Endangered Languages and Cultures

Workshop on non-linguistic aspects of fieldwork – Sheena Van Der Mark

5 February 20112 April 2009 by Jane Simpson

[from Sheena Van Der Mark, La Trobe University] A workshop about bringing non-linguistic aspects of fieldwork out of lunchtime conversations and into a more public domain is being proposed for the upcoming Australian Linguistics Society Conference at La Trobe University. This is the abstract for the workshop as it currently stands: The experiences we have … Read more

ELAP students fieldtrip

5 February 20111 April 2009 by admin

The Endangered Languages Academic Programme at SOAS is experimenting this year with including hands-on in situ fieldwork as part of our MA in Language Documentation and Description.

A group of MA students is currently carrying out two weeks of fieldwork in Guernsey with Dr Julia Sallabank, Research Fellow in Language Support and Revitalisation, who has been doing research on Dgèrnésiais (the locally preferred spelling, more commonly spelled Guernésiais) for many years. The students are documenting contemporary language use and making digital audio and video recordings of narrative and conversations, putting into practice the knowledge and skills they have been acquiring in their MA coursework, especially the half-units Field Methods and Technology and Language Documentation. Dgèrnésiais is the nearest autochthonous endangered language to SOAS and is estimated by Jan Marquis, the Guernsey Language Support Officer, to have around 1,000 speakers (just 2% of the population), with the bulk of them aged over 60. The trip is timed to coincide with the annual Guernsey Eisteddfod which includes poetry and speaking competitions.

Three recent events

5 February 201129 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

The first few weeks of semester have been a game of snakes and ladders, and I’ve tumbled down some very long snakes. So it’s good to report on a few ladders.
First was the Kioloa Australian Languages Workshop, of which more below.
Then there was the launch of Gayarragi Winangali, an electronic version of the Gamilaraay Yuwaalaraay Yuwaalayaay Dictionary at the Koori Centre, University of Sydney. It’s a wonderful resource which features a lot of data, a lot of sound, and a lot of ways of accessing the data. (Not to be compared with the expensively produced Multilocus Indigenous language CDs, most of which are depressingly data-light…).
And finally, ANU ePress have republished The Land is a map, a collection of papers on place-names in Australian Indigenous speech communities. (Bizarrely and sadly, they had to scan the book because their predecessor, Pandanus Press, wasn’t into digital archiving).

The language of instruction – an ESL expert’s opinion

5 February 201113 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

[From an ESL expert working in the public service outside the NT]
I have heard a great deal about how bilingual programs in the NT have once again been targeted for demolition- personally, I think this is completely and utterly wrong. I would hasten to add, however, that I think that the language situation for Indigenous students in classrooms throughout much of Australia is also generally totally undesirable – ie, not just because bilingual school programs are being stopped/limited…
In my opinion, the best-case scenario for any children who are learning new information/concepts/knowledges is that they understand the language in which this new material is being presented to them. Students’ “strongest language” – the language variety in which they are understanding the world, thinking deeply, communicating fluently etc – is what I would recommend as the most effective language of instruction… I support the NT bilingual school programs because they have been utilising students’ “strongest language” for teaching junior school information/concepts/knowledges including literacy. Students have been gradually introduced to English literacy in a structured way, bridging from pre-existing first language literacy skills into second language (English) literacy.

Djiniyini Gondarra

5 February 201110 March 2009 by Jane Simpson

In the chaos of starting first semester, three excellent events have passed unnoticed in this blog (but not in my thoughts): Tony Woodbury’s Master class and workshop on speech play and verbal art T (February 13 2009) at ANU, National symposium on assessing English as a second/other language in the Australian context (20-21 February 2009) at UNSW, and the State Round of OzCLO, the High School Computational and Linguistic Olympiads at the University of Sydney (starring Wemba-Wemba, Pitjantjatjara and a brilliant problem on Japanese braille).
What must be passed on, however, is this message from the Reverend Dr Djiniyini Gondarra. Longterm readers of the blog will remember his appalled and very moving reaction to the heavyhandedness of the Intervention in the Northern Territory in 2007. Things have not improved.

Report on EL Week 2009

5 February 20112 March 2009 by admin

Endangered Languages Week 2009 has come and (just) gone, ending on Saturday with the second day of the workshop on Ideology and Beliefs on endangered languages. It was a fun, if exhausting week (made even more exhausting by having to teach our regular classes this year as it took place during term time), marked by having lots of visitors from as far away as New Zealand, Australia, the USA and Canada, as well as more local visitors from throughout Europe and the UK. The nice thing was that quite a number of people came to London for the whole week to participate in the various events.

Unesco’s “Atlas of The World’s Languages in Danger”

5 February 201121 February 2009 by admin

Unesco has just published the latest version on its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger edited by Christopher Moseley (the original 1996 and 2001 editions were edited by the late Stephen A. Wurm). The on-line interactive version of the Atlas is now available and the book version is due out soon. There is also a downloadable map in .pdf format (warning, it’s 20 Mbytes in size and unless you have access to a very large monitor or printer it is not terribly usable).
The editorial group who assisted Moseley is a veritable who’s who of specialists in endangered languages, including 27 experts from 13 named regions, supplemented by 6 specialists who provided “complementary information on specific areas”. Having spoken to several of the contributors personally (including one colleague I met in Tokyo last week), it appears that preparation of the database underlying the Atlas was not all harmony and light and resulted in some disagreements among contributors. Not so unusual in endangered languages research, I guess.
I had a little cruise around the interactive presentation, which uses a Google Maps interface and noticed quite a few oddities in regions where I have a little knowledge. Perhaps readers of this blog will notice more. There is a “Contribute your comments” link to the website but it appears to be broken because all it does is display the same page. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere one could point out apparent errors to Unesco and the editor, however it is possible to comment on individual listed languages by clicking on their “pin” on the Google Map and going to the “Comments” tab in the information that pops up. The comment then disappears and where it goes is not at all clear.
Here are a few other things I noticed:

Back in Tokyo

5 February 20119 February 2009 by admin

9 February 2009
David Nathan, Director of the Endangered Languages Archive, at SOAS, and I are back in Tokyo at the invitation of Toshihide Nakayama of ILCAA, the Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies for 10 days to run a workshop on language documentation that follows up our 2008 workshop. This year we are taking a different tack and focusing the week of seminars and practical sessions on the principles and practices of archiving endangered languages materials. The week begins on Monday (today) with preparations in the morning and David’s public lecture on “Archiving endangered language materials” in the afternoon. Classes begin in earnest on Tuesday and run until Friday, with sessions from 10am to 5pm each day. There will be 15 attendees, mostly students who are doing fieldwork in various locations around the world. Details of the workshop can be found here.
The topics we plan to cover include:

Language documentation and language archiving – major issues
Audio – good practices refresher
Audio recording – how to make great audio
Data and metadata – good practices refresher
Data management practical
Workflow for archiving
Mobilisation and delivery of language materials
Transcription, annotation, translation – good practices refresher
IP and ethical issues in the delivery, usage, and archiving of materials

There will be group work in the practical sessions and a final discussion with presentations by the attendees on the last day. If time and energy permit I will blog about how the workshop goes and report on some of the outcomes.

Announcement: 3L Summer School

5 February 20117 February 2009 by admin

The Department of Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies is proud to announce the second 3L International Summer School on Language Documentation and Description to be held in London 22nd June to 3rd July 2009 (information about the summer school is also available en français). Courses will be in English, with tutorial and practical sessions in French and English. There will be two conferences associated with the summer school (see below).

This two week summer school aims at introducing the concepts and practices of language documentation and its links to language description for future and novice field linguists. It will draw upon the extensive expertise of the three organising universities in the 3L Consortium: University of Lyon, Leiden University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. It follows on from the success of the first 3L Summer School held in Lyon in 2008.

Announcement: Puliima 2009: “Modern Ways for Ancient Words”

5 February 20116 February 2009 by Jane Simpson

Puliima 2009 National Indigenous Language and Information Communication Technology Forum Koori Heritage Trust and William Angliss Institute Conference Centre, Melbourne, Australia 1st and 2nd April 2009 [UPDATE 11/2/2009 Puliima have announced that they have limited travel funds to be able to assist people, especially Indigenous people from North Queensland and Victoria, to attend. E-mail puliima2009@acra.org.au … Read more