Language documentation and conservation

An extremely interesting journal for all those interested in language documentation and conservation - the Journal of Language Documentation and Conservation (LD&C). LD&C publishes papers on all topics related to language documentation and conservation, including, but not limited to, the goals of language documentation, data management, fieldwork methods, ethical issues, orthography design, reference grammar design, lexicography, methods of assessing ethnolinguistic vitality, archiving matters, language planning, areal survey reports, short field reports on endangered or underdocumented languages, reports on language maintenance, preservation, and revitalization efforts.

With many different and captivating journal articles, this is a must-see site for any budding linguist.

Click here to go to the LD&C site - and have fun!

Rare Find: A New Language

As native tongues rapidly become extinct, linguists discover an exotic specimen. In the foothills of the Himalayas, two field linguists have uncovered a find as rare as any endangered species—a language completely new to science. The language is named Koro. "Their language is quite distinct on every level—the sound, the words, the sentence structure," said Gregory Anderson, director of the nonprofit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, who directs the project's research. Details of the language will be documented in an upcoming issue of the journal Indian Linguistics.

To read more, hear some Koro, or learn words in Koro, click here

Babylonian, dead for millennia, now online

The language of the Epic of Gilgamesh and King Hammurabi has found a new life online after being dead for some 2,000 years.
Academics from across the world have recorded audio of Babylonian epics, poems, and even a magic spell to the Internet in an effort to help scholars and laymen understand what the language of the ancient Near East sounded like.

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A vanished language returns

OF THE thousands of languages now spoken in the world, about two dozen die out in any given year, linguists believe. But Mashpee resident Jessie Little Doe Baird is showing that, in the right circumstances, vanished tongues may yet be spoken again. Baird, the 46-year old director of the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, won a so-called “genius’’ grant this week for her initiative to revive the language of her Wampanoag ancestors. The honor is richly deserved.

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