Documenting Seke Stories

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.

Seke, a little-documented Tibeto-Burman language of the Tamangic branch, has at most 700 speakers from five villages of the Mustang District in northern Nepal. Today the language is highly endangered, with few speakers under 40 years old, massive outmigration of all but the elderly, and even older speakers shifting overwhelmingly to Nepali. Building on an ongoing Columbia University Field Methods class, ”Documenting Seke Stories" aims to create an annotated corpus of video and audio recordings including folktales, oral histories, and a wide range of other narratives reflecting the lives and stories of Seke speakers. Primary investigator: Ross Perlin

Project Details


Location: Nepal, Southern Asia, Asia Organiser(s): Endangered Languages Documentation Programme Project partner(s): Endangered Language Alliance Funder(s): Arcadia Funding received: £9,983.00 Commencement Date: 01/2015 Project Status: Active
Project owner? Update this project



Related Projects

Archive Collage

Understanding Mandate Palestine through the publications and archive of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem

This project digitised 33000 pages of rare books (1619-1950) and archives (1919-1950) from the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, preserving endangered materials on M…

Explore project
EAP1402 Pub003

19th-century documents from the Peruvian asylum el Manicomio del Cercado

The Victor Larco Herrera Hospital in the centre of Lima, Peru, was closed in 1917. Its archives, dating back to 1859, consist of medical documentation as well as administrativ…

Explore project
EAP1306 Silk Museum

The Caucasian Silk Circle: Digitising Photo Collection of the State Silk Museum in Georgia

The State Silk Museum of Georgia holds the only documentary evidence of the practice of sericulture in the 19th century. Taken during expeditions of the Caucasian Sericulture …

Explore project