New Courses
New courses
The courses section of this website has been updated and renamed. It is now called "Learning and Training" and offers complete courses in linguistics. These courses are still underdevelopment, but should be completed by the end of the year!
These courses include:
- Introduction of Language Structure
- Advanced Exploration of Language Structure
- Theoretical Syntax
A number of other courses are planned to be completed soon. Including:
- Introduction to Phonetics
- Introduciton to Phonology
- Linguistic Typology
- Meaning (Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics)
If you are interested in enrolling in any of these courses please click on the Learning and Training tab and take a look. Once you find a course you are interested in send me an email to enroll. If you are interested in participating in a course that is not offered or planned, please let me know and I will do my best to accomodate you.
ENJOY!
Language Conservation
It is a fact of our times that many communities across the globe are losing important resources. This loss affects both the individual communities as well as the global community. Among the most vital resources being lost are the languages of these communities. These languages are being replaced by national languages such as English, Spanish, and Portuguese. In the wake of this replacement we find a significant decrease in human knowledge, cultural information, history, socio-economic progress, and linguistic understanding.
Fortunately individuals all over the world are concerned with this loss and have engaged in research that will preserve this information before it is too late. Others have acted in order to strengthen native communities in their language use and learning. While it is difficult to say whether this work will have a long-term lasting effect on and in the local communities, it is clear that each step forward is a step in the right direction.
LanguageConservation.org is committed to developing and fostering projects that take steps toward language preservation. We are engaged in urgent and ambitious work to document the endangered languages of the world and to provide community support and outreach. Both of these outcomes are guided by our mission to create language-based community development projects.
When a language is strengthened a community is strengthened, individuals are more aware of their own identities and social roles, and possibilities are opened for expression and influence. Communities are consequently enabled to act appropriately and are empowered to act with confidence and understanding. Humanity is enriched through the preservation of history, knowledge, and ideas that help to advance our understanding and possibilities.
Unfortunately, many people are unaware of the urgent action needed in response to language endangerment and loss. This leaves open two fundamental tasks: elevating the awareness of the general public to the needs of indigenous languages and communities of the world, and providing training, action, and support for future generations of linguists and community members. These can be daunting tasks unless we pool our abilities and develop new ways of preserving languages.
I invite you to get involved with LanguageConservation.org and to collaborate on helping to preserve the languages across the World.
Google partners to catalog endangered languages
Thousands of languages are on the cusp of extinction throughout the world - each representing a unique history and culture for its speakers. It is through these languages that people connect to their past, make sense of the their world, and create a cultural legacy that is passed down to future generations. Through these languages speakers have a voice. Their life is not threatened with marginalization; these languages are our identity as individuals and communities.
Scholars and interested individuals have been active in bringing this issue to the attention of governments throughout the world. Programs and projects focusing on the documentation and description of these languages have been going on for some time, but recently they have regained momentum as one of the core motivational enterprises of the scientific discipline of linguistics.
However, despite these efforts some fundamental information is missing. The number of acutal languages in the world is an educated guess, a hypothesis. The number of people speaking each language is similarly an approximated number. How can we be concerned for the world's linguistic diversity if we don't even know what that means? Linguists have a sense of the impeding, irreversible loss in linguistic diversity but are having a hard time communicating the urgency to non-linguists.
To rectify this situation linguists from all over the world (including those affiliated with LanguageConservation.org) have partnered with Google to create the largest wolrd linguistic catalog known. These efforts, being called "The Endangered Language Catalogue" http://www.endangeredlanguages.com, are unique because participants are creating open-access information on the languages from all over the world. Check out the introduction by Google:
The catalog initally contains information on 3,000+ languages from all over the world, many of which most people will seem extremely exotic to most people. With an estimated 7,000 languages in the world, this catalog represents nearly half. These efforts will not solve the problem overnight. They will not preserve all of the world's linguistic diveristy. It is up to each person to become involved in the cause. There is much to be done. Information needs to be updated and new material needs to be added.
Eventhough it won't stop linguistic loss this catalog is definately a step in the right direction for answering the basic questions about the world's linguistic diversity and giving speakers of lesser-known languages a voice.