Ninde documentation and orthographic design project
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.
This project is concerned with the documentation of Ninde, a threatened Central Malekula (Oceanic) language spoken in five villages in the South West Bay region of Malekula island of Vanuatu. Ninde is almost entirely undocumented; there is a sketch grammar based on data from one young speaker. The language is spoken by at most 1000 people, and in four of the five villages is not being transmitted to children. One of the immediate goals of this project is the community-led creation of an orthography and possibly even pedagogical materials in order to facilitate Ninde-language education and preserve traditional knowledge.
Primary investigator: Caroline Crouch
Project Details
Location: Vanuatu, Melanesia, Oceania
Organiser(s):
Endangered Languages Documentation Programme
Project partner(s): University of California, Santa Barbara
Funder(s):
Arcadia
Funding received: £5,534.00
Commencement Date: 01/2012
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