admin The latest, and fiftieth, deposit to go online at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) is Trevor Johnson’s magnificent Auslan Corpus. Auslan is Australian Sign Language and the corpus consists of over 900 bundles (including over 850 video recordings) of one hundred native or near-native deaf signers filmed in pairs between mid-2004 and mid-2007 in five … Read more
I thought a low point of journalistic reporting about endangered languages was reached yesterday when the Australian press ran a story entitled “Cyber zoo to preserve endangered languages” that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald, the Brisbane Times (and apparently also the Brisbane Sunday Mail, hat tip Felicity Meakins), the Melbourne Age, the Canberra Times … Read more
There has been a little flurry of media stories about endangered languages in the last couple of days with titles like “Digital tools ‘to save languages’” on the BBC News website and “Cyber zoo to preserve endangered languages” in the Sydney Morning Herald (readers who are on Facebook can find a full listing on David … Read more
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
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
Volume 10 of Language Documentation and Description is now available for purchase from the SOAS online store. Until 31 January 2012 copies may be ordered for £10 (including postage and packaging), which is 25% off the regular retail price. Volume 10 is edited by Jan-Olof Svantesson, Niclas Burenhult, Arthur Holmer, Anastasia Karlsson and Håkan Lundström, … 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
The Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS is seeking to fill two vacancies: Digital Content Curator — to undertake a variety of tasks with language documentation collections, from working with current and potential depositors, to processing data, to crafting content for collection presentation pages Software Developer — to extend the existing archive system to expand … Read more
A new organisation, the Austronesian and Papuan Languages and Linguistics research group (
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