New from Asian Highlands Perspectives - AHP 31: The Lost World of Ladakh: Early Photographic Journeys through Indian Himalaya, 1931-1934

[Bettina Zeisler]

Zitat von Randy LaPolla <randy.lapolla at gmail.com>:


>> Speaking of Ladakh, many years ago (1980's) at Berkeley I heard a  
>> woman give a talk on "The Ladakhi Project", which was an attempt to  
>> get the people in Ladakh to stop moving toward a petroleum-based  
>> economy, and to help them go back to a self-sustaining economy with  
>> things such as solar stoves and whatnot. The project included  
>> writing a dictionary of the language. Does anyone know what  
>> happened to that project?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Randy


Yes, Helena Norberg-Hodge has started many projects in Ladakh, first,  
I think, LEDEG focussinbg on solar energy, second the Women's  
Alliance, focussing on agriculture and self-reliance, and another one,  
the name of which I just don,t remember. Apart from the dictionary,  
which is a first approach to the dialect spoken in Leh, she has not  
done much linguistic work and particularly nothing on or for language  
preservation. While she started as a linguist, I was told to be aware  
of her, as she would not really this kind of people. (I nevertheless  
had a friendly exchange with her.) Thre is another NGO in Ladakh which  
is more concerned about the language, although they could not do much  
against the opposition of the scholars (they published a magazin,  
which contained a Ladakhi section, but had to abolish it under fierce  
pressure). They have published one more Ladakhi-English-Urdu  
dictionary by Abdul Hamid (with quite some input by Rebecca Norman),  
and this dictionary is already an improvement to the first one, but it  
is out of stock now. Rebecca Norman is on the verge of publishing yet  
another dictionary, which as far as I have seen, is yet another  
improvement.

I, for my part, have been working on a Valency Dictionary on Ladakhi  
verbs focussing on two rural dialects. A trial version is already  
online, but for the time being not on the final host site (which  
undergoes restructuring) but on our project server, which may not run  
longer than another year.

Anyone interested in this work may have a look at


http://u-205-c242.ga19.uni-tuebingen.de/dictview/init_browse.action

Registration is required.

Jule from Ladakh
Bettina Zeisler