Palash Nath

With the advent of the digital world and its phenomenal growth in terms of innovation and practical utility, it has started to establish its mark in every aspect of human lives. Such digital advancement has substantially and positively influenced the ever-expanding horizon of research, innovation, modelling, preservation and dissemination of knowledge in both Humanities, and science. This paper deliberates on the influence and role played by various digital tools in the specific field of documentation and preservation of endangered languages under the broader scope of Documentary linguistics. This paper will throw lights, in particular, on the digital interventions in terms of recording, annotating and preserving language data in digital format and its impact on the methodology while drawing on the experience of the author in conducting a digital documentation of the Tai Khamyang language in Upper Assam. Finally, the paper also briefly discusses some challenges in availing and using digital platforms and tools in the process of language documentation and archiving.

The mode of collaboration has paved the way for developing a meaningful synergy which culminates into mutual benefits both for the researcher and the researched. In the context of linguistics, the advent of community-based language research has gone beyond the template of the traditional researcher-centric approach to a more equitable sharing of responsibilities, duties and ownership in a language development program between the researcher and the community members. This paper discusses three related concepts i.e. community based Language Research, Mother tongue based Multilingual Education and collaboration. It discusses various aspects of collaboration in successful development and implementation of a mother tongue based multilingual education through community based approached in the specific context of the Singpho mother tongue based multilingual education program.

Orthography is referred to as a system of representing a language through the written form. More specifically it refers to the use of graphemes or symbols which correspond to each of the sounds in the language and also to the set of conventions for using those graphemes to represent the language meaningfully in written form. This paper presents an understanding of orthography and the various important aspects related to it. The paper, in this context focuses on various types of orthography and also briefly discusses the issues related to the development of orthography of minority languages spoken by indigenous communities.

The issue of endangerment or loss of a great number of languages and its impact on human civilization has taken the centre stage in the academia since 1990s. Besides linguists and language researchers, academics from other branches of knowledge such as anthropology, history, political science, social science etc has started taking interest in to this issue. Keeping in mind the crucial role played by language at both the personal and societal level in the mankind, the loss of a single language and its resultant impact has intrigued academics from diverse fields of study to look at this issue. It has prompted the learned body of academics, researchers and community members to take urgent and necessary steps, if possible at all, to preserve these languages. This paper investigates into the concept of language endangerment and discusses the various reasons behind such endangerment. Besides it also cites two widely discussed models of looking into different levels of endangerment of languages.