A British anthropologist is setting out on a year-long stay with a small community in Greenland in an ambitious attempt to document its dying language and traditions. Stephen Pax Leonard will live with the Inughuit in northwest Greenland, the world’s most northernmost people, and record their conversations and storytelling traditions to try and preserve their language.
Inuktun is an undocumented language with about 1,000 speakers. Although most Inughuit are trilingual, also speaking Danish and Greenlandic, their primary language is still Inuktun.
Leonard says he is determined to become a part of their community and plans to hunt with the men if he is allowed. He is taking solid-state audio recorders that should work in the freezing conditions and plans to produce an “ethnography of speaking.”
See: CNN
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Thailand
Local time: 19:16
English to Thai
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Anthropologist and linguist are similar in many aspects. They both observe human language and transfer to outside world. I expect that a good abthropologist can be a good translator or interpretator in term of background knowledge of men and society. How many of Prozians who have background in this doctrine?
Best regards,
Soonthon Lupkitaro
Netherlands
Local time: 14:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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One year is not enough to save the language. To save it, you need to teach the people to write it, and you need to publish in it. In one year you can record many interesting things to preserve for future students of language, but if you want to save a language, one year is not enough.
United States
Local time: 05:16
English to Arabic
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I agree firmly with Samuel Murray's good observation that "one year is not enough to save the language. To save it, you need to teach the people to write it, and you need to publish in it. In one year, you can record many interesting things to preserve for future students of language, but if you want to save a language, one year is not enough."
And, along with Samuel's point that that oral language must eventually be rendered into a written corpus, even ... See more
I agree firmly with Samuel Murray's good observation that "one year is not enough to save the language. To save it, you need to teach the people to write it, and you need to publish in it. In one year, you can record many interesting things to preserve for future students of language, but if you want to save a language, one year is not enough."
And, along with Samuel's point that that oral language must eventually be rendered into a written corpus, even if that researcher devotes his time during that year (or two or more 'in situ') primarily to observing and recording -- one would hope both audio and video modes -- of 'natural / routine / customary' communicative acts in that language, he will still require several years afterward to codify and categorize those acts and then construct features of that language.
Similar instances have occurred with field linguistics research in Arabic dialectology which involved the elderly populations of beduin tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region, most recently in the central Najd and northern Nefud regions Saudi Arabia.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Stephen H. Franke
English-Arabic
San Pedro, California
[Arabic dialectologist and lexicologist; another
researcher in Saudi Arabia, Oman and UAE] ▲ Collapse
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