Isabella Victoria Wolfe (NYU Gallatin) | The Language Conservancy | Indiana, USA
It has been almost eight weeks since I first started at The Language Conservancy. I’m still working on Cowlitz Salish’s online dictionary, but I have started coding for any discrepancies in translation and field notes. Most of the Cowlitz recordings for the online dictionary were recorded in 1967 by an American linguist named M. Dale Kinkade; so some entries don’t necessarily reflect their intended English translation equivalent.
For Apsáalooke (Crow), our lead Linguist is getting ready to travel to Crow Nation for additional eLearning materials. In the meantime, I have been developing print outs of the lessons with the rest of the Crow team for Crow Nation members to follow when recording.
This week and the remainder of my internship, I have been audio-editing recordings of Hoocąk. Hoocąk is in the Siouan language family; these recordings are for a new eLearning website for Ho-Chunk Nation in Wisconsin called Hoit’e Woiperes “Knower of the Language”.
I have de
veloped a truly tender appreciation for the data science that is incorporated into building these dictionaries and eLearning software; the categorization of these languages’ lexical information is both tedious and time consuming, but nonetheless, extremely rewarding when I have the privilege of working with such a lovely team of Linguists. At first, it was quite difficult to navigate, but TLC has been really informative for coding toward language processing and the implications of grammar in designing these dictionaries. A topic that was brought up recently while editing a paragraph for one of TLC’s dictionaries was the implications of “of” when referring to the location where an Indigenous language is spoken due to U.S. states being historically colonial. It is important to acknowledge the Tribe or Nation before anything else; to have these communities be the forefront of their resources. I would like to think that I am consciously aware of these implications, but TLC has made me realize just how important every minute detail is in this field of work.
Sincerely,
Isabella V.W.