The Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) is a digital archive for materials on endangered languages, based at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). The Archive preserves digital collections, including audio and video recordings, of endangered languages around the world. ELAR is part of the worldwide community of language archives (Delaman and the Open Language Archives Community). ELAR's main aim is to preserve and publish collections of audio and video recordings, transcriptions and translations, dictionaries, and primers in and of endangered languages created with and by speakers of the endangered languages. The archive also digitises legacy collections in analogue formats saving them from deterioration and making them accessible to the speaker and their descendants, scholars, and the public. [1]
The collection currently contains over 550 deposits recorded in over 70 different countries, [2] the majority of which are the results of Endangered Languages Documentation Project (ELDP) documentation projects [3] funded by the Arcadia Fund. [4]
The catalogue of archived materials can be freely searched via the Open Languages Archives Community. The endangered languages collections at ELAR can be accessed free of charge.
ELAR also provides training in all aspects of the creation of digital collections to archiving collections. These entail metadata creation, data management, formats, curation as well as digitisation of analogue formats. [1]
The archive was originally funded in 2002 as part of a donation by the Arcadia Fund to support the documentation of endangered languages, to train students and scholars in language documentation and to digitally preserve and publish the collections. [5] ELAR was housed in and supported by the SOAS University of London library from 2015 until their move to the BBAW in 2021. [6] David Nathan was director during the first decade of the archive's existence until 2014, when the role was taken over by Mandana Seyfeddinipur, who is also head of ELDP. [7]
From July, 2021, ELAR has been housed at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (German: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften) in Berlin, Germany. [8]
ELAR is one of three partners of the CLARIN Knowledge Centre for Linguistic Diversity and Language Documentation (CKLD), providing its expertise to researchers and community members across Europe. [1]
The Deutsches Wörterbuch, abbreviated DWB, is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence. Encompassing modern High German vocabulary in use since 1450, it also includes loanwords adopted from other languages into German. Entries cover the etymology, meanings, attested forms, synonyms, usage peculiarities, and regional differences of words found throughout the German speaking world. The dictionary's historical linguistics approach, illuminated by examples from primary source documents, makes it to German what the Oxford English Dictionary is to English. The first completed DWB lists over 330,000 headwords in 67,000 print columns spanning 32 volumes.
The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) is a digital archive of records of some of the many small cultures and languages of the world. They digitise reel-to-reel field tapes, have a mass data store and use international standards for metadata description. PARADISEC is part of the worldwide community of language archives. PARADISEC's main motivation is to ensure that unique recordings of small languages are preserved for the future, and that researchers consider the future accessibility of their materials for other researchers, community members, or anyone who has an interest in such materials.
Astra Digital Radio (ADR) was a system used by SES for digital radio transmissions on the early Astra satellites, using the audio subcarrier frequencies of analogue television channels. It was introduced in 1995. As of February 2008, there were still 51 stations transmitting in this format. ADR ceased on 30 April 2012 when analogue broadcasts on Astra 19.2°E ended.
Language documentation is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community. Language documentation seeks to create as thorough a record as possible of the speech community for both posterity and language revitalization. This record can be public or private depending on the needs of the community and the purpose of the documentation. In practice, language documentation can range from solo linguistic anthropological fieldwork to the creation of vast online archives that contain dozens of different languages, such as FirstVoices or OLAC.
The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer. In the 18th century, when French was the language of science and culture, it was a French-language institution.
The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations in and around Berlin, Germany, the BBAW is the largest non-university humanities research institute in the region.
Anna Lisbet Kristina Rausing is a science historian and philanthropist. She is a co-founder of Arcadia, one of the UK's largest philanthropic foundations.
Peter Baldwin is a research professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles, Global Distinguished Professor at New York University, and a philanthropist.
Akpes (Àbèsàbèsì) is an endangered language of Nigeria. It is spoken by approximately 7,000 speakers in the North of Ondo State. The language is surrounded by several other languages of the Akoko area, where Yoruba is the lingua franca. Yoruba replaces Akpes in more and more informal domains and thus forwards a gradual shift from Akpes towards Yoruba. Akpes is generally attributed to the Volta-Congo Branch of the Niger-Congo phylum.
Kwah (Kwa), also known as Baa (Bàː), is a Niger–Congo language of uncertain affiliation; the more it has been studied, the more divergent it appears. Joseph Greenberg counted it as one of the Bambukic languages of the Adamawa family. Boyd (1989) assigned it its own branch within Waja–Jen. Kleinewillinghöfer (1996) removed it from Waja–Jen as an independent branch of Adamawa. When Blench (2008) broke up Adamawa, Kwah became a provisional independent branch of his larger Savannas family.
The Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae is an online dictionary and text corpus of the Egyptian language developed by the Research Centre for Primary Sources of the Ancient World at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) in Berlin, Germany. Intended to be a complete documentation of the Egyptian lexicon, it encompasses varied meanings of words in different texts over 3000 years of linguistic history. The dictionary is entirely based on primary source material, including inscriptions from temple walls, roads, tombs, papyri, and potsherds from religious, legal, administrative, and literary texts. The Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae is publicly available on the internet. It is a publication of two academy's projects at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Ahamb, also spelled Axamb or Akhamb is an Oceanic language spoken in South Malakula, Vanuatu.
Peter Kenneth Austin, often cited as Peter K. Austin, is an Australian linguist, widely published in the fields of language documentation, syntax, linguistic typology and in particular, endangered languages and language revitalisation. After a long academic career in Australia, Hong Kong, the US, Japan, Germany and the UK, Austin is emeritus professor at SOAS University of London since retiring in December 2018.
The field of language documentation in the modern context involves a complex and ever-evolving set of tools and methods, and the study and development of their use - and, especially, identification and promotion of best practices - can be considered a sub-field of language documentation proper. Among these are ethical and recording principles, workflows and methods, hardware tools, and software tools.
Mandana Seyfeddinipur is a linguist, author, and educator. She is also the Head of the Endangered Languages Archive.
The Arcadia Fund is a UK charity organization founded by Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin. Established in 2001, the organization provides grants on a worldwide basis focusing on numerous projects outside the UK. The primary focus of the organization is to preserve endangered culture and nature and to provide open access. Its Mission statement outlines the organization's philosophical view to: "serve humanity (and) to preserve cultural heritage and ecosystems". The organization believes that "once memories, knowledge, skills, variety, and intricacy disappear – once the old complexities are lost – they are hard to replicate or replace" and consequently want to, "build a vibrant, resilient, green future".
The Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance is an interdisciplinary research project dedicated to the study of the reception of antiquity in the Renaissance. At the heart of the project is its scholarly database recording antique works of art and architecture known in the Renaissance in relation with the early modern sources documenting them. The project is based at the Institute of Art and Visual History at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
The Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) is a funding programme and digital archive run by the British Library in London. It has the purpose of preserving cultural heritage where resources may be limited. Each year EAP awards grants to researchers to identify and preserve culturally important archives by digitising them in situ. The original archival material does not leave the country of origin, and projects often incorporate local training and career development. EAP focuses on material created before the mid twentieth century.
Patience Louise "Pattie" Epps is an American linguistics professor and researcher at the University of Texas at Austin whose main research focus is on the Naduhup language family, which consists of four extant languages in the Amazon.
Wolfgang Klein is a German linguist and a founding director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. He's known for his contributions in language acquisition, text analysis and studies on the semantics of time and space.