US linguists' web map preserves China's dialects (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

US linguists' web map preserves China's dialects

01-26-2014 10:42 BJT


BEIJING, Jan. 26 (Xinhuanet) -- Thousands of variations of Chinese are
spoken in the vast nation and two Americans have created a unique online
map of Chinese dialects, featuring 10 major dialects and 300 stories so far.

Kellen Parker and Steve Hansen launched Phonemica (phonemica.net) in May
2012 to collect and preserve disappearing dialects. Other websites are
devoted to dialects but this gathers them in one place.

“The website is for archiving the stories and dialects for future
generations, so that in 30 years people can know what their grandparents
lives were like,” Keller told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview through
email.

Parker and Hansen are looking for volunteers to tell stories themselves and
to find and record other storytellers, especially older people, to build
their archive and preserve dying local speech. Most of it now is
crowd-sourced.

Access full article below:

http://english.cntv.cn/20140126/102135.shtml
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