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ELAR turns 36

2 March 2011 by admin

At the end of last month the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS made available its 36th collection of endangered languages materials. Deposits added in February include Bogong from Ghana, Pingjiang from China, Surel from Nepal and South Eastern Huastec from Mexico. The Pingjiang collection of 69 love songs is notable for having a description … Read more

LDLT3 conference

2 March 20111 March 2011 by admin

The third biennial Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory conference (LDLT3) aims to bring together researchers working on linguistic theory and language documentation and description, with a particular focus on innovative work on under-described or endangered languages. The conference will be held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London from 18-20 November 2011. In … Read more

Language Documentation Training

27 February 2011 by admin

The documentary linguistics training course DocLing 2011 wrapped up at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS) on Thursday last week. This was the fourth annual training course held in Tokyo through collaboration between the Linguistic Dynamics project of the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA) and the Hans Rausing Endangered … Read more

Open for business

19 February 2011 by admin

All volumes of our publication series Language Documentation and Description are now available for purchase through the new SOAS online store. Payment can be made by all major credit cards and the store uses the latest security technology, including Verified by Visa, so you can shop in complete safety. Simply register you name and address, … Read more

Another forty years on

11 February 2011 by admin

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the beginning of my professional involvement with Linguistics. And it all started out rather accidentally. In February 1971 I went from Nemingha, New South Wales, to Canberra to begin my Bachelor of Arts (Asian Studies) degree at the Australian National University (ANU). I had intended to study Japanese … Read more

ELDP grant application round open

11 February 2011 by admin

The 2011 grant application round for the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) at SOAS opened on 10th February. Applications close on 28th March 2011. Further information is available here. ELDP has made two changes to the application process this year: applications must be submitted through a new online application system (unless online access is difficult) … Read more

LSA 2011 Sessions on Metadata in Language Documentation and Description

10 February 201121 January 2011 by admin

At the recent annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Pittsburgh Jeff Good of University at Buffalo and I organised a tutorial session (Friday 7th January, 1.5 hours) and poster session (Sunday 9th January, 3 hours) on the topic of metadata in language documentation and description. The tutorial talks covered general topics such … Read more

Small and strong

18 February 20116 January 2011 by admin

Alongside all the talk about Last Speakers and loss of particular endangered languages, it is important to remember that not all the world’s minority languages are endangered. Languages can be small (having relatively few speakers) and yet be strong, in the sense that they are spoken by everyone in the community and show no signs of language shift or replacement by some other language.

A reminder of this came last month when Steven Bird sent a message to RNLD email discussion list asking:

Can anyone suggest the names of languages having small speaker populations that still have a good level of intergenerational transfer and good survival prospects?

This elicited a number of responses that identified small and strong languages in Africa, Brazil, and the Australia-Pacific region (probably reflecting more the readership of the RNLD list rather than anything particular about these regions). The full details are here (scroll down to topic 13), but I thought a short summary might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Happy Anniversary

5 February 20114 January 2011 by admin

Today marks the 20th anniversary of a symposium on “Endangered Languages and their Preservation” that was held on the 3rd January 1991 at the 65th annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in Chicago. The symposium was organised by the late Ken Hale and featured presentations by him, Michael Krauss, Lucille J. Watahomigie, Akira … Read more

Endangered genres

5 February 20116 December 2010 by admin

[ update 6/12/2010: some missing links now added ] It is by now well known that around half (or possibly more) of the world’s 7,000 languages are endangered and under threat of disappearance during the current century. Perhaps less well known is that many languages that are not (yet) endangered show certain genres, or ways … Read more