Comments on: Endangered languages and linguistic best practices

By: Laura Welcher

Laura Welcher — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:16:09 +0000

Happy to provide more info about endangered languages, OLAC, archived linguistic materials, etc.

By: dchud

dchud — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:59:23 +0000

Am still at JCDL 2009 and I think they still are too, will relay this directly.

It would be great to hear them discuss their work with you!

By: Jon Udell

Jon Udell — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:00:04 +0000

I should add here, via @dchud on Twitter:

http://www.language-archives.org/

“OLAC, the Open Language Archives Community, is an international partnership of institutions and individuals who are creating a worldwide virtual library of language resources by: (i) developing consensus on best current practice for the digital archiving of language resources, and (ii) developing a network of interoperating repositories and services for housing and accessing such resources.”

If somebody from that organization wants to talk about that effort, I would love to hear about it, and to relay the discussion on my podcast.

By: Joe Germuska

Joe Germuska — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 13:57:40 +0000

That was really a great Long Now talk.

I’ve been fascinated with this general subject since I was introduced to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (and criticisms of it) in a really mind-blowing linguistics elective in college. That’s also where I was introduced to George Lakoff, whose work on metaphor is maybe another facet of what you describe here.

Of course, the number of people who understand grammatical fine points of languages from disparate families enough to analyze them at this level is pretty small, but if you find any of them, please invite them to Interviews with Innovators!