Documentation of Baskeet song, verbal art and ceremonial language

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide to for the linguistic documentation of endangered language and knowledge. Grantees create multimedia collection of endangered languages. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) housed at the library of SOAS University of London.

Baskeet (bst) is a little known Omotic language spoken by about 60,000 speakers at the fringes of the Ethiopian highlands in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Region of Ethiopia (6.34N 36.61 E). The project focuses on the linguistic and ethnographic documentation of endangered literary genres, namely songs, poems, prayers and ceremonial speech, which are being abandoned in the course of rapid socio-cultural changes. The project will, firstly, produce a multi-media documentation (text, audio, video) of these culturally emblematic endangered domains and, secondly, contribute to a longer-range project of an extensive documentation of Baskeet with a dictionary at its core. Primary investigator: Yvonne Treis

Project Details


Location: Ethiopia, Eastern Africa, Africa Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): Research Centre for Linguistic Typology Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £128,042.00 Commencement Date: 01/2007 Project Status: Active
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