Looking back on 2018: Thank you to all of our supporterS!

As we look back in 2018, we’d like to thank all of the researchers and community collaborators who work with us day-to-day on documentation programs and digital projects underway around the world! Our work is detail-oriented and grueling, and despite the challenges that we face, as well as the ongoing threat of language extinction, we continue to move forward with perseverance and enthusiasm.

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In particular, we’d like to thank our field research team in India: Bikram Jora, Opino Gomango and Luke Horo. All of their hard work, dedication and insight continue to make documenting the Munda language family possible. Thank you to Gutob speakers Bondu Kirsani, Tankadhar Sisa, Kamla Sisa and Radha Kirsani, as well as field assistants Gajendra Pradhan, Sujesh Gomango and Satosh Padni for their great work on the recent Gutob language documentation project, which was funded by grant award number 1500092 from the National Science Foundation (“Documentation of Gutob, an endangered Munda language of India”). The NSF’s support is gratefully acknowledged.

We’d like to give a shout-out to our colleagues in Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, China, Russia, Nigeria, Chile and Peru who we have collaborated with in person and afar on various documentation projects, workshops and events this year.

Thank you to our US-based colleagues such as Jacob Bowdoin for working on the new mobile-friendly Talking Dictionary app (coming in 2019!) and to intern Jessica Golden from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro for working on the Munda Languages Initiative web page and the Talking Dictionaries Map.

THANK YOU to all of our amazing online volunteers who have helped with digital tasks such as transcription and research: Katie Li, Shelby Sands, Murilo da Silva Barros, Henry Wu, Hannah Bishop, Michael Horlick, Dylan Charter, Dave Prine, Theresa Usuriello, Juhyae Kim, Edward Hess, Amatullah Brown, Zainah Asfoor, Gillian Gardiner, Virginia Vázquez, Sarah Agou, Charis Nandor, Corinne Van Ryckeghem, Leena Dihingia, Thorin Engeseth, Priyanka Pradeepkumar, Wojciech Zeyland, Jacquelyn Duffy, Vasiliki Moutzouri, Durgesh Rajan, Andrea Macanovic, Anna Peckham, Charlie Baranski, Cheyenne Wing, Kevin Sanders, Pranav Merchant, Li-Fang Lai.

Thanks to the people and organizations who we have collaborated with on various events and campaigns this year: Nick Montgomery at Roanoke College, Eddie Avila at Rising Voices, the team at Portland State University, Boise State, and countless other people we worked with at conferences and workshops all around the world.

Living Tongues Program Director Anna Luisa Daigneault gives a speech about endangered languages to students and faculty at Roanoke College in December 2018.

Also, we’d like to say thank you to our generous donors who continue to support our work: Kamal El-Wattar, the Carpers and many others. Thanks to the Zegar Foundation for funding our current major project documenting the fragile knowledge domains of the Birhor people in India.

Onward to 2019!

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