(Laugher)
D: Hey, Christine! Ch: Cool, cool, yeah.
So first off, I'm proud of us for getting YouTube working.
(Laugher) We've really come far this year.
Well, yeah.
So thank you all for joining us today.
We're just going to quickly go over
the language Revitalization accelerator applications.
So the Language Revitalization Accelerator is a now annual cohort program
that Wikitongues puts together.
Each grant recipient receives $ 2000 U.S.
They also have access to the Wikitongues network.
So linguists and other people on the advisory council
and then webinars and certain networking events throughout the year.
This year we'll be funding around 20 or up to 20 projects.
So we want to take some time to go over what we look for in grant applications,
how we've chosen successful grant applications in the past
with some examples for you,
and then we'll take some time at the end to answer any questions that you have.
Cool! Do you want to kick us off, Daniel, and talk about what we look at,
from like a general top-level perspective and we go through all the applications?
D: Absolutely.
So.
The goal of the language revitalization accelerator
is to make it easier for people to launch
their own language revitalization projects,
their own mother tongue projects in their communities.
And the challenge with that is we're basically standardizing something
that cannot be too standardized and needs to still be locally relevant
because every community has different needs
and language revitalization takes a lot of different forms.
And so while we're kind of in the early stages of this program,
one of the things that we're trying to do is to make sure that each cohort has
a certain geographical diversity,
as well as an urban-rural diversity and a diversity of ages,
so that we're sure that our approach to language revitalization
can apply to as many different kinds of people as possible
in as many different contexts as possible.
We also learn a lot from the people who we work with.
And so
the more different kinds of language revitalization projects
we have in the accelerator,
the better we can support people the following year.
So even though we don't have an exact reserved number of slots
for each continental region,
we are trying to make sure that every year we UNDIST with people from across Africa,
across Europe, Asia, the Pacific, the Americas,
We want to make sure that we have a geographically diverse cohort.
More specifically, when we're looking at a successful application,
we're interested in projects
that are framed in a long-term context.
One of the first questions is what do you want for your language in ten years?
And the reason we ask that question because language revitalization
is generational and you are not going to revitalize your language in one year.
What you can do, though, is have a vision for the next ten years,
which is a slice of a generation.
And then that can be broken down into more bite-sized goals for one year
because the accelerator lasts one year.
This is why the next question is what do you want to do for your language
between April 2023 and April 2024?
And so projects that aren't trying to do a million things
but instead, focus on one thing tend to be more successful.
And
we can more confidently help someone who wants to do one thing.
If you're trying to build a dictionary in your language, we can make sure
to pair you with a linguist who works on lexical elicitation.
However, I don't think that in the course of a year
we can help you develop an orthography for your language,
build a dictionary of your language,
develop a grammar sketch for your language.
You can't do everything.
The other thing that we're that we look for
are applications that think not just about language documentation,
but language revitalization more broadly.
Documenting your language is a part of revitalizing your language.
But documentation alone is not language revitalization.
Language revitalization is a community process.
And so if your goals include engaging your community in a certain way,
so perhaps if you are working on documentation
like you're recording oral histories in your language.
If you are enlisting a group of five young people in your community
to work with elders to record the oral histories,
what you're doing is effectively
kind of putting young people in immersion scenarios
where they learn from elders, where they learn about their language,
and that is more revitalization oriented
than you alone going around with a camera and recording people.
So that is to say that
and it's also important to point out
that language revitalization might not include language documentation.
Maybe your language is already really well documented
and you are going straight to community work.
You're setting up a school for children.
You're setting up an immersion program for adults.
You're creating original content in your language.
But whatever you're doing is,
it's important to think about how you are going to engage your community
and how many people in your community you hope to engage,
because that is the kind of community aspect of language revitalization
that's really, really important.
So from the top, we are looking for projects
that have a kind of a very strong and achievable focus for one year,
but that are thought about
in the context of the long-term nature of language revitalization.
And we're looking for projects
that very explicitly engage your wider community.
Ch: Yeah, those are great points.
And one other I would add that we get asked a lot is:
"Do I need to be a speaker of this language?"
So we do prioritize mother tongue and ancestral heritage language learners.
So if the language is your mother tongue, we will prioritize your application.
Or if the language is one of your ancestral or heritage languages
that you do not have the opportunity to learn.
Perhaps your language was forced abuse
or it's not taught in the school system in your area
or various other reasons.
We will prioritize those applications.
But that's not to say that you can't apply even if those situations do not fit you.
We've had a lot of people apply as researchers.
One person in our cohort this year is not an ancestral language later himself,
but works closely with the community and has partnered with the community
that he's working with.
If you are not a speaker of that language and it's not your heritage language,
then we recommend partnering with someone within the community
and applying through a joint application
so that you can build out that community approach
that Daniel was mentioning before.
D: Right. Because a language revitalization project
has to be led by the community whose language it is.
As an outsider, you might be able to help,
but if you haven't already partnered with that community
and demonstrated that they want your help,
then you can confidently say you're going to be able to revitalize their language.
So… Em…
People who aren't from the original communities are welcome to apply
as long as they have already partnered with that community
and are working closely with a member of that community.
Ch: Yeah, and that can be for academics, researchers
and also people interested in language learning and things of that nature.
So to give some examples, we chose examples from last-years cohort,
from the ongoing cohort right now, from the 2022 to 2023 cycle.
And we're going to go through the questions, the larger
narrative type questions on the application
and show you examples of successful applications last year.
I will share my screen quickly.
And we can run through these.
So the first question that is narrative,
a long tax writing out is: “What is our relationship to that language?”
So this person last year kept this short and sweet,
but really covered their background
and what they've also been doing in their language activism work
over the past year.
So they wrote, I am the youngest for a 1993 native speaker of this language,
and I'm a language revitalization activist.
I've learned it from my grandmother and I teach it to other people.
I'm also a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of … .
I redacted all information throughout this
so we're not putting anyone on blast, but a Ph.D. candidate.
And they've successfully graduated since then. So congrats!
During my work to keep my language alive,
I have documented about 1600 hours of conversations in this language
with about 100 speakers.
So again, nice, concise,
tells us about their relationship a bit more about who they are.
It's an ancestral language, clearly,
because they learned it from their grandmother,
potentially a mother tongue.
We know they're working with this at an academic level
and they've done their own activism and revitalization work already.
So we know that they'll be committed and excited about joining this cohort
and putting the grant to use.
The next question is: “What are your long-term language goals?”
As Daniel mentioned, this is not something
that will be implemented in the one year that you're working with us.
We know $2,000 can only go so far
and it can help kickstart a language revitalization program
or help put some more momentum
into an ongoing exercise or revitalization program.
But this is just to give us a general idea of what's going on in your community.
Maybe we have other grants or people you can partnership with in the future
and just gives us an idea of the scope and the situation.
So I put two examples here of last year
and we don't have to read them out completely.
But the first one says: “In order to revive our language,
we're planning to compile and publish a dictionary over the next two years
and its textbooks over 2 to 5 years. Here are our goals over 5 to 10 years.”
And they gave us four very specific goals.
This person during their one year project with us,
their project was to publish a dictionary
and they gave very specific metrics for that.
So this long term language goals actually shows how this cohort
will help in moving forward with their long term language goals.
And then the second example is a bit more of a narrative answer,
and it says, To revitalize our language,
we first urgently need to facilitate the passing on of language from the elders
and this phase of the work.
Our focus is on both digital preservation
and building pathways to connect elders to apprentices.
We will love to build out a more formal program to match teachers and students
both in group settings and one on one.
And so we liked this answer because it talks about now,
but also talks about how those are building blocks and stepping stones.
So building out more formalized programs in the future.
Next we have, “What are your language goals for 2023 to 2024?”
Of course, that's the question for this year, last year was 2022.
So someone for this year's cohort wrote,
"Our goal for 2022 to 2023
is to collect and revitalize the names of flora and fauna in our language
with the help of community members in our region specifically.
And they gave us a very specific metrics.
So as Daniel mentioned at the beginning, we want we're really looking at projects
that have one or two attainable goals within a year.
That's why we ask about your long-term goals and then your goals for this year.
So if you want to compile a dictionary, it's helpful to it.
We want to compile a dictionary
with X amount of words in our terms or lexicon phrases.
Your projects might change over the course of the year, and that's understandable.
But if we have some type of metric that we can go on and benchmark that helps us
and it also helps you in your project
to not have too much on your plate throughout the year.
So say also maybe you want to work on children's books.
So in your application for "What are your language goals for 2023?"
Instead of writing, "I want to compile children books for kids in my community",
you can write, "I want to compile five children's books for kids in my community,
and that helps us give a benchmark
and stay focused and help your project plan throughout the year.
So this example is great because it gives us
four people that we're working to men and women.
We're going through eight communities.
We're naming local flora and fauna in this language.
Then they also had more metrics of like how many terms they want to put together.
We have two more to go over and then we'll move to your questions.
So how will you achieve your language goals?
This person wrote, "The implementation of materials will take place during
summer, and fall 2022.
The curriculum will be incorporated into the educational programs
at five schools in these communities in our region.
So again, we have some good metrics.
We also know the timeline, "summer and fall",
and then they go through each of the seasons
throughout this one year cohort and what they'll do during those seasons.
So in the summer they're going to again using the curriculum.
There will be workshops where parents will be separated into these ….-structured
ethnographic focus groups, and they created these interviews
that were then transcribed to collect data during the teaching year.
During the regular session, the teachers then will incorporate those lessons,
focusing on a certain amount of hours per week,
and then we'll implement stuff from these focus group interviews
and it continued on throughout the winter and next spring and summer.
And then lastly, we ask about other attempts to revitalize your language.
Are there a lot of other projects going on?
Are there no projects going on? If there are a lot other projects?
Why does your project stick out or why is it filling a gap
that's been opened with other revitalization projects?
So this person approached this
by talking about other revitalization at times that have been ongoing.
So they wrote, There have been several attempts at documenting our language.
However, much of this documentation was only accessible to academics,
not for providing resources to the community.
So it goes and shows us why their project
will stand out compared to other projects in the past and why it's really needed.
"Our language was traditionally spoken all along the area …"
that I redacted (Chuckles).
"Today, there are less than 10,000 speakers"
And then why their project is needed,
"Our project is needed because ex…
need to be able to tell our own history in our own language
on our own terms and using our own resources
that do not reside under the authority of another institution.
Disconnection from language and culture means identity loss.
So it's important that we provide people in the diaspora
a way to reconnect with their cultural heritage.
And so they continued.
So this one really spoke to us because they do talk
about what other projects have taken place, and why their is needed.
And we get more of a story of the region
and why this is important to community members.
So those are all the main questions of the application.
The rest are more data collecting and about you.
You will notice on this year's application, we do have a question
asif your project is related to Wikimedia.
We have a new track within next year's grant cycle.
We received funding from the Wikimedia Foundation.
So we have a certain amount of cohort slots allotted for Wikimedia projects
and that can be related to a few different areas of the Wikimedia Foundation.
And so feel free to apply for Wikimedia specific projects this year.
D: And one of the reasons we worked
with the Wikimedia Foundation to start this track
is last year we received a lot of applications
for people who wanted to use Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation platforms
as a language revitalization tools.
So there were people who wanted to create a version of Wikipedia in their language.
And this is a very kind of unique and specific approach
to language revitalization that we wanted to be able to support.
But it requires a certain specialized technical support
that we didn't have last year, but thankfully we will have this year.
Ch: Yeah! Okay.
I'm sure we've received a few questions on YouTube,
but while I go check those.
Daniel, we got a couple of questions on our Instagram account this morning,
so I'll pass those over to you and then start checking our YouTube stream.
So one of the questions was
'Will the cohort be available in other languages besides English?"
D: The cohort will be available primarily in English and Spanish this year.
A certain like basic level of English
is good for being able to benefit fully from all of the resources that we provide.
We're working on localizing this in more and more languages.
So last year, this current cycle is available primarily in English.
Next year will be in English and Spanish.
And we're hoping the year after that we can add more languages.
That said, this year we have a member of the cohort who does not speak English.
One of her collaborators, a linguist working in her community, does.
And they applied together
and they attend all of our cohort calls together.
So.
It is not necessary to be fluent in English by any means.
Some English proficiency will be helpful,
but if someone else in your community is an English speaker,
then that is fine.
And we're going to be offering a good deal of Spanish language support this year.
And in fact, if you go to the application page
for the Language Revitalization Accelerator as of yesterday,
there is also a translation in Spanish
and you can now apply fully in Spanish as well.
And we will do our best to subtitle this video in a few different languages
so that more people have access to it.
Ch: Yeah.
And so if you know someone who's interested in applying
or would be interested in applying, you believe,
and they do not speak English, please still encourage them to apply.
We will not turn down someone's application
just because they don't speak English.
They can even apply in different languages if they need to.
If if they don't feel comfortable writing out their answers in English,
or they can partner with someone to write out those answers,
we are very happy to have people of all languages to join our cohort,
but we just won't be able to provide full translation in all the quarterly check ins
and things like that for certain languages.
But we will do our best.
Webinars we will get subtitled.
For example, last week we had a webinar for our current cohort members
and it was conducted in English,
but some of our cohort members preferred to use Spanish or French.
So we're currently captioning that video in Spanish and French
and it should be available next week so they can play it back and watch it.
And we are going to start incorporate like some more live transcriptions
and things like that.
So there are some some great technology to use with Zoom,
but you will get benefit most from the cohort
or be able to use all the facilities of the cohort,
if you do have a somewhat worked
or somewhat conversational level of English,
but we will adapt as necessary and work with you
so you can be a part of it.
D: Yeah!
And our long term goal is to localize this in as many lingua franca as possible.
So, in an ideal world, being available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese,
Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Swahili.
But there are limitations on that as we grow.
So we thank you for your patience.
If English is a challenge for you,
we are working on this and will improve this from year to year.
Ch: Yeah! This past cohort, we really tried to go all in from the beginning
and did not realize that live translating or live interpreting
was more of a thing than we expected, especially on Zoom.
So if anyone is very good at working live interpretation in Zoom,
please reach out to us over email.
I would love to talk to you about it
and get tips on how to make that run smoothly and navigate that.
So if anyone has done that before, please email us at hello@wikitongues.org
and I would love to have your advice and pick your way with some questions.
Yeah, so we've gotten some more questions.
Someone wrote in our YouTube channel as an example,
"So if I applied for this,
I'd have a much better chance to work on Irish or Scots Gaelic
as opposed to Manchu, since both of the former are ancestral,
and Manchu isn't.
D: That really depends on what your relationship to Manchu is.
If you are a linguist, for example,
working closely with a member of the Manchu community
who wants to revitalize their language, and you're there to support and help them,
you might actually have a better chance applying
for Manchu
than Scottish Gaelic
or Irish,
depending on what you want to do with Scottish Gaelic or Irish.
So it really, really depends...
Again, what's important is a relationship to the community,
whether that means it's your ancestral language
or you are working closely with someone whose ancestral language it is.
Right? And then also the uniqueness of your project.
So I think one of the challenges that you might have in applying for Irish
is that this is a language that obviously needs support,
but it's also a language that has a lot of active revitalization projects.
Including a national government that supports it, right? So...
You would have to demonstrate a certain uniqueness of your project
that would be relevant.
So it really depends on the uniqueness of each project
and your relationship to Manchu if it's not your ancestral language.
But the answer is no, not necessarily.
Yeah, so one other question we have is, "Could this count for college stock?"
That depends on your school.
I don't see why not in certain situations, that really depends on the class.
So if you have a language documentation class and you need to do field work,
I'm sure you could talk to your professors about it and get credit for that.
In terms of like an internship,
I don't think you could count as an internship,
although maybe it depends on your where you're from.
It depends on the country you're from
and what the situation is with like grant receiving a grant money
and what the taxes are and if there is any.
Reason, you know, like any blockage
between like an educational and receiving a grant, I'm not sure.
It really depends on where you're based in the situation,
but I think there is a possibility of it getting counted as like a project
or even being able to use the output of what you create during this grant
as a school project.
There's no reason you kind of write like you will be able
to keep all the data for yourself, will have access to things,
but all the output is copyrighted
and stays within your name or within the community,
whatever you create or whatever you agree to from the beginning.
So you can use it for other purposes also.
Okay. And someone asked if we could share the slides.
Yes. There is... Let me make sure.
Let me get that. I think that link should work.
So you should be able to see a view-only version of the slides there.
I hope that works for you.
Okay, and one more question someone asked on our Instagram.
if they can apply for a project that's focused on language normalization.
D: So Christine and I actually spoke about this not long before the stream.
You certainly can apply for a project focused on linguistic normalization
as we understand the term 'linguistic normalization'
is part of language revitalization.
Because after your community reclaims their language,
they need to feel comfortable and proud using their language in their daily lives.
And in some cases, you may also want to educate outsiders about your language.
A really interesting example of this is in San Francisco.
You are starting to see signs
in the Ohlone language that teach non-indigenous people
about the indigenous language of San Francisco
and in the San Francisco Bay area.
And this is partly to normalize the language,
but also to educate people who aren't Ohlone about Ohlone, right?
So there are all kinds of projects like this in Cornwall, England.
There were efforts to get restaurants and bars
to put their bathroom signs and menus and stuff like that in Cornish.
to normalize the language and raise awareness about it.
So this is a part of language revitalization in many cases,
and we see no reason why you couldn't apply for a project
that was focused on normalization goals.
Ch: Yeah! So it looks like that's all of our questions.
If you have any other questions, you can send us an email.
It's in the slides. It's also hello@wikitongues.org.
Or you can write us on social media: on Twitter, Instagram,
all of those places, YouTube, but we're quickest to reply by email.
So just send us an email to ask any questions
if you've already sent in your application this year,
but some ideas popped in your head after watching this live stream,
send us an email and we can share your answers with you.
And you can update them.
We can go through one edit round
so that you can see them based on the questions
that were posed in this live stream and the answer it's received.
Yeah, so thank you all for tuning in.
We're very excited to receive your applications.
You have until January 23rd, 2023.
There'll be lots of reminders until then and the time deadline is 11:59 p.m. GMT.
Of course that changes based on where you are in the world
by the end of the day.
GMT is when they're due, so we'll be sending out reminders.
Feel free to ask any questions about the application
and we're excited to go through them and see what ideas you all have.
D: Fantastic. Thank you, everyone.
Or in one of my ancestral languages, Yiddish,
"A sheynem dank!" (Thank you very much!)
Ch: Kiitos! (in Finnish: Thank you!)