Save Dying Languages and Folksongs
Of the world's 6,000 natural languages, half will probably not survive for another generation - 2009
The World Oral Literature Project
The World Oral Literature Project: A Cambridge University
project, led by Cambridge University's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to safeguard the
world's
6,000 spoken languages aims to help cultures under threat from globalisation create lasting records of their
native languages. Grants have been given to tribes from Mongolia to Nigeria - and the researchers admitted
traditional British languages such as Cornish and Gaelic are also at risk.
Experts are encouraging native people and anthropologists to capture myths, folk songs chants and poems in their dying languages through multi-media tools.
The collected oral literature is being compiled into a digital archive that can be accessed on demand and
will
make the "nuts and bolts" of lost cultures readily available.
For many communities the transmission of oral literature, through
ritual texts, songs, word games and historical narrative, lies at the heart of cultural
practice.
But drastic socio-economic change and the rise of more dominant global cultures are disrupting the transfer
of
native languages and risk annihilating them completely.
Project leader Dr Mark Turin, a research associate in social anthropology, said the issue of protecting
endangered languages was beginning to resonate with the public.
Dr Turin, of Cambridge University's Department of Social Anthropology, said: "When a
language
becomes endangered so too does a cultural world view.
"We want to engage with indigenous people trying to document their myths and folklore, which can be
harder to find funding for if you are based outside Western universities.
"If you are a Himalayan tribesman you are might not have access to a video camera to record your shaman
and elders.
"It's often the vernacular traditions of communities living on the margins of nation states that
are
most at risk.
"By supporting communities to document their own cultures for the future, and through working with
engaged and committed scholars, our project is responding to this urgent challenge."
Dr Turin said the project was concentrating on non-Western cultures where natural disasters, famine
and unstable government put indigenous languages at greater risk.
But he admitted traditional British languages such as Cornish and Gaelic were also under threat. He said:
"People often think it's often only tribal cultures that are under threat. "But all over
Europe
there are pockets of traditional communities and speech forms that have become extinct. "It is the
domain
of stronger nation states with better resources to look after their own indigenous tongues, through Welsh
language TV and Breton literature. "Given our small team we are focusing on the indigenous people who
do
not have the funding to help themselves."
The first batch of archives material includes a recording of folk music of the Lo Monthang region,
Nepal, and ceremonial chanting in the Vaups Region of Colombia.
While funding is already secure for next year, the 100,000 pilot project is currently seeking sustainable
long-term grants to make it a permanent fixture in the University's research agenda.
Linguist List Endangered Languages
The Endangered Languages Project
The Endangered Languages Project
is an online resource to record, access, and share samples of and research on endangered languages, as well
as
to share advice and best practices for those working to document or strengthen languages under threat.
Experts estimate that only 50% of the languages that are alive today will be spoken by the year 2100. The
disappearance of a language means the loss of valuable scientific and cultural information, comparable to
the
loss of a species. Tools for collaboration between the world communities, scholars, organizations and
concerned individuals can make a difference.
The languages included in this project and the information displayed about them are provided by the
Catalogue
of Endangered Languages (ELCat), produced by the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and The Institute for
Language Information and Technology (The Linguist List) at Eastern Michigan University.
Google Begins Effort to Help Preserve Languages Nearing Extinction
Endangered
Languages Project. Google says the new site can be used by people to find and share the most
up-to-date
and comprehensive information about endangered languages so that they don't disappear because they
haven't
been passed down to younger generations." Documenting the 3,000-plus languages that are on the verge of
extinction (about half of all languages in the world) is an important step in preserving cultural diversity,
honoring the knowledge of our elders and empowering our youth," the blog post stated. "Technology
can strengthen these efforts by helping people create high-quality recordings of their elders (often the
last
speakers of a language), connecting diaspora communities through social media and facilitating language
learning."One example of an endangered language, according to the post, is the Miami-Illinois language, which was once used
heavily
by Native American communities in what is now the U.S. Midwest. The language is considered today to be
extinct
by some people, with its latest fluent speakers dying in the 1960s, the post reported. It is being revived
slowly, though, through the efforts of one man."Decades later, Daryl Baldwin, a citizen of the Miami
Tribe of Oklahoma, began teaching himself the language from historical manuscripts and now works with the
Miami University in Ohio to continue the work of revitalizing the
language, publishing stories, audio files and other educational materials," the post stated.
"Miami children are once again learning the language and—even more inspiring—teaching it to each other.
Daryl's work is just one example of the efforts being made to preserve and strengthen languages that are on
the brink of disappearing. "In an interview, Rissman said Google unveiled the project as part of its
philanthropic efforts to help organize the world's information and to make it more accessible to people
everywhere.
"This is more than information-this is language" with roots in cultural history and customs, he
said. "We realize this is an urgent and global problem. We realize that some of our tools might make a
difference," including storage space, collaboration, connectivity and YouTube video capabilities.
"YouTube is built into the site as a way to preserve content and as a teaching tool."
The effort was ripe for organizing because thousands of people around the world are already preserving and
working on endangered languages but often are not collaborating to the fullest because they are doing their
work on their own, Rissman said. "This can be a tool to help bring those people together. We feel that
our contribution of technology is really just the start, but this is being driven forward by a coalition of
endangered language experts and dedicated communities around the world. That's what is needed."
The languages project is being supported by a new coalition, the Alliance for Linguistic
Diversity, which will provide storage, research, advice and collaborations to assist in the efforts.
The
Alliance includes a diverse membership of groups, including the Alaska Native Language Archive, Association
for Cultural Equity, CBC Radio, Center for American Indian Languages, Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, First
Peoples' Cultural Council, Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia, Indigenous Language Institute, Laboratorio de
Linguas Indigenas, Universidade de Brasilia and The Endangered Languages Catalogue team at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa.
Google will eventually turn the project over to others who are "true experts in the field of language preservation," the blog post stated. When that happens, the project will be led by the First Peoples' Cultural Council and The Institute for Language Information and Technology (The LINGUIST List) at Eastern Michigan University.
The issue of disappearing languages has been a global concern for years. In 2007, University of Alaska
Fairbanks professor emeritus Michael Krauss spoke about the issue at the annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, according to a story by ScienceDaily.com.
Over the years, humans
lose sections of their languages as the populations of groups of people dwindle, Krauss said in his
presentation. He compared it to losing sections of the Earth's biosphere due to pollution and other
factors. "I claim that it is catastrophic for the future of mankind," Krauss said at that meeting.
"It should be as scary as losing 90 percent of the biological species."
Preventing the loss of languages should be important to us all, he said. "Every time we lose (a
language), we lose that much also of our adaptability and our diversity that gives us our strength and our
ability to survive."
Fabula
Is an easy-to-use program which allows children and teachers to create their own bilingual, multimedia storybooks complete with digital photos. Bilingual stories help children learn other languages by using words, sounds and pictures to explore the similarities and differences. Fabula can be used to create stories in any pair of languages, but the five nation team which worked to develop this package - teachers, children, software engineers, translators and researchers - is particularly interested in the lesser used languages of Europe, such as Welsh, Irish, Catalan, Basque and Frisian.
3/9/00 Fabula authoring tool, which can be used to create own stories with text and sound in the two languages of the bilingual pair. by David Sutcliffe
Good to see that once again we have a question that can really gather momentum.
Regarding the question of education in the local vernacular being isolating. There are so many examples that
give the lie to that idea: what about Welsh medium schools in Wales where English is a subject on
the
timetable like French is in schools in England. How far can you go with Welsh alone? But that is
irrelevant since there are now virtually no Welsh monolinguals, just as there are few Dutch monolinguals. Or
what about Catalonia where I live, where more than 95% of state schools and most private
schools have Catalan as the medium of instruction - even though Catalan is a language without a
state (without an army or navy as John Holm once put it)
spoken by some 6 million with first-language fluency. People also speak Spanish and a growing number speak
English.The local language is thriving, and isolation is not an issue.
But this brings me to a connected issue. The Ebonics in school furore showed that few schools in the USA will be left in peace to use AAVE as the point of departure from which to learn to read and go on to develop standard English. I'd really like to be proven wrong on that point.
Not least because at the present time I am working as a member of a European Union project on the development of multi-media bilingual materials. This is the Fabula project, organized from the University of Reading, UK. Under the auspices of Viv Edwards and Frank Monaghan.
The software developed for this project consists of a CD ROM reader with a very entertaining story ("I've got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts") in full colour with bilingual text - the same text presented in two languages, one of the two languages being a "stateless language". So for example, in one version there is Welsh at the top of the page and English at the bottom, another version intended for Spain has Catalan at the top of the page and Spanish at the bottom , and so on. There is sound also so the text can be heard, bubbles with the words actually spoken can be activated to appear, plus other interactive features.
Then there is the authoring tool, which can be used to create own stories with text and sound in the two languages of the bilingual pair. Illustrations - drawings, magazine pictures, etc. - are then imported into the page format. This software will be available free, and /or installed in the CD ROM (again an extra given free of charge).
So this kind of approach can be very usefully applied to any language (variety) pair that coexist in a
given
society. I would be very, very interested in seeing this applied
a) to AAVE and standard English
and
b) to Jamaican Creole (or some other Caribbean Creole) and standard English.
Just imagine that, and how effective it would be. It uses the two ways of saying things as a teaching stimulus, secondly, as interactive multimedia it is attractive; thirdly, the vernacular is given "standing". Not only that, but in the US context, such bilingual and electronic-based materials will probably beless "threatening" to parents and authorities than monolingual vernacular materials on paper (conventional readers, etc).
I hope this creates interest, and / or can be passed on to teachers who would be interested.
David Sutcliffe david sutcliffe@trad.upf.es
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Rambla 30-32
08002 Barcelona