We are happy to share a newly translated resource from the Endangered Languages Project and the First Peoples' Cultural Council: an Igbo translation of Culture Camps for Language Learning: An Immersion Handbook. 

Language and culture immersion camps are a highly successful tool for language revitalization - there are examples of community language camps all over the world. They usually combine land-based learning with traditional activities, games, and the building of community relationships, all within a language immersion setting. 

This handbook is intended to be a practical tool for camp organizers, staff, Elders, community members, teachers and anyone else involved in language and culture immersion camps. It includes key points and details for each step of the entire process of planning and carrying out a language and culture immersion camp.  

Language camps can be organized and tailored to communities' specific needs, often without much funding, and with full community control over the process. This makes language camps a very appealing and feasible language revitalization activity in many areas of the world. Igbo is one of the largest languages in Nigeria, and this handbook will offer useful guidance to not only Igbo communities, but smaller language communities who are multilingual in Igbo.

This handbook was originally developed by the First Peoples' Cultural Council in British Columbia, Canada, for First Nations communities. This version has been fully translated into Igbo, as well as localized with images, activities, and suggestions relevant in Igbo-speaking contexts. It was translated and adapted for Igbo-speaking communities by ELP volunteer Onyinye Favour Chibueze, and designed and illustrated by Chinedu Daniel Okeke. 

We hope this handbook will be useful for language revitalization work in Nigeria and beyond.  

You can download the handbook by clicking on the thumbnail below:

📢 Are language camps being held in your community? Did you find this handbook useful in your language revitalization efforts? Would you like to see this handbook in your language? We would love to hear from you! Please reach out to us at feedback@endangeredlanguages.com .

We're hiring! Applications for ELP's fall 2024-spring 2025 internships are now open. 

If you are passionate about supporting language revitalization, great at gathering and sharing knowledge and stories, skilled at organizing and supporting volunteers, and/or a tech-savvy digital resource manager, we'd love to hear from you!⁠

ELP is seeking 3 interns for the 2024–2025 academic year (September 2024–March 2025). Interns will contribute to developing our web community and online resource library, growing and managing ELP’s volunteer program,
gathering and sharing stories about language work, and more.

We’re a small organization committed to mobilizing capacity for Indigenous and endangered language communities to achieve their language goals, making knowledge about language work accessible to those who need it, and fostering relationships between people working to support language diversity.

These are part-time (10 hours/week), paid contract positions. The internship duration is from September 2024 through March 2025, with a break in the December-January holiday period. ELP is a fully remote organization; applicants located anywhere in the world are eligible and encouraged to apply.

Learn more about the positions and apply by August 8 at https://bit.ly/ELPinterns2024 ! ⁠

In February and March 2024, ELP hosted the first annual Ready to Revitalize, an 8-week online course in project planning for language revitalization. It was an honor to gather with some truly dedicated language champions from around the world, share knowledge, and build skills and connections to support their language work. 

Ready to Revitalize grew out of the annual Language Documentation Webinars which ELP has been hosting, in partnership with the Language Documentation Training Center, since 2019. These 8-week webinar series share introductory skills in language documentation with hundreds of learners around the world, and each year, they conclude with one session on language revitalization. This session is always extremely popular, and each year, participants have requested more learning opportunities in language revitalization. 

So, in 2023, the ELP staff began designing a separate 8-week course in language revitalization, with the same goals as the documentation webinars: to share practical, usable knowledge in support of language work. We wanted the course to be open to anyone in the world, with no prior experience or knowledge required - everyone from absolute beginners to experienced community revitalization practitioners was invited to apply. The weekly topics included:
 

• Week 1 : Introduction and Getting to Know Each Other
• Week 2: Language Planning, Strategy, and Visioning
• Week 3: Language Revitalization Methods
• Week 4: Collaborative Work and Partnerships
• Week 5: Funding, Human Resources & Material Resources
• Week 6: Language and Place
• Week 7: Language and Technology
• Week 8: Participant Presentations

When we announced Ready to Revitalize, we were overwhelmed by the interest in the course. We designed the program for 20 people, to ensure it was a small enough group that everyone could comfortably participate and get to know each other. We expected a few dozen applications at most - instead, more than 400 people applied to participate in the course. It was very difficult to choose among the hundreds of wonderful language champions who applied, but in the end, we invited a cohort of 20 people from 18 countries, with a wide variety of interests, skills, and experiences. We chose participants according to a few general criteria. We wanted this course to be available to people who had limited or no access to other learning opportunities in language revitalization; who had a clear idea or goal for language revitalization work in their communities; and whose situations were particularly urgent for revitalization work (such as a severe language endangerment situation, or a context of political or social oppression). But they all had one thing in common: a deep commitment to uplifting their languages and communities, and a desire to grow their skills in language revitalization. 

“I have been in this language [revitalization] program for a long time in isolation. My voice was not loud enough to be heard from a distance. With ELP I think they heard my voice.” -Gibrilla Kamara, Mani, Sierra Leone

For 8 weeks, participants met weekly on Zoom to learn, share their experiences, and build connections with each other. A key part of the course was building relationships among everyone in Ready to Revitalize. Every week, participants spent time in small group discussions, sharing their own experiences and perspectives across borders, and finding inspiration and support from their peers. This sense of community and solidarity is at the heart of ELP’s work, and we are overjoyed to have been able to create a safe and meaningful space for language champions to learn from each other. 

“It's been super to see such amazing teamwork among all of the ELP staff, and to meet others working actively and passionately. Knowing this is a worldwide movement is one thing, but starting to feel part of an international community is another.” -Jo-Anne Ferreira, Trinidadian French Creole, Trinidad and Tobago

But beyond sharing usable knowledge and building connections, Ready to Revitalize also provided participants with firsthand experience in envisioning, planning, and carrying out a revitalization project - and hands-on practice in writing grant proposals. From the first week, participants began devising a concrete project plan, thinking about questions like “what does my community need to move forward in language work right now?”, and “what realistic paths might bring my language community closer to our goals?” From there, they drafted more detailed project proposals, created estimated budgets, and thought through the ethical dimensions of the work they would undertake. By the end of the course, participants had created a fully fleshed out revitalization project plan, and written a grant proposal to submit to ELP. 

“I learned how to verbalize a plan of action, discuss, and listen. It gave me a sense of confidence in going forward and also an excuse to get started!” -Megan Gourd, Northern Paiute - Gidutikad Band, USA

We are very happy that this year, we were able to offer mini-grants to Ready to Revitalize participants, to support the revitalization projects they so carefully developed over the past two months. In the coming months, we will share about some of these projects*, and highlight the incredibly creative, innovative, and inspiring ways that course participants are working to revitalize their languages.

“Understanding that I can work with other people interested in revitalizing my language but most important, that our effort can spread beyond our local place, this is the most important thing I learned. Thank you.” -René Oswaldo González Pizarro, Ayuuk, Mexico

We offer our sincere thanks to our partners at the First Peoples’ Cultural Council for making it possible to offer funding for these small projects. Most of all, we want to thank the participants for sharing their time, their experiences, their knowledge, and their aspirations during this course. The ELP team learned a great deal from offering this course for the first time. Thanks to our experiences, and the insights and feedback shared by participants, we are looking forward to hosting an even better Ready to Revitalize at the beginning of 2025. 

It was a privilege and a joy to share this space with such amazing language champions, and we cannot express this more beautifully than one of the course participants did:

“The format used is more like learning circles, which we in the Pacific Islands refer to as ‘storying corners’, but I would rather use the analogy of ‘traffic junction’ or ‘intersection’ conversations. We are passing through a traffic congestion and happen to meet in the intersection waiting for the traffic to clear so we can pass through. While we are waiting, we engage in a dialogue on language revitalization, and this brief temporal space becomes a useful insightful juncture in our busy schedule about our own projects. Life is a journey that often takes us to paths where we cross with other people, and this is one of them - where the virtual space has been a brief interlude to reflect, learn and impact ideas where possible, with others we are most fortunate to meet. It was a very sacred temporal virtual space of learning for me because of respect and open dialogue.” -Course participant*, Papua New Guinea

*Not all places in the world are safe or welcoming for language revitalization work. It is of paramount importance for us to protect the safety and privacy of participants, so some projects and names will not be shared publicly.

by Beulah Waritimi

Food is a multi-faceted tool. Not only is it essential for our survival, it can be described as a vehicle for helping us understand or formulate our individual and group identity. Through preparing, serving, and eating food, we are able to express and create connections that are instrumental in helping us develop our own identity and establish our identity within a group or community. In this blog post, I’d like to share a little of my own journey with language revitalisation and food. 

Growing up in a multicultural and culinarily diverse country such as Nigeria, food as a big part of identity has certainly been my story. I was always surrounded by the sweet and tantalising aromas of my mother’s cooking that would envelop the entire house. As a child, I remember running straight to the kitchen when I could hear the pounding of pina beribá and boru with our wooden mortar and pestle. These ingredients would later transform into a soft pliable doughy texture that would be submerged in the most fragrant and rich soup, using your hands to pull it apart. This dish is synonymous with my childhood, and the joyous experience of a home-cooked meal that celebrated the ingredients indigenous to the Niger Delta region. 

As I’ve been on my own journey of language reclamation, I’ve been examining the relationship between food and language and how that can be instrumental in the reclamation of the Izon language for myself and my family. 

As part of this journey of language reclamation, I was afforded the opportunity during my ELP internship to host a Zoom cooking class with my grandma, through which she taught me how to make kekefịyàị, a dish that is integral to Izon cuisine. 

Adding fụ́ (salt) to our kekefịyàị

This experience was incredible because not only was it an introduction to the master-apprentice method of language learning, but it was also a moment to share my culture with my fellow interns. In the course of the class, my grandma and I were able to teach the ELP team Izon cooking vocabulary such as “Fụ́” which means salt and “Ịmbele” which translates as delicious. The team also had the opportunity to ask my grandma questions about Izon culture and her experiences growing up as an Izon woman in Nigeria. Although we attempted to have the cooking session in Izon, there was never a feeling of disconnect between my grandma and I and the ELP team. It was so comforting to realise that food can be a unifying tool, crossing boundaries and borders, and paving new ways for conversation. 

As someone who thinks food is not just a source of nutrition but a catalyst for language revitalisation, I am excited to see the ways in which I can continue to engage with food on an individual and communal level within the scope of language revitalisation. 

What would a blog post about food be without a recipe? Here is how to make a vegan kekefịyàị, using my grandmother’s recipe. 

Vegan kekefịyàị

Ingredients

2 unripe plantains 

½ white onion 

2 tbsp of palm oil 

½ tsp of dry pepper powder

1 can of chickpeas (we are using chickpeas to replace the seafood traditionally in kekefịyàị)

3 tsp of dried mushroom and nori powder 

1½ cups of water 

1 vegetable stock cube

Instructions 

1. Peel your plantain and slice diagonally or into circles and set aside. 

2. Chop/dice your white onion and set aside.

3. Bring a medium-sized pot to your stove and pour in your water on medium/low heat.

4. Add your sliced plantain and can of chickpeas.

5. Then, add your white onion, palm oil, dry pepper, mushroom powder and vegetable stock cube.

6. Add a pinch of salt to taste. 

7. Leave to cook with the lid partially on for about 25-30 minutes. At this point, the sauce should have thickened and the plantain should be soft and easy to cut through. 

8. Serve hot and enjoy!  

    

    

   Our finished vegan kekefịyàị. Ịmbele!

   
   

ELP intern Akano Johnson Adewale spoke with linguist Dr. Bolanle Arokoyo, who has worked for many years on the documentation and revitalization of Nigerian languages. In this interview, she shares about her path and experiences working with Nigerian languages, and her advice for linguists interested in documentation and revitalization. 

Dr. Bolanle Arokoyo

Could you tell us a bit about you and what you do?

My name is Bolanle Arokoyo, a linguist and an Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Nigerian Languages, University of Ilorin in Nigeria. Over the years, I have worked on the documentation, description, and revitalization of many Indigenous languages here in Nigeria. 

Why and how did you become interested in the documentation, description, and revitalization of Nigerian endangered languages?

Personally, I have always loved language, and that's why I found myself in linguistics in the first place. However, my interest in the documentation and revitalization of Nigerian Indigenous languages began 20 years ago when I lost my Mom. In the preparation for the burial, I wrote my tribute in English and at one point I discovered it would be interesting to have a copy too in my dialect Owé, and in the course of doing this, I discovered I was able to pass across my message more in Owé than in English. Which means language is more than a means of communication, it encompasses a knowledge system. On the day of the burial, I read the tribute on behalf of my family in English, and I read the Owé version after, but before I could finish, almost everyone present was in tears, meaning this had a great effect and was able to convey more information than English. At that time, Owé was endangered because of the presence of the standard Yoruba and English. That day, I made up my mind to work on the documentation and revitalization of Owé, which was already endangered, so it could be passed on to younger generations. 

However, for Olukumi, I came across the language about 10 to 15 years ago. I became interested in it because the name "Olukumi " in my dialect Owé means "my friend". So when I heard about that, I became curious, did a lot of research and came to the knowledge that it is spoken in Delta State. Its location in an area predominantly dominated by Igbo and Isan languages led me to start working on it to prevent it from extinction. 

How many languages have you had the opportunity to work on?

For the most part, I have worked on standard Yoruba, but also its dialects, especially Owé, which is my dialect spoken in Kogi state in Nigeria. Then I worked extensively on the Olukumi language spoken in Delta State. 

Language in this part of the world is sensitive. What strategies do you employ to engage and collaborate with language communities and native speakers to attain this much success?

Language belongs to the people. Owé is my dialect which made it easier for me, but despite that, I still make my intention about the language clear to relevant stakeholders. For the Olukumi, the community sees me more as a member of the community than a linguist. They accepted me as theirs. I make sure I build that relationship with the community to the point that, if you are a linguist or researcher going to that community, the Ọlọ́zà(King) will ask if the person knows me and refers such person to me first. 

I must say you have to build a relationship, with that they won't see you as an external or stranger but as someone interested in the development of their language. 

What impact do you believe language documentation and description have on the preservation and revitalization of endangered languages?

At this moment, many African languages are understudied. These languages rely on oral traditions, they don't have a standard orthography and aren’t put into written form. Talk more about the dialects of these languages! To revitalize most of these languages, more documentation is needed. In fact, description and revitalization efforts will help African languages because documenting and archiving them is not enough to preserve languages. Until we put more effort into description and revitalization, languages won't feel the impact of linguists.

What are the benefits the language community normally derives from you working on their language? 

To Olukumi for instance, my work has been able to bring visibility to the language. I was also able to develop a bilingual dictionary which fosters learning of the language. Also, we developed language teaching and learning materials coupled with other revitalization efforts for the intergenerational transfer of Olukumi. 

What challenges do you often encounter when working with speakers of endangered languages?

I think I have not really faced any significant challenge working on Owé and Olukumi because I had built good relationships with the community. They keyed into my goal for their language and this has given my work a free flow. 

How do you navigate cultural differences during a documentation project?

When you are not a member of a community, there will definitely be cultural differences. The major factor to take note of is cultural awareness. Once you are aware, you will respect their culture. Majorly, for anyone embarking on such a project, do research and ask questions to know the do's and don'ts of the community. 

Can you share any success stories or examples where your documentation effort has made a significant impact on a particular endangered language community?

I was in Olukumi for the launching of the Olukumi language dictionary and I was accommodated in the apartment of one of the native speakers. The daughter of my host took the dictionary in amazement and began to learn words in Olukumi. She was happy and that was the first time she would see material on Olukumi. This gave me a lot of joy knowing my work is invaluable. Also, my work has given Olukumi a lot of visibility and has attracted tons of researchers to the language. In the past, people tended to mix Olukumi with Lukumi, but my work on it shows the difference between them.

Do you feel fulfilled or derive joy in this area of Linguistics you have chosen?

Yes, I do. I feel fulfilled to have been able to contribute my quota to these languages especially when I look at what I have done even in terms of collaboration with top organizations like the Living Tongue Institute for Endangered Languages in the USA who partnered with me. I have 2 dictionaries on their platform and we are still working to further improve them. So that's big and I am happy with what I have done so far. I hope to do more.

Any words for linguists who are interested in language documentation, description, and revitalization of endangered languages?

It is a really good area of linguistics, but you have to be really interested and passionate about it. It is not for the fainthearted because it is not something anyone can do today and leave. It is a long-term commitment. It takes a lot of time, but your legacy will speak for life. We do encourage our undergraduate students to pursue a career in this aspect so basically it is a fantastic area that needs more people.