Documentation of Nalu, Tristao Islands, Guinea (Atlantic, Niger-Congo)

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.

Nalu (ISO 639-3: naj) is an endangered Atlantic language spoken on the littorals of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. In Guinea, most Nalu speakers live north of the river Nuñez on the Tristão islands, located in the sub-prefecture of Kanfarandé, prefecture of Boké. Across the border in Guinea-Bissau, speakers of Nalu inhabit the Cacine estuary in the Tombali region. Nalu is predominantly spoken by an adult population (>30 years) and counts significantly less than 22,000 speakers. This project aims at creating a record of this little studied and little known group of people. It will produce a dictionary, annotated audio and audiovisual data of texts from different genres, cultural activities etc., six short documentary films, an orthography, and a grammatical sketch. Primary investigator: Frank Seidel

Project Details


Location: Guinea Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): University of Florida Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £97,322.00 Commencement Date: 01/2006
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