Workshop in Guwahati, India

2015 was a busy year for us! Our year began with teaching a digital skills workshop in Guwahati, India, as part of our ongoing commitment to document the endangered Tibeto-Burman languages of nearby Arunachal Pradesh. We worked with a group of language activists who speak Koro Aka and Hruso Aka, in order to lay the groundwork for new Talking Dictionaries in their languages.

The workshop participants included Sange Degio, Sorsomi Degio, Bisai Degio, Tadak Degio, and Shri Dotto Yame representing Koro Aka, and Khandu Degio, Pipi Nimasow and Ramda Gidasow representing Hruso Aka. They learned valuable audio recording and editing skills, as well as linguistic documentation techniques and have been continuing surveying other members of their communities since then.

The Living Tongues facilitators were Dr. Greg Anderson and Dr. Bikram Jora, with logistics support from Jonathan Anderson and Bhokta Newar. The work on the Talking Dictionaries is ongoing, and the next phase will take place in February 2016.

 

 

Fieldwork

In March 2015, Dr. Greg Anderson and Dr. Jora, together with Nyishi scholar Tame Ramya of Rajiv Gandhi University (Itanagar), also conducted preliminary linguistic surveys of Tibeto-Burman languages such as Bangru (which is related to Hruso) and Puroik (aka Sulung) in Arunachal Pradesh, India. The work will be expanded during an upcoming survey of the region in February 2016.

Dr. Anderson and Living Tongues Institute Research Associate Opino Gomango also travelled to Odisha State to work with speakers of a South Munda language named Gta’. Dr. Anderson has been writing a grammar for Gta’ which will be ready for publication by mid-2016, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Under the auspices of the Living Tongues Munda Languages Initiative, in autumn of 2015, Dr. Bikram Jora began surveys of three Kherwarian Munda languages: Bhumij, Birhor, and Tamariya Mundari. Together with Living Tongues Institute Indigenous Language Activist Dr. Bhubaneshwar Sawaiyan, Dr. Jora also has been filling in the gaps remaining in our survey of the Kherwarian language, Ho.