A new website for the Ron-Kulere speaking world

A month ago I launched Ron-Kulere meeting place, a new website for the Ron-Kulere speaking world. Some of you may already have noticed it and may have wondered what is the aim of this new thing. I thought I should post a short notice here to explain a bit.

What is it ?

Like the current form of Chadic Newsletter, Ron-Kulere meeting place is a weblog, i.e. besides some general static pages it mostly consists of entries (posts) which are displayed in reverse chronological order. I have chosen this form because it allows me to add more things on an irregular basis, whenever I find the time. Thus, Ron-Kulere meeting place will keep growing.

What can you find here?

Ron-Kulere meeting place combines text, images, audio material and links to other web pages related to its topic. Besides information on Ron-Kulere languages, culture and history, people can also find material in Ron-Kulere languages, both written and recorded. Thus, you can read a Ron story and at the same time listen to it.

Who is it for ?

Ron-Kulere meeting place is for everyone (not just the scientific world) who is interested in the culture, history and language of the Ron-Kulere. Above all, it is intended for the Ron-Kulere speakers themselves. Of course I know that the number of Ron-Kulere speakers who have access to the world wide web is extremely small. But they do exist and I hope that they will find this blog interesting and will spread the word to others.

Possible criticism

I know very well that from a scientific point of view, the way I present the facts and materials is imperfect. Linguists will criticize me for not using the IPA system of transcription and for not marking tone. Also, the quality of many of the audio recordings is quite poor and wouldn’t be good enough for signal processing. Many of these recordings were done by Ron speakers using low quality tape recorders. Given the chance (and money) to do more research on Ron, today I would try to use the latest digital recording equipment.

But then, I think an imperfect presentation of my data (will it ever be perfect?) is still better than no presentation at all.

I will be happy to read – and answer – any questions and comments.

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Chadic recordings and transcriptions at LACITO archives

Recordings and transcriptions in Chadic and other languages can be found at the LACITO archives. The archive is an ongoing project of the research group “Langues et Civilisations à Tradition Orale (LACITO)” of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Here is what the creators of the archive write about it:

The LACITO Archive provides “free access to documents of connected, spontaneous speech, mostly in “rare” or endangered languages, recorded in their cultural context and transcribed in consultation with native speakers. Its goal is to contribute to the documentation and study of a precious human heritage: the world’s languages. At present, the archive contains some 195 documents in 43 languages.

Sound recordings are available in both uncompressed (wav) and compressed MPEG I Layer 3 (mp3) formats. In order to listen to the recordings, a Media Player needs to be installed.

Unfortunately, so far, only one Chadic language — Ouldeme — is represented in the LACITO archives with a recording and transcription: Le conte de la tête ronde/ Story of the round head . In order to see the special characters, you need to have a UNICODE type font on your PC.

The creator of this resource, Véronique de Colombel, has her own webpage at LACITO, where one can find links to all her Chadic publications.

Chadic links collection: feel free to contribute

In one of the first posts, I mentioned Web resources for African Languages, a private website run by Jouni F. Maho. There, one can find links to online materials on many Chadic languages, including articles, dictionaries, sound files and word lists. It is organised by subgroups and languages and it keeps growing. If you look for any Chadic online materials, it is the first place to check.

I have started collecting my own list, using the social bookmarking service Del.icio.us. My own Chadic links can be found at http://del.icio.us/chadicnewsletter.

Maybe you have already noticed the new section titled “Chadic Links“. Feel free to contribute to this list. In order to do this, all you have to do is open an account with Del.icio.us (which is free of charge) and save your own Chadic links there. It would be great if we could build up a larger collection together.

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Web resources for African Languages

At Web resources for African Languages, a private website run by Jouni F. Maho, one can find links to online materials on many Chadic languages, including articles, dictionaries, sound files and word lists.

• what is available on Hausa
• what is available on other Chadic languages
• what is available on other Afroasiatic languages

In the next few days, we will have a look at some of the materials found on this website in more detail.

A new year and a new start

Chadic Newsletter is a publication that has a long tradition (Read our About page). After appearing in printed form for more than 30 years, in the past few years it was continued electronically, in form of a website which was updated from time to time.

In the meantime, new technologies have been developed. In the past few years, weblogs have become a very popular way of online publishing. Writing a weblog entry is very simple — nearly as simple as writing an email message — and it is an excellent way of sharing information quickly.

Therefore, starting today, Chadic Newsletter will be published in the form of a weblog, which will carry the name Chadic Newsletter Online.

We hope that our readers will accept this new means of publication. We are very eager to read your comments. A very nice and useful feature of weblogs is that you can add your comments right at the bottom of each post.

Best wishes for a happy and successful year 2007 to all of you!