writing systems

The 85th Annual Meeting of the LSA (Pittsburgh, 2011) included a symposium on creating orthographies for unwritten languages. Creating an orthography has important implications for both speaker community access and long-term preservation and access to linguistic data. The organizers of the symposium have made the materials (abstracts, handouts, and slides) available here: http://www.sil.org/linguistics/2011LSASymposium/

The Endangered Languages and Dictionaries Project at the University of Cambridge investigates ways of writing dictionaries that better facilitate the maintenance and revitalization of endangered languages. It explores the relationship between documenting a language and sustaining it, and entails collaboration with linguists, dictionary-makers and educators, as well as members of endangered-language communities themselves, in order to determine what lexicographic methodologies work particularly well pedagogically for language maintenance and revitalization.