Wikipedia:LDTC Wikipedians

LDTC Wikipedians

LDTC Wikipedians are a group of Wikipedia editors who are active or former members of the Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC).

The Language Documentation Training Center (LDTC) is a collaborative language documentation project involving linguists and speakers of various languages, including some languages which lack other documentation.^[1]^[2].

About LDTC

LDTC was founded in 2004 by linguistics graduate students at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.^[3]^[1] It is an entirely student run organization with a focus on introducing native speakers of underdocumented languages to basic concepts and techniques of language documentation. Each semester, graduate students from the Department of Linguistics are paired with speakers of under-documented languages with the goal of making information about these languages available and accessible. There is a basic workshop series, which presumes no prior linguistics knowledge, and has the creation of a language website as an end product. There is also an advanced workshop series for participants who have completed the basic workshop series; in the advanced workshops, participants choose their own end product. Weekly workshops are held during the semester, typically on the UHM campus. In the workshops, the language experts learn how to document and preserve their language, and the language mentors get to apply their linguistic knowledge and gain hands on experience in a language documentation project. LDTC has also inspired a sister organization at UH Manoa, the Sign Language Documentation Training Center (SLDTC), which is designed to help participants document their sign language through video recordings and archiving.

Language Experts

Language experts are fluent or heritage speakers of lesser-documented languages or dialects. Language experts are paired with linguistics graduate students known as "Linguistic Mentors". Throughout the semester language experts learn about basic linguistics concepts that they incorporate into a published product about their language (for the basic workshops, the final product is a website). Although the linguistic mentors assist in making recordings, compiling and adding data to existing archives (Kaipuleohone and ScholarSpace), and data analysis; the final form of the published product is ultimately decided by the language expert.

Linguistic Mentors

Linguistic mentors are typically graduate students from the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's Department of Linguistics^[3], although anyone in the Honolulu area with an interest in linguistics is welcomed to join.

Language Products

Since first being created, LDTC has created websites for over 80 languages and dialects.^[3] These websites contain a variety of information on the language being documented, including syntax, phonology, and word lists. In addition to linguistic descriptions, the websites contain culturally relevant content including songs, stories, or recipes. There are six additional language websites being created during the Fall 2017 semester including Banjarese, Hokkien, Kirundi, Marshallese, Telugu, and Xiang Chinese. Advanced workshop participants have gone on create childrens' books in their language, present at linguistics conferences, and apply for and receive grants to do larger language documentation projects.

Workshops

Weekly workshops are held during the school year, where presentations are given on a variety of linguistic concepts, and language experts and mentors meet to learn from one another, make recordings, and work on their language products.

Wikipedia edits

LDTC Wikipedians typically work on Wikipedia articles related to linguistics. They often focus their Wikipedia edits on language pages, especially those of smaller- or lesser-known languages. LDTC Wikipedians may also make new language pages for languages that do not yet have Wikipedia articles. Finally, LDTC Wikipedians make edits and/or create pages for notable linguists, especially those who may have been passed over due to gender-, racial-, ethnic- or other bias.

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