We are pleased to announce that our Living Dictionaries online dictionary-builder now includes an Assamese interface. This will help people in Assam (India) use the website entirely in Assamese as well as browse dictionaries for local indigenous languages such as Sora (spoken in Assam and elsewhere).
We want to be sure that the platform’s functionality is not just English-centric but accessible to people coming from many different linguistic backgrounds. You can now navigate and build dictionaries directly the platform using interface languages such as Assamese, French, Spanish, Russian, KiSwahili, Bengali, Hebrew, Malay, Bahasa Indonesia and Portuguese. Several others are coming soon!
Below are some snapshots of the Sora Living Dictionary using the new Assamese interface.
Thank you to the many volunteer translators who contributed to the Assamese version of the platform: Palash Nath, Luke Horo, Kapil Medhi, Dr. Seuji Sharma, Dr. Gitanjali Bezbaruah, Biren Baruah, Khagendra Nath Medhi, Pranab Sharma, Dhanmani Baishya, Chan Mohammad Ali, and Rahul Choudhary.
Living Tongues team members Anna Luisa Daigneault and Luke Horo coordinated these translation efforts and Diego Córdova Nieto implemented the translations onto the website.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful, multilingual day.
In early 2019, we began a new project documenting Birhor language and culture. Our field team, comprised of trained tribal/indigenous Indian linguists, worked closely with Birhor indigenous experts to digitally document their fragile and now disappearing knowledge domains, such as local hunter-gatherer strategies, ethnobotany and rope-making techniques.
Much progress has been made on the project. Our Living Tongues research collaborators in India have undertaken many field trips to Birhor communities and accumulated a large quantity of linguistic and cultural data that have contributed to the various project goals outlined below.
Goal #1 – The Birhor Audiovisual Collection
We have undertaken the creation of an annotated/translated audio-video collection of interviews documenting traditional Birhor cultural practices and local ecological knowledge base. We have filmed a series of short narrated videos of several traditional activities of the Birhor. These are currently being transcribed and translated by Living Tongues project coordinator Dr. Bikram Jora, who is based in India, and local indigenous facilitator Anukaran Mardi. Both have developed a longstanding, trusting relationship with members of the Birhor communities.
Their regular collaboration ensures a high level of detail for the project, and the fact that Mardi is indigenous to the region also adds a high level of authenticity and accuracy to the collected data. Our aim is to professionally archive the grammatical annotations as well as the fully annotated set of narrated videos in the Birhor collection by the end of the project.
Anukaran Mardi (right) interviews Mr. Biswanath Birhor (left) about “isroll” – a climber plant whose root (“isjor”) cures snakebites and body aches. Footage by Dr. Bikram Jora. Mr. Biswanath Birhor observed, “The plant is a root known as isjor. For treating snake bites, about 4-5 inches of root is ground with water and drunk at regular intervals…. for a headache, a small amount of isjor paste is applied to your forehead.” A still from a video depicting Mr. Biswanath Birhor collecting and processing “jom bayer” [ʤom bajer] – a highly useful climbing plant that is used to make rope. Filmed by Dr. Bikram Jora.
The short films we have collected have covered many cultural and ethnobotanical topics (see list below). We also filmed a narrated nature walk with a local Birhor expert who detailed the many subsistence and rope-making uses of the local plant species we encountered on the way.
Birhor Short Films: Cultural Topics
Traditional utensils
Birth ceremony
Death ceremony
Daily life activities
Seasons
Marriage
Directions
Clan (types and names)
The Birhor origin story
Traditional forest dwelling
Leaf and twig hut-making
How to make traditional liquor
Birhor Short Films: Ethnobotanical Topics
Short films of people collecting raw materials and producing traditional rope with “jom bayer” [ʤom bajer], a local creeper vine
Home remedies used to cure ailments such as snakebites and body aches
The importance of three local tubers for food: Ukuc, Baula, and Kundri
Wild plants and roots with various uses: Kateja (which stops dysentery), Malec, and Alkusi (to stop itching)
Spontaneous dialogs on related plant topics
Furthermore, we have filmed a handful of examples of traditional oral culture and music. This includes a marriage song, a song about Soso village, as well as over a dozen other local cultural songs that we still need to analyze and transcribe. More video data continues to be collected as well.
A Birhor Family in Sadbhaiya village, India.
Goal #2 – The Birhor Talking Dictionary
The framework for a trilingual, online, mobile-friendly Birhor Talking Dictionary with images, recorded words and phrases has been established and it will be populated with thousands of words and phrases in 2020. These entries will also be used for a Birhor-Hindi-English print dictionary. Here is a sample of data from our spreadsheet of collected words. In the coming months, the Birhor Talking Dictionary will be easily accessible on any mobile device as well as on desktop, both online and offline in places where there is limited internet access.
Goal #3 – Bilingual Birhor-Hindi printed materials for primary schools, including a pocket dictionary for class use.
The raw materials for the print dictionary have largely been collected and are being transcribed and translated to produce the dictionary. This has covered a range of basic vocabulary domains like body parts, kinship terms, names of various members of society and other words relating to humans, animal terms, plant terms, including a range of plants that have significant nutritional, economic or ritual functions or purposes in Birhor culture, a number of cultural products and concepts relating to the material and spiritual worlds, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, color terms, abstract terms, verbs, an array of terms relating to the natural world of the Birhor, social events and festivals, and deities.
Photos of Birhor traditional rope-making activities in Sadbhaiya village (Mahudi block, Hazaribagh District, Jharkhand, India). Photos by Dr. Bikram Jora, 2019.
Ethnobotanical Photos We have taken over 450 photos that document plant knowledge and the material culture of the Birhor people. These beautiful images will populate the printed pocket dictionary, be available online in the Birhor Talking Dictionary and also in the pages of the primary school materials that will be used in Birhor communities. The latter will probably also be supplemented with hand-drawn sketches from Birhor community members, as some interest has been expressed in this. A very small sample is included below.
Who Are the Birhor People?
The Birhor are a Munda-speaking, forest-dependent semi-nomadic tribal community with fewer than 20,000 members concentrated in the eastern central Indian state of Jharkhand and adjacent northern parts of the state of Odisha. Only a few thousand fluent speakers of the Birhor language remain at present as their way of life and their language are both under threat.
Until recently, many Birhor subsisted as hunter-gatherers living in leaf-huts setting up camps at the edge of village market areas, selling rope and rope products in local village markets; many now have been forced to live in settled agricultural communities, as forest degradation and urban encroachment has made hunting and gathering no longer viable as a way of life. Officially a ‘primitive’ tribal group, the Birhor stand at the very bottom of the complex and multi-tiered ethno-religious and linguistic hierarchies that dominate Indian life. In northern Odisha, two different groups are officially known as ‘monkey-eaters’ and overtly despised.⠀
The cultural and environmental context that the Birhor people are living in is changing rapidly and their language and culture are both poorly documented. Both will likely soon disappear without immediate action. Their knowledge of medicinal and nutritional uses of forest products is vast and unrivaled in India.
The Living Tongues Team is coming to Seattle and we would love to meet you! Our “Speak Volumes” event series is all about raising awareness about endangered languages, and why it is important to document them before it’s too late. You are invited to join us for an evening of community-building and engaging discussion at the Wagner Education Center, located at the beautiful Center for Wooden Boats.
Living Tongues founder Dr. Gregory Anderson and Director of Research Dr. K. David Harrison will speak about their work as linguists who have traveled the globe to document dozens of languages on the verge of extinction.
Living Tongues team members will discuss innovative tech solutions such as our Talking Dictionaries mobile software that helps community members easily create tools that help languages live on for generations to come.
Video clips from recent fieldwork around the world will be shown.
We are excited to meet passionate individuals who want to get involved with language preservation efforts and support initiatives led by Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. You will also get the opportunity to meet other avid language enthusiasts and ask questions about our work!
Mark your calendars for Thursday, August 8th from 7:00-9:00PM.
We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a two-year grant by the Zegar Foundation to document the fragile knowledge domains of the Birhor tribal people.
The Birhor are a Munda-speaking, forest-dependent semi-nomadic tribal community with fewer than 20,000 members concentrated in the eastern central Indian state of Jharkhand and adjacent northern parts of the state of Odisha. Only a few thousand fluent speakers of the Birhor language remain at present as their way of life and their language are both under threat.
Until recently, many Birhor subsisted as hunter-gatherers living in leaf-huts setting up camps at the edge of village market areas, selling rope and rope products in local village markets; many now have been forced to live in settled agricultural communities, as forest degradation and urban encroachment has made hunting and gathering no longer viable as a way of life.
Officially a ‘primitive’ tribal group, the Birhor stand at the very bottom of the complex and multi-tiered ethno-religious and linguistic hierarchies that dominate Indian life. In northern Odisha, two different groups are officially known as ‘monkey-eaters’ and overtly despised. The cultural and environmental context that the Birhor people are living in is changing rapidly and their language and culture are both poorly documented. Both will likely soon disappear without immediate action. Their knowledge of medicinal and nutritional uses of forest products is vast and unrivaled in India.
Our field team, comprised of trained tribal/indigenous Indian linguists, will work closely with Birhor indigenous experts to digitally document their fragile and now disappearing knowledge domains, such as local hunter-gatherer strategies, ethnobotany and rope-making techniques. We will also make strides documenting their rich oral literature, which forms an intimate connection with their traditional subsistence activities and helps shape the social cohesion of the community.
Community empowerment may lead to further development projects and the Birhor people may be able to slowly change their socio-economic context over time, finding new ways to retain their identity. The process of recruiting local Birhor consultants, training them in digital documentation techniques, and collaborating with them in a cultural empowerment project will result in first-time recordings of endangered cultural and linguistic knowledge and first-ever educational materials in the languages, and lead to valuable digital literacy for participating community members assisting them in future socio-economic mobility.
The specific outcomes for this project are:
Annotated/translated audio-video collection of traditional Birhor cultural practices;
An online, mobile-friendly Birhor Talking Dictionary with images and sounds;
Printed primary school bilingual materials & a basic pocket dictionary for Birhor class use.
The annotated, trilingual audiovisual archive of Birhor daily life will be freely available online on Youtube and through the Living Tongues website (of course protected according to the community’s desire). Documentation efforts can continue in the future without the help of outsiders, as can the preservation and celebration of Birhor knowledge and culture in local educational settings. These records would also serve to create positive media visibility for the Birhor and other marginalized tribal peoples in India.
Questions about this project? Write to annaluisa@livingtongues.org
We are a non-profit research institute dedicated to documenting endangered languages around the world.
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