Discussion about minority and indigenous languages

Polyglot Conference Global Q&A
#1

Dear all,
The ZALOA team invites you to a discussion about how we can support minority and indigenous languages. We are working on creating material to learn Náhuatl and other Mexican languages and would love to exchange ideas with others who have experience with either learning a minority/indigenous language or who work on creating material. I think in this community we can all learn from each other. We would be very interested in knowing more about your ideas and experiences.
The discussion will be hold in the new “ZALOA world” room (click on Earth Exchange).
Time: Monday, October 19 at 7pm London time.

If you would like to share something about that topic but can’t participate in the live discussion, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences here in the comments.

Best,
Anja

8 Likes
#2

Cualli tonalli Anja!

I’m currently helping out someone (actually he and his team are doing the heavy work :slight_smile: ) who works for an NGO that creates software to document endangered languages. He is working on reviving an extinct language that was spoken in the Sydney-Newcastle area in Australia. We’re reading through documents written by missionaries in the 19th century - the language has been extinct since the 1890s and reconstructing the grammar and phology. The syntax is split-ergative with a tripartite alignment - extremely rare typologically and also quite complex to master :slight_smile:

I’ll try to get my new friend who is a native speaker of Warlpiri, one of the more stable Australian Aboriginal languages to attend but due to the timezones it might be a little difficult :slight_smile:

I’ll see you this evening and share what I’m helping with and also my experience in this field.

Ixquicha nimitzihtaz!
Brian

8 Likes
#3

Oh yes I’ll be giving a talk in the Topic Room (Venus) on Wednesday 21st at 1pm London time about Australian Aboriginal languages. I’ve asked Liam, a native speaker of Warlpiri to attend and tell a bit about his language and culture.

5 Likes
#4

I work full-time for a research institute who is doing this. We are creating language technology for low/zero-resource languages to help with maintenance and preservation. Digital equity is a critical piece to the puzzle here. I’m also working right now to document and create tech for an endangered language of less than 20k speakers. I’m looking forward to joining.

4 Likes
#5

Brian and DrDran, thank you so much for your comments, I am very much looking forward to the discussion today at 8pm London time.
This is going to be very very interesting and I can’t wait to learn from your experiences.

2 Likes
#6

Great discussion. Please let me know when you plan to host the talk on technology. I can feature a few things as well if you think that will be valuable.

2 Likes
#7

Same here, I really enjoyed hearing your stories and experiences. Thanks to everyone who participated.
We would like to schedule another session for this Friday at 5pm UK time to discuss more about technology that you use to support and promote minority and indigenous languages.

It might be could if we could structure this a little more. From our experience, we’d be happy to share our knowledge about an online course that we created and how spread the world through social media.

Daniel, do you think you could give us an insight in what the company you work for does?

Anyone else?

2 Likes
#8

Hi all, this is sorta perfect timing - I am a board member of WIELD - the Western Institute for Endangered Language Documentation, which is dedicated to the documentation for endangered languages, especially for lgs of the Americas, but we are trying to have a pan-global outreach here. We have just launched a Twelve-Tweet Twitter-based workshop on “fragmented languages” (i.e., languages which do not have much documentation on record), so if any of you are interested, please check this out, ask me any questions, and perhaps submit a 400-word abstract to [neil.alexander.walker AT gmail DOT com] by 30 NOVEMBER 2020 if you’re interested.

I’ll be checking messages on the forum for the rest of the week if you’re at all interested, so if anyone has questions about the WIELD Twitter Workshop, I’d be happy to answer/redirect your questions whenever necessary. Thanks!

-Ed Luna

5 Likes
#9

This is the WIELD website for the workshop: http://wieldoc.org/?page_id=761.

2 Likes
#10

Absolutely. I’ll plan to be there.

1 Like
#11

This is exciting to hear! What language is he working on? (Apologies if you already mentioned and I missed it).

#12

Hi Ed, Kristen from Wikitongues. I would love to talk to you further about WIELD - the organization aligns nicely with what we do at Wikitongues.

Checkout the workshop now!

#13

Oh, where is this workshop happening?

#14

Oops, sorry! I wrote in a hurry - that was supposed to be checking out the workshop now* (referring to the WIELD Twitter workshop)

#15

Ah, I see - and if we can have some more public exposure for this workshop, that would be extremely helpful. WIELD is basically dedicated to language documentation/preservation, especially for languages that can be described as “fragmented” - like Northeastern Pomo and Purisimeno, for example. You can read further here: http://wieldoc.org/?page_id=387. Let me know if you’d like to discuss this further - thanks.

#16

Hi Daniel, I am trying to organize our session for this Friday in which we would like to talk about technology that can help to spread the word about indigenous and minority languages or technology that helps to create learning material. Do you think you could give us an insight and tell us more about what you and the company you are working for are working on? Maybe you can present in like 5-10 your idea behind it and your goals. The session is scheduled for this Friday at 5pm London time. Let me know,
Anja

1 Like
#17

Hi Edmundo, I am trying to organize our session for this Friday in which we would like to talk about technology that can help to spread the word about indigenous and minority languages or technology that helps to create learning material. Do you think you could give us an insight and tell us more about WIEDLD? Maybe you can present in like 5-10min, the idea behind it, the goals and how to participate. The session is scheduled for this Friday at 5pm London time. Let me know,
Anja

#18

Glad to. I plan to be there.

#19

Dear Anja, 5 PM London time would be 1 AM (Sat) JST, which would be a bit inconvenient for me (for some reasons). I could give a prerecorded spiel about WIELD - but if the meeting itself were rescheduled for 4:30 London time, that would even be better. Would this be doable? Thanks.

Ed

#20

Either 4.30 pm or 5.00 pm London time would be ideal for me.

Brian