Endangered Languages And The Use Of Sound Archives And Fieldwork Data For Their Documentation And Revitalisation: Voices From Tundra And Taiga

The research program Voices from Tundra and Taiga has been devoted to the study of endangered languages and cultures of the Russian Federation, which must be described rapidly before they become extinct. This research is in the fortunate position that earlier work on the reconstruction technology for old sound recordings found in archives in St. Petersburg has made it possible to compare languages still spoken in the proposed research area to the same languages as they were spoken more than half a century ago. We have prepared a catalogue of the existing recordings, and a phono and video library of recorded stories, and of the folklore, singing and oral traditions of some minority peoples in the Russian Federation and its bordering areas. For this purpose, the existing sound recordings in the archives have been used together with the results obtained from new fieldwork expeditions. At present, many old recordings still remain hidden in private archives and places where the quality of preservation is not guaranteed. In a research project on Endangered Archives, we make part of these recordings available and add them to the database developed in St. Petersburg

Charting Vanishing Voices: A Collaborative Workshop to Map Endangered Oral Cultures

Friday, 29 June 2012 to Saturday, 30 June 2012 Location: CRASSH, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DTA two-day collaborative workshop bringing together scholars, digital archivists and international organisations to share experiences of mapping ethno-linguistic diversity using interactive digital technologies.This event is supported by the World Oral Literature Project, the Vanishing Worlds Foundation and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH), University of Cambridge. In partnership with Anglia Ruskin University

Multiethnic Societies of Central Asia and Siberia Represented in Indigenous Oral and Written Literature

Central Asia and Siberia are characterized by multiethnic societies formed by a patchwork of often small ethnic groups. At the same time large parts of them have been dominated by state languages, especially Russian and Chinese. On a local level the languages of the autochthonous people often play a role parallel to the central national language. The contributions of this conference proceeding follow up on topics such as: What was or is collected and how can it be used under changed conditions in the research landscape, how does it help local ethnic communities to understand and preserve their own culture and language? Do the spatially dispersed but often networked collections support research on the ground? What contribution do these collections make to the local languages and cultures against the backdrop of dwindling attention to endangered groups? These and other questions are discussed against the background of the important role libraries and private collections play for multiethnic societies in often remote regions that are difficult to reach

Multiethnic Societies of Central Asia and Siberia Represented in Indigenous Oral and Written Literature

Central Asia and Siberia are characterized by multiethnic societies formed by a patchwork of often small ethnic groups. At the same time large parts of them have been dominated by state languages, especially Russian and Chinese. On a local level the languages of the autochthonous people often play a role parallel to the central national language. The contributions of this conference proceeding follow up on topics such as: What was or is collected and how can it be used under changed conditions in the research landscape, how does it help local ethnic communities to understand and preserve their own culture and language? Do the spatially dispersed but often networked collections support research on the ground? What contribution do these collections make to the local languages and cultures against the backdrop of dwindling attention to endangered groups? These and other questions are discussed against the background of the important role libraries and private collections play for multiethnic societies in often remote regions that are difficult to reach

Language and Museums: Supporting Alaska Native Languages Through Collaborative Networking

With the ever-increasing risk of language loss and possible extinction of the world\u27s Indigenous languages, museums are quickly becoming active supporters and valuable resources for communities engaged in revitalization initiatives. Although working with language material is inherently difficult for museums because of their traditionally object based nature, it is imperative for museums to focus on the documentation and preservation of language as intangible cultural heritage (ICH) because of the vital connection between language and culture. This thesis examines how museums in Alaska, particularly the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center, Alaska Office, are supporting Alaska Native language and cultural revitalization through collaborative networks and the adoption of methodologies to successfully develop and implement language-based programming

Nganasan language materials in space and time

The paper provides an overview of Nganasan fieldwork data and archive resources. This description focuses primarily on the textual and sound materials, but other aspects that contribute to the documentation of Nganasan are also touched on, whereas textbooks and dictionaries are not considered here. We give a detailed survey of the available published and unpublished material as well. We do not discuss in detail fieldwork materials only available in Russian, e.g. such as Dolgikh’s rich folklore collection. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives some information on Nganasan and related languages. Section 3 addresses the early field notes, i.e. the resources before Castrén’s trip and his materials. Section 4 exemplifies the fieldwork activities of the 20th century. After that, in Section 5 we turn to the digitally available materials. The description is then rounded off in Section 6 with the description of the planned Nganasan database. The basic idea of the database is to collect and archive material from fieldwork

Dictionary 4.0: Alternative Presentations for Indonesian Multilingual Dictionaries

Building a multilingual dictionary for 719 languages in Indonesia is a challenging task. We have developed application to create the Leipzig-Jakarta list database for all indigenous languages in Indonesia. The database can be used to generate lexical similarity or lexical distance matrix between languages by comparing the word list. For starter, we covered 11 languages: Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Bima, Ternate, Tidore, Palembang Malay, Mandailing Batak, Malay, and Minangkabau. The application has two main features: exploring the existing translations and adding translations to a new language or editing existing translations through crowdsourcing. User acceptance test showed 3.48/4 score

Dictionary 4.0: Alternative Presentations for Indonesian Multilingual Dictionaries

Building a multilingual dictionary for 719 languages in Indonesia is a challenging task. We have developed application to create the Leipzig-Jakarta list database for all indigenous languages in Indonesia. The database can be used to generate lexical similarity or lexical distance matrix between languages by comparing the word list. For starter, we covered 11 languages: Indonesian, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, Bima, Ternate, Tidore, Palembang Malay, Mandailing Batak, Malay, and Minangkabau. The application has two main features: exploring the existing translations and adding translations to a new language or editing existing translations through crowdsourcing. User acceptance test showed 3.48/4 score