Academic paper: Standardization of national languages

 The following UNESCO paper (pdf doc) has several African papers which may be of interest. You will need Adobe Reader to access it. (Download it here.)

STANDARDIZATION OF NATIONAL
LANGUAGES
SYMPOSIUM
ON LANGUAGE STANDARDIZATION
2-3 February 1991
edited by
Utta von Gleich and Ekkehard Wolff

More 

English-Kirundi, Kirundi-English, and Kinyarwanda-English dictionaries

English-Kirundi, Kirundi-English, and Kinyarwanda-English dictionaries
are now available for teachers working with Burundian refugees.
The dictionariescan be downloaded for free, courtesy of the Free
Methodist Church of North America.

“Marston Memorial”- free downloadable dictionaries
http://www.freemethodistchurch.org/users/marston/Dictionaries.htm
>>

Source: BRYCS ( Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services)
December e-bulletin

AFRICA: KAMUSI PROJECT NEEDS YOUR HELP

Seen on Pambazuka News Vol 82 Issue 1.

Pambazuka news can be viewed online: http://www.pambazuka.org/ 

AFRICA: KAMUSI PROJECT NEEDS YOUR HELP
http://www.kamusiproject.org/en/CodeAfrica

The Kamusi Project, the webs leading Swahili language resource,
needs coding help in a hurry. We have a lot of old code that works
pretty well for what weve been doing (running a collaborative online
Swahili dictionary), but we need to modify and modernize our back end
in order to get where were going: a free and open source interlinked
dictionary and learning center for dozens of African languages. If
you can volunteer, please contact CodeAfrica@kamusiproject.org

Call for papers for the 7th Conference on Mande Studies

I’ve received the following conference notification, closing date end of December. If you are interested in sending in a paper and/or attending the conference, please read to the end of the article and respond to the conference organisers NOT to Sociolingo.

 

Call for papers for the 7^th Conference on Mande Studies,

Lisbon, Portugal, June 24-28, 2008

 

Panel: Literacy practices in the Mande area/ Pratiques de l’écrit dans l’aire mandé

 

Convenors / Organisatrices:

Anne Doquet, IRD & Centre d’études africaines (EHESS)

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, Centre d’études africaines (EHESS)

 

Abstract

This panel calls for propositions dealing with literacy practices: accounts of practices observed in the field as well as reflections on the researcher’s writing practices.

Literacy practices on grass-root level are often overlooked, but they are a growing part of people’s lives: notebooks or sheets of papers are held in a variety of settings, for a wide range of purposes.

Literate skills often remain a scarce resource, which gives them a specific role in the present context of political changes at local level. Studies of schooling choices show that people still believe in the importance of literacy even outside formal schooling. This raises issues of languages and scripts (sometimes contesting the dominant status of official languages as written languages).

Writing and reading practices invest the domestic sphere as well as the community level: keeping records, writing down knowledge, preserving secrets, etc. How do this processes interfere with oral modes of keeping and passing down knowledge?

Along with these private practices, studies of bureaucratic literacies (and their private counterpart), local historical writing, as well as other uses of print and press would usefully complement this approach. The panel will also include papers dealing with the way the writing activities of the researcher are locally perceived.

Literacy studies are a field of inquiry which is currently renewed by works from other African settings (see for instance the book edited by Karin Barber Africa’s hidden histories. Everyday literacy and Making the Self, Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press 2006). We believe that Mande studies could benefit from this developments and provide new insights on this theme.

 

Résumé

L’objet de ce panel est de réunir des contributions portant sur des pratiques de l’écrit, que ce soit des pratiques observées sur le terrain ou un retour sur la pratique du chercheur comme ethnographe.

Les pratiques d’écriture des acteurs locaux, souvent inaperçues, sont pourtant largement présentes : cahiers, feuilles volantes font désormais partie du quotidien des zones rurales ou urbaines. La rareté des compétences en fait une ressource recherchée, rendant particulièrement vifs les enjeux de pouvoir autour de l’écrit accompagnant les reformulations politiques contemporaines. Les stratégies éducatives montrent un intérêt persistant pour l’écriture mais pas toujours dans la langue du système éducatif formel. Aussi les questions de langues et de graphies (contestant parfois le statut privilégié des langues officielles à l’écrit) sont-elles centrales pour comprendre la manière dont les individus se rapportent à l’écrit.

Ces pratiques ont pour échelle la sphère domestique ou la communauté et prennent diverses formes : tenir ses comptes, conserver des savoirs, préserver des secrets, etc. Une question se pose alors : comment cela s’articule-t-il avec les modes oraux de conservation et de transmission des savoirs ?

Outre ces pratiques privées, des analyses des écrits bureaucratiques (de leurs usages ou des résistances qu’ils suscitent), de la mise par écrit de l’histoire locale, des usages de l’imprimé et de la presse pourraient compléter cette approche. En parallèle, d’autres contributions prendront pour point de départ l’activité d’écriture du chercheur et les réactions qu’elle suscite.

Réfléchir à ces différentes formes de la culture écrite nous semble important au moment où l’histoire de ces pratiques se constitue en champ de recherche pour d’autres régions du continent (en témoigne l’ouvrage collectif dirigé par Karin Barber Africa’s hidden histories. Everyday literacy and Making the Self, Bloomington, Indiana Univ. Press 2006).

 

 

Contributors to this date (preliminary titles)/ Intervenants à ce jour (titres provisoires) :

 

Anne Doquet, IRD & Centre d’études africaines (EHESS)

The anthropologist’s writings: issues around form and content / Les écrits de l’anthropologue : enjeux autour de la forme et du contenu

 

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, Centre d’études africaines (EHESS) & GRS (Univ. Lyon 2)

Writing and the self: an ethnographic approach of personal notebooks held by villagers around Fana (Mali) / Qu’est-ce qu’écrire pour soi ? Approche ethnographique de cahiers personnels recueillis près de Fana (Mali)

 

Francesco Zappa, Università di Roma “La Sapienza”

Islamic printing: a new frontier of written Bambara ? / L’imprimé islamique : nouvelle frontière du bambara écrit ?

 

 

If you are interested, please send an abstract and a working title to Anne Doquet (a.mbodjpouye@free.fr) by February 1, 2008.

Please note that West African colleagues residing in West Africa who wish to compete for funding to attend the conference must submit their papers to Kassim Koné (kone@cortland.edu) by December 31, 2007.

 

Si vous êtes intéressés, veuillez adresser un résumé et une proposition de titre à Anne Doquet (a.mbodjpouye@free.fr) avant le 1/02/2008.

Les chercheurs basés en Afrique de l’Ouest désireux de solliciter le financement de leur venue doivent soumettre leur texte à Kassim Koné (kone@cortland.edu) avant le 31/12/2007.

The World Language Documentation Centre

The World Language Documentation Centre was launched in May 2007. WLDC is a non-profit organisation that champions linguistic research and facilitates the needs of linguistic communities, is internationally democratic and diplomatic with a remit that is worldwide.

The WLDC Board comprises 22 experts representing the fields of language and terminology standardisation, localisation, and linguistics from around the world.  The aims and objectives of the WLDC are wide and far reaching and include:

• To ensure evaluation, enrichment, maintenance and sustainability of the wealth of information about the languages of the world forming the content of the WLDC and ISO 639-6 databases.
• To liaise with the organizations that contribute information and other resources to the WLDC e.g. GeoLang Ltd as ISO 639-6 Registration Authority, BSI as ISO 639-6 Maintenance Agency, ISO 639 JAC for all ISO 639 Alpha three coded languages, OmegaWiki for community supplied information.
• To facilitate the needs of linguistic communities where a trusted party is required to act as intermediary. 
• To research, facilitate and construct information on the world’s language and speech communities providing the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights in written, spoken and signed modes of communication.
• To facilitate the multilingual Internet by providing detailed information on the writing systems of the world that will include mapping to the Unicode standard.

Membership of the WLDC is open to anyone showing a genuine interest in contributing towards the aims and objectives of the World Language Documentation Centre.  Minimal membership fees are proposed and these fees will be used to further the aims and objectives of the WLDC and the end user communities that they serve.

www.thewldc.org