Recitation of oral texts by the late Latte
Apa, senior ritual practitioner of the Thangmi community, India.
An urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record
For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Performances of these creative works - which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives - are increasingly endangered. Globalisation and rapid socio-economic change exert complex pressures on smaller communities, often eroding expressive diversity and transforming culture through assimilation to more dominant ways of life. As vehicles for the transmission of unique cultural knowledge, local languages encode oral traditions that become threatened when elders die and livelihoods are disrupted. Of the world's over 6,000 living languages, around half will cease to be used as spoken vernaculars by the end of this century > more
Events
- On 16 March, Professor Hugh Brody (Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies, University of the Fraser Valley) will visit Cambridge to give a lecture entitled Land, Truth, Water: Finding the ≠Khomani Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari > more
News
- March 2010: Project team involved in establishing the Cambridge Endangered Languages and Cultures Group (CELC), and featured in the Cambridge Alumni Magazine.
- February 2010: Project receives a British Academy Small Research Grant to continue work on a database of endangered languages.
- Project covered in the Independent on Sunday (PDF), in La Repubblica (PDF), PhysOrg, WorldHum and OurFuturePlanet. Listen to a radio interview on FM4 ORF Austrian Radio, on Newstalk with Sean Moncrieff, on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show As It Happens, on Hungarian public radio, MR1-Kossuth and on Radio Free Europe.
- Project team invited to present at the Department of Linguistics Seminar at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London; the Golden Web Living Traditions Programme; Recovering Voices at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution; the Arctic Centre in Finland and at the Centre for Anthropology, British Museum, London, in October and November > more
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