Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages is pleased to partner with 7000 Languages to help languages survive for generations to come. The mission of Living Tongues Institute is to document threatened languages as well as support speakers who are safeguarding their languages from extinction through activism, education, and technology.
With these goals in mind, the researchers at Living Tongues created the Living Dictionaries platform where online dictionaries can be easily created and shared. Living Dictionaries are collaborative multimedia web tools that are ideal for maintaining indigenous as well as diaspora languages.
For communities who request them, Living Dictionaries will serve as companion dictionaries to language-learning courses created by 7000 Languages. These online dictionaries are never out-of-print, infinitely expandable resources that are freely accessible from exploration and browsing.
Going well beyond a static print dictionary, Living Dictionaries combine language data with digital audio recordings of speakers and other multimedia. Living Dictionaries address the urgent need to provide comprehensive, discoverable tech tools for community activists and linguists engaged in grassroots conservation efforts and revitalization programs around the world.
Partnerships between nonprofits like us can really make an impact. Both of our organizations are very attuned to the needs and suggestions of the communities we work with, so we make sure that every resource we put out really includes community involvement at every step.
Stay tuned for the first Living Dictionary coming out of this collaboration later this summer.
We are proud to be featured in the April 2022 cover story by Mint Lounge, a popular publication throughout India. This in-depth article discusses the grassroots work being done to preserve endangered languages in India. Living Tongues linguist Dr. Bikram Jora shared many details about our team’s work documenting the Birhor language.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
Linguist Bikram Jora sends screenshots of the trilingual dictionary containing 2,748 words in Birhor, classified as critically endangered. It starts with simple words like aba, or father, and moves on to phrases like aben bar hor k”atir (“for you both”). A project coordinator for the South Asia region for the US-based non-profit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, Jora has been working on ‘Documenting the Fragile Knowledge Domains of the Birhor People’, an initiative funded by the Zegar Family Foundation, since 2018. Since he belongs to Jharkhand’s Munda tribe, he understands the complexities of indigenous language and identity within the state well.
His team and he have published Abun Ari-Re, the first children’s book in Birhor, to try and make words about regular activities part of local parlance, as well as a survey of the community’s ethnobotanical knowledge, and an online dictionary. Though the published material is free, the copyright rests with the Birhor community.
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Many thanks to the Zegar Family Foundation for supporting our work with the Birhor community. We are glad that this latest article will help our research reach a wide audience in India.
Woccon is a dormant Eastern Siouan language that is currently being revived by the Cape Fear Band of the Skarure and Woccon Indians (who reside in the Cape Fear coastal region of North Carolina, USA). They are a tribal nation with a long, rich history concentrated in and around Brunswick, Bladen, Columbus and Pender Counties of Cape Fear. Their tribe is also known by the name “Skarure Woccon of the Cape Fear.”
The Woccon language closely resembled Catawba, and was considered one of two Catawban languages, which are part of the Siouan language family. Woccon itself is attested only in a vocabulary of approximately 140 words, originally published in John Lawson’s “A new voyage to Carolina” in 1709.
At Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, we have been working closely with Chief Lovell Eagle Elk and Teneia Blue Feather of the Skakure Woccon nation to help bring awareness to the Woccon language and to upload these words to create the first-ever Woccon Living Dictionary. Linguistic anthropologist Anna Luisa Daigneault and linguist Gregory D. S. Anderson from Living Tongues Institute have both helped lead efforts to process data and obtain all available archival materials that can inform this work. Our involvement with the tribe is listed on their website.
Screenshot from the Woccon Living Dictionary
The next phase of work will include working with Siouan linguistics specialists to determine the correct pronunciation of the Woccon terms. In October 2021, we obtained drafts of unpublished, in-depth linguistic analysis on Catawba from the Smithsonian that will help inform future work on Woccon because it is a closely related language.
Participants at the 2021 Skarure Woccon Harvest Festival
We live in a pivotal time for language documentation and language revitalization, and most people in the broader American public have no idea what’s at stake when indigenous languages are lost, and what it takes to revive them. Many dedicated activists (including local indigenous cultural experts, students, researchers, linguists and anthropologists) work tirelessly to collect cultural data that can be used as a basis for creating language revival programs for local Native American communities.
Why is this work part of an urgent public conversation? Languages transmit centuries of accumulated wisdom related to human adaptation and survival. They contain vital information related to land management, subsistence patterns, kinship and social relationships, local customs, cosmology and much more. Every language represents a unique way of interpreting and conveying the human experience in a specific cultural and environmental context. It is important for all Americans to welcome the views and expressions of the indigenous people who were the first to inhabit this land we all live on today.
Researchers from Living Tongues and members of the Skarure Woccon nation also collaborated during the online event “Stories of Endangered Language Activism” sponsored by PEN America.
_______________________________ Read more: Lawson, John, 1709. “A vocabulary of Woccon” in A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of That Country: Together with the Present State Thereof. And a Journal of a Thousand Miles, Travel’d Thro’ Several Nations of Indians. Giving a Particular Account of Their Customs, Manners, &c. View online.
Carter, R. 1980. The Woccon Language of North Carolina: Its Genetic Affiliations and Historical Significance
Rudes, B.A., 2000. Resurrecting coastal Catawban: The reconstituted phonology and morphology of the Woccon language. Southern Journal of Linguistics24: 228-244.
We are thrilled to post a segment from our latest video project documenting the culture and language of the Sora people of Odisha State, India.
The co-lead scientist on this project is Opino Gomango. He is a native Sora scholar and multimedia creator who has been working for over 10 years as a trained, professional linguist, in collaboration with Living Tongues Institute. He began working as a field linguist on his native Sora language in several local dialects and expanded this work to include closely related languages like Juray and Gorum and distantly related ones spoken in Odisha and in Jharkhand State like Remo, Didayi, Gadaba, Kharia, and Santali, as well as directed research teams on the unrelated Kui and Kuvi of Odisha (Dravidian languages). Gomango received initial training in Linguistics from Deccan College, Pune, and is currently completing his MBA. He is the director of this series of Sora films in collaboration with Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson of Living Tongues Institute.
It is hoped that this film (and upcoming ones in this series) will serve not only to preserve a wide range of traditional knowledge domains and cultural practices of the Sora, but also to help promote these as valuable markers of identity for the Sora community both within India and abroad.
This project was funded by a National Geographic Citizen Science Grant entitled: “Citizen science and cinematography: Documenting stories and technology of the Sora tribe” (India, 2019-2021). Their support is gratefully acknowledged.
Credits:
Filmed by Opino Gomango for Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. Narrated by Srinivas Gomango. Sora community members, in order of appearance: Sarothi Pradhan (priest), Srinivas Gomango (interviewee). Directed by Opino Gomango and Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson. Produced by Opino Gomango, Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson, Anna Luisa Daigneault, Dr. Luke Horo. Music by Srinivas Gomango. Sound Mix by Anna Luisa Daigneault. Hindi subtitles by Dr. Luke Horo. English subtitles by Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson and Anna Luisa Daigneault. Edited by Anna Luisa Daigneault
_______________________________________________________ Behind the Scenes: The House of the Lurni Spirit
Screenshot of transcribing and subtitling “The House of the Lurni Spirit” in ELAN.
One of the many speakers we interviewed for the Sora documentation project was Sora cultural expert Srinivas Gomango (pictured above). In this screenshot from the film, he is discussing Lurni-sum, also known as Grandmother Spirit, a spiritual being that watches over Sora villages and is appeased by specific offerings.
While most of the Sora traditional cultural practices were still thriving a generation ago, all are severely threatened now due to state-mediated environmental, education and economic policies that impact the Sora people. The rapid advance of Christian and Hindu religious practices is also replacing the original Sora animist religion.
Living Tongues project coordinator and Sora scholar Opino Gomango has spent months recording interviews, documenting cultural practices among the Sora and curating the footage for the final series of films. This will be one of the first series of films made primarily made by a Sora person for an audience of Sora communities. Living Tongues team members Greg Anderson, Luke Horo and Anna Luisa Daigneault are also helping out with the production, editing and the subtitling of the films.
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