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22 April 2012
Languages: The Digital Sounds of Bésiro (Chiquitano)
A group of linguists in Santa Cruz, Bolivia recently started a project called Monkox Bésiro as a way to revitalize the Bésiro (Chiquitano) language through the use of digital citizen media tools. In addition to creating Twitter and Facebook accounts to encourage participation among their community, they have been utilizing audio podcasts to share the sounds of this native language.
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10 April 2012
Living Tongues: Endangered Language Technology Kits To The Rescue
Living Tongues Institute for endangered languages acknowledges that with the death of every endangered language the collective history of an entire people dies with it. To address this issue the institute scientifically documents endangered languages, and assists communities with maintaining and revitalizing knowledge of their native languages through ICT and community driven tools. It is raising funds to secure recording equipment and computers for 8 indigenous language activists in India, Papua New Guinea, Chile and Peru.
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11 March 2012
Singing The National Anthem In Their Own Language (Part 2)
In our second feature on the examples of citizen media videos of national anthems sung in indigenous or less spoken languages, we see that in many countries it is prohibited by law to sing national anthems except the national language(s). However that does not stop the ordinary people to use citizen media to sing their national anthem in their own language.
22 February 2012
Languages: International Mother Language Day in Mali
Mali recently celebrated the annual International Mother Language Day on February 21 in Bamako. Blogger and Rising Voices grantee recipient Boukary Konaté discusses his hopes for the role of technology in promoting the use of the 13 indigenous languages in Mali.
15 January 2012
Language Tools: Virtual Keyboards & Transliteration
Imagine you write in a non-Latin based script and you are stuck in a foreign airport internet kiosk trying to figure out how to email in your language. Probably the PC you are using has a different set of keyboard other than qwerty and their is no multilingual support in the OS. There are some online tools which can come to your rescue.
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2 January 2012
Rising Voices Year in Review 2011
Rising Voices looks back at some of the highlights from our work in 2011, including welcoming new grantees, forging new partnerships, and organizing citizen media outreach events. We would also like to thank all those that accompany us on our mission of working towards a global online space much more representative with greater participation by all.
27 December 2011
9 December 2011
Languages: Content Aggregation For Underrepresented Voices
During the Online Dialogue “Using Citizen Media Tools to Promote Under-Represented Languages” some interesting issues came up including the need for aggregation of online contents to preserve less spoken languages. One example is the Welsh language tweet aggregator Umap Cymraeg which has a database of more than 2000 Welsh language Twitter users online to see the true nature of the Welsh discussions and what issues are most popular.
29 November 2011
Languages: Online Activism To Save Chakma Language
The Chakma language is an Indo-European language spoken by approx. 310,000 people in southeast Bangladesh and another 300,000 in India in the Eastern parts of India. It is written using the Chakma script which is dying because many Chakmas do not have the opportunity to learn their language in schools. But Chakma people are using social media and web technologies to preserve and spread their language.
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22 November 2011
Languages: Promoting Indigenous African Language Films
An effective way to preserve indigenous languages and save them from total extinction is to encourage the production of indigenous language films. The 5th Festival of Indigenous African Language Films was held from 2-5 October 2011, in Akure, Nigeria. Making of films in indigenous languages will expand the coding, documentation, and communicative capacities of the languages and link African diaspora to their roots.
