About our Project

Mediating Multilingualism is a project supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund and initiated by the University of Highlands and Islands (UHI) Language Sciences Institute in collaboration with Amity University Haryana (AUH), with the aim to document some of our endangered and indigenous languages and help save them from going extinct. The project has received support from the Scottish Funding Council under the UK’s Official Development Assistance (ODA). This activity is taken up in the spirit of collaboration funded and encouraged by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).

The full title of the project is “Mediating multilingualism in a local community context – a sharing of innovation and expertise between Scotland, Ireland, and India.”

PROJECT HOST : Read here : https://mediatingmultilingualism.com/project-host/

For OUR PROJECT ON Visual Ethnography, watch VIDEOS at

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZF6aBECmn3Js2wJKQE5pGg/videos

ISLAND VOICES:

The Island Voices/Guthan nan Eilean is an ongoing project initially supported by the European Union, now operated independently in close association with the University of the Highlands and its Gaelic college, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, as well as the Soillse inter-university Gaelic research network. The project primarily started in order to document the Scottish Gaelic language. As per the Scotland Census, only 1.1 percent (58000) people above 3 years old were able to speak the language which was slightly decreased from the 2001 census. 

The council areas with the highest proportions able to speak Gaelic were Eilean Siar (52 per cent), Highland (5 percent) and Argyll & Bute (4 percent), as mentioned in the Census report.

The Island Voices website contains news about the project in both English and Gaelic. The host page contains links to YouTube videos of conversation in Gaelic.

During the First Phase (Series One) of the project, 40 videos of the Contemporary Hebridean Life and Work were presented for the language learners in English and Gaelic. This work was further extended during the Series Two of the First Phase. The videos of Contemporary Hebridean Life and Work were classified into 3 divisions namely Outdoors, Generations and Enterprise.

During the First Phase, the videos were interviews given by locals which included information about cookery demonstration, process of peat cutting, life journey in College, Community newspaper etc. 

During the Second Phase, Community Creation and Individual Creation were incorporated. Norman Maclean, famous writer, spoke about his memories and impressions of Gaelic life in Glasgow and the Hebrides from the middle of the Twentieth Century till the present day which was recorded by Gordon Wells in April 2016. He also created a collection of 6 stories named Sgeulachdan Thormoid which are linked to YouTube. These recordings were made in October 2015 during Wells’ visits to his hometown.

The website also contains information about The Great War, a Gaelic Journey and other projects.

Information about the project is also translated in different languages like Bangla,  Basque, Hindi, Greek, Hungarian, Irish etc. and can be found under the Other Tongues tab.

The videos in this website are formatted as ‘Clilstore’ units and each word is linked to online dictionaries. The introductory website link is https://guthan.wordpress.com/about/ 

Centre for Endangered Languages (CFELs) under the UGC:

CFEL/CEL or Centre for Endangered Languages are research units in nine Central Universities of India, funded by The University Grant Commission.

The CFEL of Visva Bharati University located in Shantiniketan, Birbhum is the nodal centre. The Centres are an Initiative by UGC to protect the dying languages in India via field surveys, research, and Language Documentation.

The other universities in this initiative are Central University of Karnataka, Central University of Kerala, Indira Gandhi National Tribal University in Madhya Pradesh, Guru Ghasi Das University in Chhattisgarh, Central University of Jharkhand, Tezpur University in Assam, Rajiv Gandhi University in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim University. 

The main objective of CFELs is to incorporate Interdisciplinary research to protect the Endangered Languages from extinction. The study includes researchers from Anthropology, Folklore, Sociology, Field Linguistics, Literature and other related subjects. The Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL) was instituted by the Ministry of Education (Government of India) in 2013 and they have divided Endangered Languages into five zones namely Northern zone, North East zone, East Central zone, West Central zone and Southern zone. The work of CFELs are mainly focussed on these zones.

Read more about individual CFELs at the following websites :

Tezpur University: http://www.tezu.ernet.in/wmcfel/

Sikkim University, Gangtok : https://cel.cus.ac.in/

Rajiv Gandhi university, Itanagar : https://rgu.ac.in/centre-for-endangered-languages/#:~:text=The%20Centre%20for%20Endangered%20Languages,RGU%20is%20its%20multidisciplinary%20approach.

Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi : http://cuj.ac.in/CEL/index.php

Indira Gandhi National tribal University, Amarkantak: http://www.igntu.ac.in/dept_ling.htm

Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan : http://www.visvabharati.ac.in/CFEL.html

Central University of Kerala, Kasargod : https://www.cukerala.ac.in/Index

University of Kerala, Trivandrum : http://celk.in/

Assam University, Guwahati : http://www.aus.ac.in/indian-comparative-literature/centre-for-studies-in-endangered-languages/

Jadavpur University, Kolkata : https://sites.google.com/view/srielislljadavpuruniversityeve/home

Click to access 1406001456-1.pdf

CLILSTORE:

Clilstore is a store of copyleft content and language integrated learning materials as described in their official website.

Clilstore is a store of audio and visual learning units where every word is linked to an automatic dictionary. Clilstore units are extremely useful and helpful in learning a new language. Clilstore is an open source platform for storing Language Materials.

Initially Clilstore was developed by Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig. This was a part of the TOOLS project(2012-14) funded by the European Union. The project was led by Kent Andersen in Denmark and other partners were from Denmark, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain and EuroCALL.

Currently Clilstore is being developed by Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye. It is a part of the COOL project (2018-21) funded by the European Union. This project is led by Ana Gimeno at Universitat Politècnica de València in Spain and assisted by Kent Andersen at FAZ in Denmark, Caoimhín Ó Dónaill (Ulster University) in Ireland, and other partners from Kroggårdsskolen in Odense(Denmark), ETI Malta (Executive Training Institute), and Liceo Scientifico Statale Elio Vittorini in Milan(Italy) as mentioned in their website.

Clilstore uses Wordlink which is a WWW based facility that automatically links arbitrary web pages and each word of these pages are linked with online dictionaries. Wordlink  sequentially uses Multidict which is a multiple dictionary finding device that makes use of freely available online dictionaries. Wordlink and Multidict were both developed simultaneously as a part of the POOLS-T project (2008-2010) funded by European Union and they are still developing as a part of the current COOL project.

Read more : https://multidict.net/clilstore/about.php