At the Aboriginal Languages Workshop at North Stradbroke Island last month, as usual there were things to celebrate. I had the honour of helping launch the Kaytetye Dictionary*. Book launches are a lovely way of thinking about and celebrating people’s work and ideas. Here’s what I said, more or less. Things I love about this … Read more
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
Update on Laurie Baymarrwangga, Senior Australian of the Year, 2012 and patron of the Crocodile Islands Rangers. Her life story ‘Big Boss: Race against Time’ will screen on Sunday the 13th of May at 1.30pm on the ABC’s Message Stick Program. And here’s a bit about it from Bentley James, Crocodile Islands Rangers. 95 years … Read more
Back in the old days when some of us were younger and starting out on our language documentation and description careers (for me in 1972, as described in this blog post) the world was pretty much analogue and we didn’t have digital hardware or software to think about. Back then recordings were made with reel-to-reel … Read more
This month marks the 40th anniversary of my first venture into linguistic fieldwork and my first data collection on an Australian Aboriginal language. Looking back it was a kind of crazy way to start my career, but nonetheless one that got me set on a path that has given me the chance to work on … Read more
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
CALL FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST DEVELOP A USER-FRIENDLY SEARCH INTERFACE AND TOUCHPAD APP FOR A DIGITAL ARCHIVE OF LITERATURE IN ABORIGINAL LANGUAGES THE LIVING ARCHIVE PROJECT Submission date: 30 April 2012 During the era of bilingual education in the NT, books were produced in 25 Literature Production Centres in more than 16 languages. These materials … Read more
Back in January I wrote a post about stories we were publishing on the SOAS Endangered Languages Project website about some of our alumni and the interesting lives they are leading after having graduated from the University of London. There are now nine stories available, with several more in the pipeline. If you want some … Read more
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
As of this week the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS has 52 online deposits available comprising around 51,000 files. There are 12,700 data bundles in the online collection, of which 6,000 are available to any registered user and a further 5,000 require access approval from the depositors. The number of users is now 515 … Read more
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