Today, I had the great joy of being able to virtually attend the University of Buffalo’s Digital Scholarship Studio and Network conference, titled Digital Engagement with Endangered Languages and Their Communities. Shout-out to Professor M for telling me about the event!
Four presenters gave excellent presentations about language documentation and preservation, and what is entailed throughout the process of such work. I found each talk to be very enriching and engaging.
Erin Debenport was the first to present, with her presentation being titled Language Circulation and Control: Strategic Uses for Digital Technologies in Pueblo Reclamation Projects. Debenport brought up some very important points and things to remember when working in language preservation, reclamation, and revitalization. The first being that it is essential to tailor language policies to their most appropriate contexts. This means that when one is working alongside a community conducting language preservation, reclamation, and revitalization work, it is the job of the linguist or language worker to understand what the community needs and how they could best be assisted. It is also the job of the linguist or language worker to understand that there is no one ultimately correct way to correct, document, and preserve languages. Instead, language preservation is a joint effort between members of a community and outside members that often requires years of dedication and perseverance.
Next up in the presenter line was Eladio Mateo Toledo, whose presentation is titled TZ’IB’MA: Phonemic digital keyboard in cell phones for Mayan languages. At the beginning of his presentation, Toledo gave some statistics about endangered languages, stating that around 19% of the world’s languages are in a vital state, or coming close to being endangered, a statistic from Simon and Lewis (2013). Methods for Mayan language preservation need to be tailored to each language based on its population of users, not universal cut-and-paste approaches from the language documentation field as a whole. This is because language revitalization is multidimensional, as it includes cultural, historical, and political factors. Toledo listed some projects which take this multidimensional approach: workshops of the study of Q’anjob’al, Project LEA: Literacy in Awakateko, and TZ’IB’MA, the name given to the keyboard systems which have been developed to write eight Mayan languages on cell phones so far. The keyboards are available for download on Android as well as iPhones and are phonemic, meaning that the letters provided represent sounds of respective Mayan languages. You could search for the keyboards on Google Play or on lenguasmayas.com. Developing these keyboards has taken an enormous amount of commitment and effort, with the vocabulary lists and texts often being edited and revised at least three or four times. Towards the end of the presentation, Toledo made some remarks which amused the audience: “Linguistics has kidnapped language revitalization. Language revitalization has to go outside of linguistics.” While linguists play important roles in preserving languages, other types of workers are crucial to this process and need to be included and recognized too, such as anthropologists, community members, government workers, and other advocates.
Jesse Stewart gave his presentation about a language called Media Lengua, called Media Lengua in the Digital Age: A Journey of Preservation and Reclamation. At the beginning of his talk, Jesse misspoke, saying “endangerous” when he meant to say “endangered”, much to the amusement of the audience. Actually, his slight misspeak was not too much of a mistake, given that the entire conference had a central theme of advocating for smaller, minority languages. Due to linguicide, the negative effects that lead to language extinction through either natural or political forces, many languages around the world are endangered. Jesse has worked extensively to document Media Lengua, a mixed language that contains elements of Kichwa/Quechua and Spanish. Part of his work has been to help produce Stories and Traditions of the Pijal, which documents the lives of the people he has worked with and is available for free online. He has published part of the dictionary work that has been completed for Media Lengua on the journal Dictionaria, which could be viewed online. The process thus far for recording and preserving Media Lengua has been quite time-consuming: not only has this work needed a revised and consistently-updated vocabulary list, it has also required that all words which became entered in the dictionary to also be written in the IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Replanting the Forests in Language Ecosystems, presented by X’unei Lance Twitchell, was the final presentation given, and it was quite moving. What I particularly enjoyed about this one was that the audience had a direct chance to hear the perspective of an indigenous person who is involved in language preservation work, which is always important and refreshing. It reminded me of the plenary talk at CoLang 2022 given by Wesley Leonard, who got a shout-out in X’unei’s talk also. X’unei emphasized that being heard and listened to is the first part of acknowledgement that language users all want for themselves, especially in indigenous communities. He mentioned the phrase “go fluent yourself”, a phrase that is meant to encourage others to think about language and its importance, and to heavily consider using it responsibly. There must be a re-establishment of pride and prestige for indigenous and minority languages, Twitchell noted. Language preservation is about “protecting the speakers you have while making new ones,” a particular line I will carry with me going forward. X’unei shared two quotes that served as a perfect wrap-up for the day’s event: “there is a spirit in everything” and “nothing measures up to our language.”