8. Places to Go, on the Web and in the World

Lesser Known Languages of India

The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, India, launched a website on lesser known languages of India, on Dec. 9, 2003, during the inaugural function of the International Conference on Himalayan Languages. The address is
http://www.ciil-spokencorpus.net

Canadian Aboriginal News Service

The Canadian Aboriginal News is a subscribers list. Original news stories will be posted here from across Canada and the world by the Aboriginal News Service. Subscriptions are: $10 CDN/month. For more information visit
http://www.canadianaboriginal.ca

Language Status in Afghanistan

Harold F. Schiffman notes:
I have posted a link to the English version of the new (final) Afghanistan Constitution on our Afghanistan languages website; the English pdf version is available here:

http://www.constitution-afg.com/
resrouces/Draft.Constitution.pdf
(yes, there is a typo in this URL...)

Article 16 mentions language rights:

Article 16:

From among the languages of Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashaei, Nuristani and other languages spoken in the country, Pashto and Dari are the official languages of the state.

The state shall adopt and implement effective plans for strengthening and developing all languages of Afghanistan. Publications and radio and television broadcasting are free in all languages spoken in the country.

(This is the same text as in previous drafts;)

There is also a web-site derived from a recent meeting on languages of Afghanistan and the surrounding region:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/salrc/
afghanistan.html

Berkeley Survey Catalogue Online
Leanne Hinton reports:

I am pleased to announce that the catalog of the Survey of California and Indian Other Languages, which was off-line for months due to a computer hack-in, is now on-line again. The catalog can be accessed at:
http://linguistics.berkeley.edu
/Survey/archives.html

You can search by language, family, stock, collector or consultant. If you have any questions or would like to make an appointment to visit the Survey, please contact me (hinton(at)socrates.berkeley.edu) or the Survey assistant, Rainbow Willard
(rainboww(at)socrates.berkeley.edu).

Lexicography Discussion Group

Wayne Leman invites you to join the Lexicography e-mail discussion group that he is organizing:

Anyone active in lexicography fieldwork (including dictionary making) or teaching (or with a serious interest in lexicography) is welcome to join and contribute to the discussions.

The list will entertain discussion on any lexicographical topics of interest to the list members, including announcements of research or publications, discussion of lexicography computer software, discovery procedures, lexical relations, universal semantic domains, aboriginal group intellectual property rights, dictionary-making, etc. It will be open to anyone studying the lexicon of any language, but I suspect some of the most active members will be from SSILA.

The list website is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
lexicographylist/

from which anyone may join. Or one may join by sending a message to:

lexicographylist-subscribe(at)
yahoogroups.com

Educational Linguistics Listserve

Edling-L is an international forum for students, faculty, and practitioners to discuss research, current issues, and trends in educational linguistics. Edling-L serves as a venue for open discussion among all scholars studying language issues in both formal and informal education.

Edling-L members are encouraged to engage in lively conversation on research ideas and concerns in addition to sharing information about upcoming conferences and research meetings, calls for papers, publication releases, research resources, bibliographic information, stories of language in education from popular media, and other matters of interest.

To be added to the list, send an e-mail to
pennelf(at)dolphin.upenn.edu
For more information visit
http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~pennelf/ELF
/listserv.html

Creek Language Archive From Jack Martin:

Readers may be interested in visiting the Creek Language Archive. This site is designed to make many of the published sources on Creek available to a wider audience as pdf files and html pages. It also provides basic information on Creek, including a short talking dictionary and sections from a textbook in progress.
http://www.wm.edu/linguistics/creek

New address for Cheyenne Language Page
http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

Valencian is now Valencian.org

The International site for the Valencian language (Valencianlanguage.com) has been changed to http://www.valencian.org

Please also use this new e-mail:
info(at)valencian.org

Kirrkirr 4.0

Christopher Manning reports:

I've made available on the web a new version of Kirrkirr, Kirrkirr 4.0:
http://nlp.stanford.edu/kirrkirr/

Kirrkirr is a dictionary presentation program, aimed at novice users of indigenous language dictionaries. It operates over XML dictionaries, but is flexible as to how exactly the dictionary is structured.

The emphasis is on innovative methods for dictionary information presentation and visualization. There were presentations on it at both the 2000 and 2001 meetings: http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/exploration/LSA
http://www.ldc.upenn.edu/annotation/database

As well as all the usual sorts of improvements and fixes, there is now perhaps enough documentation on getting dictionaries to work inside Kirrkirr that someone other than the program's author might be able to succeed in doing it:
http://nlp.stanford.edu/kirrkirr/
dictionaries/

Linguist's Search Engine

From: Philip Resnik: For the past while, we've been working on a project we call the Linguist's Search Engine (LSE), an easy-to-use web tool that permits linguists to do searches they could not easily do on Google or Altavista--for example, searches involving syntactic structure, constructions, and the like. I'm happy to say the LSE is now up, running, and available. If we've done it right, what you'll find at http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/ should be pretty self-explanatory. For those who prefer explanations of the non-self variety, a Getting Started Guide can be found at
http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/lse_guide.html

Finally, there are discussion forums set up at http://lse.umiacs.umd.edu/forum/ that will, we hope, give rise to a genuine LSE user community on the Web. Since this is the first time we're opening the LSE up to all users, there may still be some technical glitches. If you encounter any problems, please bear with us, and e-mail us at lse(at)umiacs.umd.edu to let us know. Please also let us know, via the discussion forums, what interesting experiences you have, positive or negative, and what features you'd like to see added to make the LSE more useful.

Info about Etribe.ca

Etribe Network is proud to introduce the First Native American Portal operated by First Nation's people. After years of planning and months of development Etribe Network has now become a reality for all people to enjoy. We are pleased to bring you The Etribe Portal Version One which will provide you with everything and anything Native.

In launching The Etribe Portal, we are asking that you show your support and sign up to the community. Etribe hopes to be your Yahoo, MSN or AOL but Native American operated and powered by the people. The Etribe Portal contains all major components that most major sites offer. We have our own Email System (Apowwow), Employment/Job (NDNJobs), Personals (RezFox), News (Etribe News), Calendars, Models, Photo Sharing (RezPics), Search Engine (World Wide Waboos) and much, much more. Make the Etribe Portal your homepage.

Etribe will be undergoing testing in which we will rely on our people to help us make everyone's experience an enjoyable one. We are open for suggestions, comments and recommendations to ensuring that it is complete and functional.

We are looking for Native News contributors, Models for our sites, discussion topics and feedback, pictures, Powwow Listings, Conference Listings, and anything else you'd like to share with people across Turtle Island. We will be improving every day and we hope to provide you with tools needed to bring our people together through technology. We will be providing opportunities for Artists to post their artwork and poets to post their literature.

For all interested advertisers we will be offering sections throughout the site for the marketing of products, services, organizations or events. Banner advertisements, link locations, and specifically targeted areas will be open for clients to advertise. For example, if you’re a car dealership and want to advertise your Automobile business, we will have custom areas to advertise in the Auto Section of The Etribe Portal. Just our way to promote our First Nation businesses, organizations and events.

In closing, please visit http://www.etribe.ca to sign up to the First Native American online community. Remember this Portal is yours and we are asking all to contribute. It's our way to bring Native People closer together.

Research on Lang. Policy & Lang. Planning

http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/poileasadh
Wilson McLeod

The Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies is endeavouring to establish a Centre for Language Policy and Language Planning. A series of seminars, conferences and research reports will tackle a range of subjects relating to language policy and language planning both within Scotland and internationally. For example:

Texts from seminars
o Philip Gawne, 'Securing the Future of Manx Gaelic' (25.2.04)
o James Oliver, 'Stands Gaelic Where it Did?' (3.12.03)
o Kenneth MacKinnon, 'Bòrd Gàidhlig na h-Alba: New Thinking for a Fresh Start?' (5.3.03)
o Alan Davies, 'The Native Speaker in Applied Linguistics' (19.2.03) o Niamh Nic Shuibhne, 'Legislating Language: Current Developments in Ireland' (5.2.03)
o Davyth Hicks, 'Scottish Place-names: Planning the Linguistic Landscape' (24.4.02)
o Dónall Ó Riagáin, 'Gàidhlig and the other lesser used languages: what future in the new Europe?' (6.3.02)
o Konstanze Glaser, 'Essentialism and Relativism in Gaelic and Sorbian Language Revival Discourses' (30.1.02)
o Wilson McLeod, 'An Eaconamaidh Ghàidhlig: Duilgheadasan Teòridheach agus Pragtaigeach' (5.12.01)
z

Bibliographies on language policy
· Gaelic in Scotland: Sociolinguistics and Language Policy Bibliography 1980-2004 · Minority Ethnic Languages in Scotland: Sociolinguistics and Language Policy Bibliography 1980-2004
· 'A Selected Classified Bibliography of the Scots Language' (Caroline Macafee, University of Aberdeen)

Research reports · Faclair Na Pàrlamaid: A Critical Evaluation (Wilson McLeod, October 2001)
· The State of the 'Gaelic Economy': A Research Report (Wilson McLeod, October 2001)
· Revitalising Gaelic? Critical Analysis of Report of Taskforce on Public Funding of Gaelic (Alasdair MacCaluim, Wilson McLeod, Oct 2001)

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