News

Dictionary Projects Make Progress in 2015

Submitted by Kevin Warfel on Mon, 2017-03-20 16:57

(November 2015) During the first ten months of 2015, nine language communities in seven countries held special workshops to begin the process of building their dictionaries.

Bissa Barka (Burkina Faso)
Cøllø/Shilluk (South Sudan)
Kabwa (Tanzania)
Kemedzung, Chung and Sari (Cameroon)
Komo (Ethiopia)
Natügu (Solomon Islands)
Rapoisi (Papua New Guinea)

Additional workshops had been planned in Nepal, but they had to be canceled because of the devastating earthquakes that struck the country in the spring.

Read the full article at sil.org.

Two Communities in Ethiopia Begin Dictionary Development

Submitted by Kevin Warfel on Mon, 2017-03-20 16:34

(March 2015) Two communities in Ethiopia recently began the process of dictionary development. Mother-tongue speakers of Gwama and Koorete partnered with SIL’s Dictionary & Lexicography Services team and SIL Ethiopia to organize Rapid Word Collection (RWC) workshops.

For more details on these workshops, read the article on SIL's website.

Madhya-Purbiya Tharu (Nepal) RWC workshop a huge success

Submitted by Kevin Warfel on Tue, 2014-10-07 08:26

A Rapid Word Collection workshop was held for the Madhya-Purbiya Tharu language September 9-17. The event was hosted by SIL at its office complex in Kathmandu in collaboration with Mother Tongue Center Nepal (NGO). Six word-collection groups worked for ten days and succeeded in collecting nearly 23,000 lexical items. All items were both glossed and entered into a FLEx database by the end of the workshop--a noteworthy feat. More than 50 individuals participated in one way or another, with Verna Stutzman facilitating the training of the key participants, with the help of Mari-Sisko Khadgi (Language Development Foundations Activities Manager for SIL Nepal) and Sushil Subba (Director of MTCN) as translators. For more details, see the Madhya-Purbiya Tharu report on this website.

SIL article re: Lotud (Malaysia) Dictionary workshop

Submitted by Kevin Warfel on Mon, 2014-10-06 16:19

An article published by SIL regarding the September 2013 Rapid Word Collection workshop for the Lotud-speaking community in Malaysia can be found at the following link:

http://www.sil.org/about/news/community-collaborates-first-dictionary-suang-lotud

Dictionary-making workshop for the Gusilay in Senegal

Submitted by Kevin Warfel on Thu, 2017-03-23 14:50

Collecting words for the parts of a house

(March 2017) In the town of Thionck-Essyl in the south of Senegal, speakers of the Gusilay (Gusiilaay) language are celebrating the success of a recent Rapid Word Collection (RWC) workshop, where they collected a total of 12,485 words in 11 days. The workshop was publicized on the local radio station, including interviews of participants who voiced the importance of their collective work, resulting in a room full of Gusilay speakers at the closing ceremony, ready to join the celebration.