South Sudan adopts English as its official language

The young nation of South Sudan has chosen English as its official language but after decades of civil war, the widespread learning of English presents a big challenge for a country brought up speaking a form of Arabic.

BBC news

JISC purchases Foreign Broadcast Information Service (free access)

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been purchased by JISC Collections and is available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils.

Covering the period 1974–1996 in the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Eastern Europe, the JISC selection of the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports includes a wealth of transcripts of broadcasts and news from around the world all translated into the English language.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

Area studies to lose direct cash

The British Academy is to stop direct funding through its Learned Society Programme. In a letter to the directors of the six societies involved, which represent "area studies" in the UK, it says the programme will end in 2012. The African Studies Association, the research committee of the Association for South-East Asian Studies, the British Association for South Asian Studies, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, the Joint Initiative for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Society for Libyan Studies receive a total of about £150,000 a year from the academy. A spokesman for the academy said the learned societies would still be able to compete for other sources of funding after 2012.

Times Higher Education

Endangered Languages Week 2008

30th April to 8th May 2008, School of Oriental and African Studies
Meet an Endangered Language
Half of the world's 7,000 languages are under threat from larger languages and are not being passed on to children. During Endangered Languages Week you can come face-to-face with an endangered language, learn about where it is spoken and why it is threatened, experience its culture, and pick up some basic words and phrases. Each session lasts 30 minutes and will be held at 1pm on R201 (near the 2nd floor stairs, SOAS main building).

Wednesday 30th April
Guernesias - spoken on Guernsey, Channel Islands
Guernesiais, a variety of Norman French, is highly endangered. According to the 2001 census, there were 1,327 fluent speakers or just 2.22% of the population (and 70.4% of them were over 64). This presentation will include a short language lesson, some cultural images and videos, and discuss recent examples of revitalisation measures in support of the language.

Thursday 1st May
Huave – spoken in southern Mexico
The Huave (Ikoots ‘all of us’) are a minority indigenous people of Southern Mexico comprising 17,000 people settled in four villages on the Pacific Ocean coast. Until a decade ago the Huave language (ombeayiüts ‘our mouth’) was spoken in four, quite divergent, varieties. At present only one of these varieties is still used by everybody, including children, in the village of San Mateo. In another village (San Dionisio) the local variety is obsolescent, and demands to start a revitalization project are currently emerging. In the other two Huave villages local varieties of the language have been replaced by Spanish. This presentation will illustrate aspects of Huave language and culture.

Tuesday 6th May
Talyshi – spoken in northern Iran
Talyshi is an Iranian language spoken in northern Iran near the Caspian Sea and the border with Azerbaijan. The language shows massive dialect variation and is under pressure from Persian. This presentation will discuss the language situation, and present an overview of Talyshi culture and language use.

Wednesday 7th May
Kolyma Yukaghir - spoken in Siberia, Russia
Kolyma Yukaghir is spoken by about 40 people who live in the north-eastern part of Siberia, on the banks of the river Kolyma. The language is linguistically isolated, and little is known of the history of the people who speak it. This will be a brief introduction to Yukaghir language and culture, including images, original music, and learning some basic speech patterns.

Thursday 8th May
Janonke – spoken in Guinea, West Africa
Jalonke is an endangered Mande language mainly spoken in the West African country of Guinea. The taster will give a brief introduction to the language situation and then focus on one of the areas especially elaborate in West African culture and crucial for every fieldworker and language learner to master, ie. greetings.


For more details and a full programme of Endangered Languages Week visit www.hrelp.org/elw