR team (Langues En Danger-Terrain, Documentation, Revitalisation), members of the DDL and ICAR laboratories (University Lumière-Lyon 2 and ENS Lyon, France), from 1st to 13 July 2012. It follows on from the highly successful 3L Summer Schools in … Read more

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International Mother Language Day 21 February 2012

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Large or small, Indo-European or Inuit, endangered or killer, let’s celebrate our mother tongues on UNESCO‘s International Mother Language Day! We don’t all die for language rights, like the Bangla-speaking students of the University of Dhaka who were killed on 21 February 1952, protesting the then Government of Pakistan’s decision to promote Urdu as the … Read more

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Hopes and dreams

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On Thursday I had an interesting time in a sleek-looking conference room at Parliament House with the House of Representatives Inquiry into language learning in Indigenous communities. The terms of inquiry cover learning English and learning Indigenous languages. Lots of people have put lots of time and thought into their submissions and appearances (available online). They are a fascinating snapshot of current concerns, hopes and dreams. (A couple contain not-so-subtle touting – gimme a gazillion and I’ll solve literacy/attendance/savethelanguage, but they’re the exception).

So I was answering questions about my submission [.pdf] on language learning in Indigenous communities. Here goes with points that I wanted to make, and then what I remember of questions asked by the Committee:

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Scam alert or how to make a lot of money really quickly

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Felicity Meakins writes… Just recently I was on Amazon, when I came across two potentially interesting books: Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster (eds) (2009), Mixed Language, Alphascript Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome and John McBrewster (eds) (2010), Michif Language: Language, Métis people (Canada), First Nations, Fur trade, French Canadian, Mixed language, … Read more

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