Endangered Languages and Cultures

Language Documentation and Description Volume 7 is a special issue containing lectures on topics in language documentation and description from the 3L Summer School held at SOAS in June-July 2009. The lectures have been revised and expanded for publication, with added examples, diagrams, tutorial questions and exercises, and suggestions for further reading. Additional papers, by Peter Austin (practical advice on applying for a research grant) and David Nathan (on the role of audio, based on a paper published in the International Association of Sound Archives journal), will make the volume particularly useful to aspiring language documenters.
The lectures and papers represent state-of-the-art discussions of the theory and practice of language documentation and description by leading exponents, and the volume will be of interest to anyone teaching or learning about documenting and describing languages. The volume will be published in early 2010.
The price for LDD 7 is normally GBP 10 however until 31 January 2010 only, we are offering a special pre-order price of GBP 7.50 (plus P & P), a 25% discount. To order use the discount order form [.doc], or visit our website.
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In a few weeks’ time reports and powerpoints on the ELIIP workshop will be up on the ELIIP website for discussion.
I took away memories of the beauty of the mountains and saltlakes, the strange comfortableness of bison, and a slight increase in knowledge about the Latter Day Saints – how can one not feel sympathetic to the nineteenth century Welsh Mormon who set sail for Zion equipped with an English and Welsh dictionary.
There’s a lively group of people at the University of Utah working on native American languages (from Brazil north to Ojibway). One project that especially struck me was a Shoshone outreach program. Several Shoshone were at the ELIIP workshop. Last year 10 Shoshone high school students came to the Center for a six week summer camp funded by a donation from a local mining company. In the program they learned some Shoshone language, as well as crafts from Shoshone elders. The students worked as paid interns to do some work on language documentation and prepare language learning material in Shoshone. It was a great introduction, not only to language documentation but to university life generally. What a good idea!]
Back to the workshop. Yes we need something like ELIIP – a list of endangered languages with information about them and pointers to other sources about them. But it won’t work unless it is aimed at more than just linguists. And it must point to rich information. And it must be inclusive. And it must be simple to use. And, since there is very little money around, it must be designed to have as low maintenance costs as possible.
Summing up, I’d say the workshop allowed various ideas to gel about what the one-stop shop for languages would look like. I thought the most important were:

• Avoid duplication. A lot of work has already gone into collecting material. Don’t waste it.
• Data-freshness. People will be drawn to the site if they believe that the data is fresh, rich and reliable.
• …comes at a cost Whatever’s built has to be updatable and maintainable at minimal cost. So maintaining links – even with a web crawler – is beyond many sites
• Buy-in If it’s to work, lots of communities, archives and linguists need to be able to add in material easily and to feel that it belongs to all of us
• Simple interface for searching AND for uploading. This means paying for good design and testing with a range of users. Maybe there’ll be several interfaces for different types of user.
• Wish-things
  • There was a strong swell of opinion in favour of digital archives where people could deposit digital data files and update information easily
  • Snapshots in time People will want to know what a language was like 10 years ago, 20 years ago – how many speakers, did children speak it and so on.
  • Localisation How to translate the material into other languages for countries where outreach on the importance of helping speakers keep their languages is really needed? Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Pidgins and French may be the main lingua francas for some of these areas.

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A divide was proposed by Gary Simons between curated web services (where people create data and people manage that data) – like Wikipedia – and aggregating web services (where automatic harvesters harvest data from archives, libraries etc) – like Google. I think the consensus was that we needed both – linking to information that is out there, and filling in the gaps.http://www.language-archives.org/OLAC/metadata.html

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[from Margaret Florey]

We are pleased to announce the formation of the Consortium on Training in Language Documentation and Conservation(CTLDC). The CTLDC has been established as an international response to the crisis confronting the world’s languages by co-Directors Carol Genetti (University of California at Santa Barbara and InField founder) and Margaret Florey (co-founder and co-Director of the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity).

The central aim of the CTLDC is to build a global resource for all those who are actively working to maintain linguistic diversity through fostering collaboration among people who are engaged in training in language documentation and conservation. The CTLDC will provide a critical network to foster communication and collaboration, and enhance the sharing of skills and resources.
An international Planning Group has been established to guide the development of the Consortium. The Planning Group (listed below) comprises representatives of organizations which are at the forefront of supporting linguistic diversity through planning and administering training programs, creating funding strategies to support linguistic diversity, designing tools to provide more accurate data on trends in linguistic diversity, establishing resource networks, and developing and influencing language policy. UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Section has agreed to host the first meeting of the Planning Group in Paris in late 2010. That meeting will allow us to prioritize activities and establish the structure and goals of the Consortium.

Following the 2010 meeting, the CTLDC will open for international membership and will begin to work towards its longer-term goals, to

• construct a clearinghouse of materials accessible to LDC trainers and community members from across the globe,
• provide a forum for the sharing of curricula, teaching and assessment strategies, and methods,
• facilitate the explicit discussion of the goals and models currently being developed and implemented for training in language documentation and conservation (LDC),
• encourage partnerships between trainers of varied backgrounds and experiences,
• take into account a wide variety of perspectives and approaches by bringing together instructors from universities, communities, intensive institutes, school-based programs, language centers, and other initiatives,
• promote new collaborations, exchange ideas, and support training efforts worldwide,
• identify successful practices for LDC education,
• establish ethical and other principles to guide practitioners in documentation, conservation, and capacity-building activities,
• develop strategies to increase the range of funding opportunities to support LDC training at all levels,
• publicize LDC activities and events to raise greater awareness about the importance of linguistic diversity.

We will continue to provide updated information as the Consortium develops, and we look forward to many of you joining us as members and sharing your expertise to further support linguistic diversity.

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This blogpost comes to you from Salt Lake City at the University of Utah, thanks to the Center for American Indian Languages which is co-hosting a Workshop on Endangered Languages Information and Infrastructure (ELIIP) project with Linguist List(organised by Lyle Campbell, Helen Aristar Dry, Anthony Aristar). It’s intended mostly for the specialist, but there’s an interesting push to reach out to the general public- if they don’t understand what we do, they won’t support it. Cute and less cute facts help in conveying this – more on this later.
A thousand flowers on endangered languages are blooming on the web, from Wikipedia to blogs on particular languages to the language resources catalogued by libraries. Helen Aristar Dry suggested that users want to view the whole flowerbed from a convenient vantage point. That’s the II of ELIIP: do we need a comprehensive catalogue/database/website/portal of endangered languages?
So suppose Jane LUser does a google search on the web for ‘Ossetian language’.

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