Memoria del pueblo Kamentsá, a través de la lengua viva Memory of the Kamentsá people through the living language.
The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides grants worldwide for the documentation of endangered languages and knowledge. Grantees create audiovisual collections with transcription and translations of endangered languages and practices. These collections are preserved and made freely available through the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR).
| Kamentsá [ISO 639-3 kbh, Glottocode cams1241] is a language isolate spoken in Colombia by only around 500 people, out of which a smaller fraction (about 80) are fluent speakers, users of the language in wider community contexts. Approximately 7,800 people ethnically identifies as Kamenstá, and most of the members of the group are organized into political representations who have raised awareness towards the vulnerability of the language and the cultural practices endangered because of the imminent lost of the language. This proposal is presented by members of the Kamentsá community of speakers from the Valle del Sibundoy, in the highlands of the Putumayo, in south Colombia. This project aims to collect narratives from a variety of discourse genres focusing particularly on narratives and work with the elder generation of Kamenstá speakers. As the years past by, we lose about 4 to 5 Kamenstá elders, who are the generation where the language is stronger. With this project we aim to emphasize on the collection of life stories, stories of the community, origin narratives, poetry, music, and instruction discourse that is no longer being transmitted to the younger generation and currently held in the knowledge of the elders. Part of the material collected will be transcribed (using the Kamentsá orthography), and translated into Spanish, with the corresponding historical and cultural data of the collected texts as well as metadata. |
Project Details
Location: Colombia, South America, Americas
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): Fundación PDEL - Para la Preservación de la Diversidad Étnica y Lingüística
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: 9,861.00 EUR
Commencement Date: 09/2023
Project Status: Active
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