Two years ago in fall 2003, Meylysa Tseng, a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Hawai‘i was inspired by the rich cultural diversity on her campus at Manoa. Meylysa was looking for a good community service project to organize. Suddenly, she realized that there were many speakers of different endangered languages studying at the university and that graduate students of linguistics could teach language documentation skills to these students. At first many were skeptical. They thought the project would not take off. But, that did not discourage Meylysa who went on to recruit her other classmates and seek support from various departments within the University. One semester later, nine previously under-documented languages of the world received much needed attention, were further away from extinction and the effort saw the winning of two awards: the Jacob Peace Memorial Award and the NAFSA "Partnership in Excellence Award."
Today, the Language Documentation Project (LDP) continues its social mission by training students from countries with endangered languages on how to document their languages and to apply for grants to expand their projects. This semester there are 20 students being trained by graduate students in the Linguistics Department, led by an equally dedicated graduate student, Valerie Guerin from France. The project utilizes computer software to improve the documentation and archiving process and places its resources on the Internet for speakers of the languages documented, as well as other researchers to access them. Valerie’s dedication has been rewarded.
This May, she will present the project at the NAFSA international conference in Seattle. According to Valerie the LDP director, the project’s secret ingredient is, "the spirit of aloha and cooperation in reaching out to the international student community at the university. The students who speak endangered languages are placed in a constructive environment where people care about their languages and culture. And in cooperation, everyone wins. The Department of Linguistics benefits by having its student engage in real and useful research. The University as a whole is enriched by the presence of these laudable efforts. Graduate students in linguistics are provided with an opportunity to pass on their training and skills. In the process, everyone broadens their cultural knowledge and is motivated of the importance of language preservation."
One of the languages documented so far is the Ema language spoken by approximately 50,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, commonly known as the East Timor. There are more than 15 other languages spoken in this newly formed nation, which was recognized as an independent state from Indonesia in 2002. To date, there has been very little documentation of the Ema language. Matias Gomes, an East Timorese student joined the LDP in spring 2004 and worked together with linguistics graduate student, Ryoko Hattori to compile a basic 300-word vocabulary list. They are now working on designing a writing system for the language to be followed by the first alphabet picture book in the Ema language. Their work was recognized and awarded the Jacob Peace Memorial Award. Matias was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to continue their work. Since then, Matias has recorded an Ema funeral song and an Ema sketch grammar is under preparation.
For more information, visit the LDP Web site: http://www.ling.hawaii.edu/~uhdoc.
