Question on assessing technology for endangered language communities

[MJ Hardman]

Congratulations.  This is very nice and what you say is indeed so.  We are
doing a similar thing for the Jaqi languages of South America.  We would
very much like to see your thesis when you finish, if you could let us know
when, where and how.  Given that it is computational, perhaps an ecopy would
be available.

May the wind be at your back.

Dr. MJ Hardman
Doctora Honoris Causa UNMSM, Lima, Perú
website:  http://at.ufl.edu/~hardman-grove/



On 11/2/09 5:48 PM, "monty hill" <mhill06 at SIMONS-ROCK.EDU> wrote:

> chwe:'n,
> 
> i'm monty hill, a member of the tuscarora tribe of the haudenosaunee (iroquois
> confederacy), and also an undergraduate student in computer science and
> linguistics writing my thesis on this very topic! specifically, i am
> implementing a database model of the language, in such a way to generate
> meaningful output from it in the sense of creating worksheets etc from
> properly labelled linguistic data. 
> 
> technology, especially computers, i feel can be used to an enormous advantage
> for endangered language communities as a means of both preservation and
> creation of awareness of the state of the language, and efforts made to revive
> it.
> 
> on my reservation, the elementary school uses technology for great purposes:
> we have created a short podcast series which is shown monthly or so on the
> school's CCTV station, and will soon be available on the internet once we get
> our site up and running. we also have DVDs covering a couple hundred words of
> vocabulary with pictures that we distributed to about 20 families within the
> community.
> 
> my feelings on technology & endangered languages, to put it concisely is
> that the dedication of the community is the most important thing when
> considering the success of a language revitalization project. It is necessary
> to have people willing to form a community of speakers, and that the community
> has a strong sense of the importance of the language; it is only in that case
> that it is possible to keep a language from extinction. It is also necessary
> to think of language revitalization not as a personal project; that it is not
> possible to save a language from a written manuscript, be it a dictionary,
> grammar, or even textbook; but rather, language revitalization of a near
> extinct language is more accurately described as a re-creation of a community
> of speakers.
> 
> 
> it is also very exciting to hear about the projects & efforts made by other
> native people; it provides a great source of motivation and inspiration for
> the massive amounts of writing i will be doing over the next two semesters...
> 
> nya:we for your time
> montgomery hill
> 
> 
> On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Rolland Nadjiwon <mikinakn at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Dan...thank you very much. I will use it.
>> 
>> -------
>> wahjeh
>> rolland nadjiwon
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Dan Harvey wrote:
>>> > Wahjeh: I am not sure what is the general policy of the forum, but you are
>>> free to use my statement any way you wish. I am honored that you see value
>>> in it.
>>> >
>>> > Jim: the Miami success is inspirational; they have a great video available
>>> that documents how they did it.
>>> >
>>> > dan
>>> >
> 
> 

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