Category Archives: Language Hotspots

International Mother Language Day, Language Hotspots, Launches and Public Events, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages, Workshops

“International Mother Language Day” Events at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

flyer designed by Marty O’Connor

Show Your Love for Languages!
In conjunction with UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day (coming up on February 21, 2012) and Valentine’s Day, the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the UNC Undergrad Linguistics Club (Underling) team up to bring you these two fascinating events exploring the frontiers of endangered language documentation. Show some love for minority languages by attending these events!

1) Film Screening: The Linguists (Ironbound Films, 2008, 65 minutes)
Date: Monday, February 13th, 2012, 7pm-9pm    Facebook event

Greg Anderson and David Harrison are scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. Filmed in Siberia, India, and Bolivia, this documentary confronts the very forces silencing languages: institutionalized racism and violent economic unrest. The linguists’ journey takes them deep into the heart of threatened cultures and knowledge.

The Linguists world premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival went on to win many awards. Noam Chomsky calls it “a breathtaking thrill ride through the landscape of language” and the film has inspired many people around the world to get involved in language documentation. Greg Anderson is the founder of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, and one of the institute’s project coordinators, Anna Luisa Daigneault, will be present at the screening to introduce the film and to do a Q & A about endangered language documentation after the film.     http://thelinguists.com/

2) Workshop: Introduction to Endangered Languages and Fieldwork Methods Date: Tuesday, February 14th, 2012, 4pm-6pm   Facebook Event

Minority languages are being increasingly replaced by various politically, economically, or socio-culturally dominant ones. Every two weeks the last fluent speaker of a language passes on and with him/her goes literally hundreds of generations of traditional knowledge encoded in these ancestral tongues. Nearly half of the world’s languages are likely to vanish in the next 100 years.

The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, founded by linguist Greg Anderson, is a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting the world’s most threatened languages. Anderson and fellow institute director of research David Harrison also collaborate with the National Geographic Society in “The Enduring Voices Project”, a global initiative that focuses on the preservation and revitalization of endangered languages through linguist-aided, community-driven multi-media documentation projects.

Anna Luisa Daigneault, Latin American Projects Coordinator and Organizational Fellow at the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, will be holding a two-hour workshop on the importance of doing endangered language research in our current generation. She will provide students with an introduction to fieldwork methodology and speak about the use of digital technology in language documentation. Anna Luisa has worked in the Amazon for several years, documenting the Yanesha language and creating an oral history online database. She has also taken part in several Enduring Voices fieldwork trips to Paraguay, Chile and Peru.

For more information on the screening and the workshop, contact UNC event coordinator Natalie Feingold at ncfein@unc.edu

Endangered Language Activism, K. David Harrison, Language Hotspots, Launches and Public Events, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages

“Endangered Languages: Global and Local Perspectives” event at California State University, Northridge

Image

Los Angeles, California

Dr. K. David Harrison and Dr. Gregory Anderson presented at CSUN university on January 31st, 2012, in the Oviatt Presentation Room.

Many thanks to the CSUN Linguistics / TESL program for organizing this great event. Greg and David were pleased to meet the staff and students at CSUN, and engage in meaningful discussions with them.

An article was published about the event here: http://sundial.csun.edu/2012/02/linguists-discuss-the-steady-extinction-of-world-languages/

Gregory D. S. Anderson, Language Hotspots, Launches and Public Events, Support Endangered Languages, Workshops

1st Annual “Language Hotspots Workshop” Success!

Monday, July 25th, 2011

By Anna Luisa Daigneault

The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages held the first annual “Language Hotspots Workshop” from July 11th to 14th, 2011 at the Center for Ancient Studies at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. Ten young scholars from various colleges around the country attended the workshop held at the Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology at Willamette University http://www.willamette.edu/centers/casa/. The workshop was facilitated by Living Tongues Director Dr. Gregory DS Anderson and Organizational Fellow Anna Luisa Daigneault.

The workshop participants were all Living Tongues volunteer researchers currently working on the Language Hotspots Database Project, an ongoing collaborative digital project that is compiling the latest linguistic, anthropological and topographic data on endangered languages to create an innovative online research tool that will be used by scholars as well as speakers of endangered languages. The volunteer researchers are: Natalie Feingold, Eleanor Pollo, Tanager, Erik Joel West, Rachel Eidson, Victoria Osborne, Claire Fallat, Emmy Haskett and Living Tongues intern Cameron French. Data management expert Kimberly Gladman was also involved via Skype. Students represented such schools as University of Oregon, Willamette University, University of the Pacific, Evergreen State University, University of Melbourne, and University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

The goal of the event was to inform the participants about the latest research concerning Language Hotspots, specific areas of the world where many endangered languages are clustered. These hotspots exhibit high levels of linguistic diversity as well as high levels of endangerment. Language Hotspots also contain languages that are under-documented, meaning that they lack formal linguistic documentation and language tools such as texts, dictionaries, descriptive grammars and audio-visual materials, which are important for systematic conservation and revitalization efforts by future generations.

This workshop was a platform for participants to learn more about the distribution of Language Hotspots around the world. On Day 1, they learned about the analytical aspects of the model, and focused on recent Living Tongues fieldwork that took place in Eastern Melanesia. Day 2 focused on Database Quality Control methodology, as well as linguistic fieldwork in Siberia. Day 3 focused on the endangered languages of the Americas, and Day 4 was devoted to learning about phonetics and doing linguistic transcription exercises involving many languages located in the Language Hotspots around he world.

The workshop was a great success and all the participants left in high spirits, and will also continue to contribute the first Language Hotspots Database. They each received a Living Tongues silk-screened canvas tote bag (see picture below).