ELL: Re: Language Query Room Advisory Board

[Paula Meyer]

I would like to join the Advisory Board of the Language Query Room.  I am a native speaker of Kumeyaay and can be reached at this email address.
Thank you.
Jon Meza
San Diego, CA
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Doug Whalen <whalen at alvin.haskins.yale.edu>
    To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au <endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au>
    Date: Wednesday, July 03, 2002 1:26 PM
    Subject: ELL: Language Query Room Advisory Board
    
    
         The Endangered Language Fund, along with the Linguist List, is creating a new function for language communities and linguists called the Language Query Room (LQR).  This effort is being funded by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).  This note is to give you a preview of the LQR and to ask for volunteers for an advisory board of native speakers.
         The LQR will be a space where questions about how to say things in different endangered languages can be posted.  Someone who needs to have a form translated, typically a language learner or a linguist, will post a query via a form at the LQR site.  An automatic email will be sent to everyone who has registered an interest in that language.  If a native speaker feels like responding, they will use a similar form on the site, and everyone on that language's list will be informed that new material is present.  We hope to have both text (in the native orthography) and audio supported.  All of the material will be archived for future searching. 
         Our current plan is to recognize the contribution of the native speaker volunteers as official "Language Consultants." They will have their status listed as such on LQR, and a brief biography will be posted (if desired).  The primary motivation is the interest in the language and the desire to see it more widely recognized by allowing progress to be made on it outside of the field.  We are also hoping to have an endangered language chat room, which would allow speakers of the designated languages to converse with each other, with the only "cost" being to have the discussions archived.  We will have a pop-up keyboard that will make input of unusual orthographies much simpler (we hope), for those languages that have such an orthography.
         As we work on the design of the LQR, we want to make it as useful to the native communities as possible.  To help with that effort, we are assembling an advisory board, composed of speakers of endangered languages.  We would like to invite any who qualify to contact us about joining the board.  The criteria are:
         *  Is a native speaker of and endangered language (since we already have the viewpoint of the professional linguist well represented).
         *  Has email and internet access (since the LQR will only exist on the web, and the advisory board will only have virtual meetings by email).
         *  Is fluent in English (since the membership is intended to be world-wide and those of us on the grant have only English as an interlanguage).
         *  Is able to spend a few hours over the next year reading email and contributing an opinion about the best way to make the LQR function (the time demands are small and on an email schedule rather than a phone or meeting schedule).
         We are putting out this initial request over relevant lists (Linguist and Endangered Languages), but if you know of someone who meets the criteria and is not on these lists, please forward it to them so that we can find the largest pool of candidates possible.
         Those who do not meet these criteria but who have comments about the LQR are welcome to contact us as well, at the email addresses below.
         We hope to have a functioning site up this year.  The LQR will, with luck, expand the range of language material that is used in linguistic theorizing and enhance the stature of the endangered languages in the process.
         We look forward to hearing from all interested parties, and we will announce the LQR itself as soon as it is available.
         Durbin Feeling (Cherokee), Chair, LQR Advisory Board  <dfeeling at ou.edu>
         Douglas H. Whalen, President, Endangered Language Fund  <elf at haskins.yale.edu>
             
    -- 
    Doug Whalen (whalen at haskins.yale.edu)
    Haskins Laboratories
    270 Crown St.
    New Haven, CT 06511
    203-865-6163, ext. 234
    FAX:  203-865-8963
    http://www.haskins.yale.edu/
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