Language Revitalization Accelerator Q&A

Our annual language revitalization accelerator provides funding, training, and networking to up to 20 grassroots language revitalization projects. Watch our livestream to learn more about the application process and what we look for when choosing the grant recipients.

(Laugher)

D: Hey, Christine!
Ch: Cool, cool, yeah.

So first off, I'm proud of us
for getting YouTube working.

(Laugher) We've really come far this year.

Well, yeah.

So thank you all for joining us today.

We're just going to quickly go over

the language Revitalization
accelerator applications.

So the Language Revitalization Accelerator
is a now annual cohort program

that Wikitongues puts together.

Each grant recipient receives $ 2000 U.S.

They also have access
to the Wikitongues network.

So linguists and other people
on the advisory council

and then webinars and certain
networking events throughout the year.

This year we'll be funding
around 20 or up to 20 projects.

So we want to take some time to go over
what we look for in grant applications,

how we've chosen successful
grant applications in the past

with some examples for you,

and then we'll take some time at the end
to answer any questions that you have.

Cool! Do you want to kick us off, Daniel,
and talk about what we look at,

from like a general top-level perspective
and we go through all the applications?

D: Absolutely.

So.

The goal of the language
revitalization accelerator

is to make it easier for people to launch

their own language
revitalization projects,

their own mother tongue projects
in their communities.

And the challenge with that
is we're basically standardizing something

that cannot be too standardized
and needs to still be locally relevant

because every community
has different needs

and language revitalization takes
a lot of different forms.

And so while we're kind of
in the early stages of this program,

one of the things that we're trying to do
is to make sure that each cohort has

a certain geographical diversity,

as well as an urban-rural diversity
and a diversity of ages,

so that we're sure that our approach
to language revitalization

can apply to as many different
kinds of people as possible

in as many different contexts as possible.

We also learn a lot
from the people who we work with.

And so

the more different kinds of
language revitalization projects

we have in the accelerator,

the better we can
support people the following year.

So even though we don't have
an exact reserved number of slots

for each continental region,

we are trying to make sure that every year
we UNDIST with people from across Africa,

across Europe, Asia,
the Pacific, the Americas,

We want to make sure that we have
a geographically diverse cohort.

More specifically, when we're looking
at a successful application,

we're interested in projects

that are framed in a long-term context.

One of the first questions is what do you
want for your language in ten years?

And the reason we ask that question
because language revitalization

is generational and you are not going
to revitalize your language in one year.

What you can do, though,
is have a vision for the next ten years,

which is a slice of a generation.

And then that can be broken down
into more bite-sized goals for one year

because the accelerator lasts one year.

This is why the next question is
what do you want to do for your language

between April 2023 and April 2024?

And so projects that aren't
trying to do a million things

but instead, focus on one thing
tend to be more successful.

And

we can more confidently help someone
who wants to do one thing.

If you're trying to build a dictionary
in your language, we can make sure

to pair you with a linguist
who works on lexical elicitation.

However, I don't think
that in the course of a year

we can help you develop
an orthography for your language,

build a dictionary of your language,

develop a grammar sketch
for your language.

You can't do everything.

The other thing
that we're that we look for

are applications that think
not just about language documentation,

but language revitalization more broadly.

Documenting your language
is a part of revitalizing your language.

But documentation alone
is not language revitalization.

Language revitalization
is a community process.

And so if your goals include
engaging your community in a certain way,

so perhaps if you are working
on documentation

like you're recording
oral histories in your language.

If you are enlisting a group of five
young people in your community

to work with elders
to record the oral histories,

what you're doing is effectively

kind of putting young people
in immersion scenarios

where they learn from elders,
where they learn about their language,

and that is more revitalization oriented

than you alone going around
with a camera and recording people.

So that is to say that

and it's also important to point out

that language revitalization
might not include language documentation.

Maybe your language
is already really well documented

and you are going straight
to community work.

You're setting up a school for children.

You're setting up
an immersion program for adults.

You're creating original content
in your language.

But whatever you're doing is,

it's important to think about how
you are going to engage your community

and how many people
in your community you hope to engage,

because that is the kind of community
aspect of language revitalization

that's really, really important.

So from the top,
we are looking for projects

that have a kind of a very strong
and achievable focus for one year,

but that are thought about

in the context of the long-term
nature of language revitalization.

And we're looking for projects

that very explicitly engage
your wider community.

Ch: Yeah, those are great points.

And one other I would add
that we get asked a lot is:

"Do I need to be a speaker
of this language?"

So we do prioritize mother tongue
and ancestral heritage language learners.

So if the language is your mother tongue,
we will prioritize your application.

Or if the language is one
of your ancestral or heritage languages

that you do not have
the opportunity to learn.

Perhaps your language was forced abuse

or it's not taught in the school
system in your area

or various other reasons.

We will prioritize those applications.

But that's not to say that you can't apply
even if those situations do not fit you.

We've had a lot of people
apply as researchers.

One person in our cohort this year is not
an ancestral language later himself,

but works closely with the community
and has partnered with the community

that he's working with.

If you are not a speaker of that language
and it's not your heritage language,

then we recommend partnering
with someone within the community

and applying through a joint application

so that you can build out
that community approach

that Daniel was mentioning before.

D: Right. Because a language
revitalization project

has to be led by the community
whose language it is.

As an outsider, you might be able to help,

but if you haven't already partnered
with that community

and demonstrated that they want your help,

then you can confidently say you're going
to be able to revitalize their language.

So… Em…

People who aren't from the original
communities are welcome to apply

as long as they have already
partnered with that community

and are working closely
with a member of that community.

Ch: Yeah, and that can be
for academics, researchers

and also people interested in language
learning and things of that nature.

So to give some examples, we chose
examples from last-years cohort,

from the ongoing cohort right now,
from the 2022 to 2023 cycle.

And we're going to go through
the questions, the larger

narrative type questions
on the application

and show you examples
of successful applications last year.

I will share my screen quickly.

And we can run through these.

So the first question that is narrative,

a long tax writing out is: “What is
our relationship to that language?”

So this person last year
kept this short and sweet,

but really covered their background

and what they've also been doing
in their language activism work

over the past year.

So they wrote, I am the youngest for
a 1993 native speaker of this language,

and I'm a language
revitalization activist.

I've learned it from my grandmother
and I teach it to other people.

I'm also a Ph.D. candidate
at the Institute of … .

I redacted all information throughout this

so we're not putting anyone on blast,
but a Ph.D. candidate.

And they've successfully graduated
since then. So congrats!

During my work to keep my language alive,

I have documented about 1600 hours
of conversations in this language

with about 100 speakers.

So again, nice, concise,

tells us about their relationship
a bit more about who they are.

It's an ancestral language, clearly,

because they learned it
from their grandmother,

potentially a mother tongue.

We know they're working
with this at an academic level

and they've done their own activism
and revitalization work already.

So we know that they'll be committed
and excited about joining this cohort

and putting the grant to use.

The next question is: “What are
your long-term language goals?”

As Daniel mentioned, this is not something

that will be implemented in the one year
that you're working with us.

We know $2,000 can only go so far

and it can help kickstart a language
revitalization program

or help put some more momentum

into an ongoing exercise
or revitalization program.

But this is just to give us a general idea
of what's going on in your community.

Maybe we have other grants or people
you can partnership with in the future

and just gives us an idea
of the scope and the situation.

So I put two examples here of last year

and we don't have
to read them out completely.

But the first one says:
“In order to revive our language,

we're planning to compile and publish
a dictionary over the next two years

and its textbooks over 2 to 5 years.
Here are our goals over 5 to 10 years.”

And they gave us four very specific goals.

This person during their one
year project with us,

their project was to publish a dictionary

and they gave very specific
metrics for that.

So this long term language goals
actually shows how this cohort

will help in moving forward
with their long term language goals.

And then the second example
is a bit more of a narrative answer,

and it says, To revitalize our language,

we first urgently need to facilitate
the passing on of language from the elders

and this phase of the work.

Our focus is on both digital preservation

and building pathways
to connect elders to apprentices.

We will love to build out a more formal
program to match teachers and students

both in group settings and one on one.

And so we liked this answer
because it talks about now,

but also talks about how those
are building blocks and stepping stones.

So building out more formalized
programs in the future.

Next we have, “What are
your language goals for 2023 to 2024?”

Of course, that's the question
for this year, last year was 2022.

So someone for this year's cohort wrote,

"Our goal for 2022 to 2023

is to collect and revitalize the names
of flora and fauna in our language

with the help of community members
in our region specifically.

And they gave us a very specific metrics.

So as Daniel mentioned at the beginning,
we want we're really looking at projects

that have one or two
attainable goals within a year.

That's why we ask about your long-term
goals and then your goals for this year.

So if you want to compile
a dictionary, it's helpful to it.

We want to compile a dictionary

with X amount of words
in our terms or lexicon phrases.

Your projects might change over the course
of the year, and that's understandable.

But if we have some type of metric that
we can go on and benchmark that helps us

and it also helps you in your project

to not have too much on your plate
throughout the year.

So say also maybe you want
to work on children's books.

So in your application for
"What are your language goals for 2023?"

Instead of writing, "I want to compile
children books for kids in my community",

you can write, "I want to compile five
children's books for kids in my community,

and that helps us give a benchmark

and stay focused and help
your project plan throughout the year.

So this example
is great because it gives us

four people that we're working
to men and women.

We're going through eight communities.

We're naming local flora
and fauna in this language.

Then they also had more metrics of like
how many terms they want to put together.

We have two more to go over
and then we'll move to your questions.

So how will you achieve
your language goals?

This person wrote, "The implementation
of materials will take place during

summer, and fall 2022.

The curriculum will be incorporated
into the educational programs

at five schools
in these communities in our region.

So again, we have some good metrics.

We also know the timeline,
"summer and fall",

and then they go through
each of the seasons

throughout this one year cohort
and what they'll do during those seasons.

So in the summer they're going
to again using the curriculum.

There will be workshops where parents
will be separated into these ….-structured

ethnographic focus groups,
and they created these interviews

that were then transcribed to collect
data during the teaching year.

During the regular session, the teachers
then will incorporate those lessons,

focusing on a certain amount
of hours per week,

and then we'll implement stuff
from these focus group interviews

and it continued on throughout the winter
and next spring and summer.

And then lastly, we ask about other
attempts to revitalize your language.

Are there a lot of
other projects going on?

Are there no projects going on?
If there are a lot other projects?

Why does your project stick out
or why is it filling a gap

that's been opened
with other revitalization projects?

So this person approached this

by talking about other revitalization
at times that have been ongoing.

So they wrote, There have been several
attempts at documenting our language.

However, much of this documentation
was only accessible to academics,

not for providing resources
to the community.

So it goes and shows us why their project

will stand out compared to other projects
in the past and why it's really needed.

"Our language was traditionally
spoken all along the area …"

that I redacted (Chuckles).

"Today, there are
less than 10,000 speakers"

And then why their project is needed,

"Our project is needed because ex…

need to be able to tell our own history
in our own language

on our own terms
and using our own resources

that do not reside under
the authority of another institution.

Disconnection from language
and culture means identity loss.

So it's important that we provide
people in the diaspora

a way to reconnect
with their cultural heritage.

And so they continued.

So this one really spoke to us
because they do talk

about what other projects
have taken place, and why their is needed.

And we get more of a story of the region

and why this is important
to community members.

So those are all the main questions
of the application.

The rest are more data collecting
and about you.

You will notice on this year's
application, we do have a question

asif your project is related to Wikimedia.

We have a new track
within next year's grant cycle.

We received funding
from the Wikimedia Foundation.

So we have a certain amount of cohort
slots allotted for Wikimedia projects

and that can be related to a few different
areas of the Wikimedia Foundation.

And so feel free to apply
for Wikimedia specific projects this year.

D: And one of the reasons we worked

with the Wikimedia Foundation
to start this track

is last year we received
a lot of applications

for people who wanted to use Wikipedia
and other Wikimedia Foundation platforms

as a language revitalization tools.

So there were people who wanted to create
a version of Wikipedia in their language.

And this is a very kind of unique
and specific approach

to language revitalization
that we wanted to be able to support.

But it requires a certain
specialized technical support

that we didn't have last year,
but thankfully we will have this year.

Ch: Yeah! Okay.

I'm sure we've received
a few questions on YouTube,

but while I go check those.

Daniel, we got a couple of questions
on our Instagram account this morning,

so I'll pass those over to you and then
start checking our YouTube stream.

So one of the questions was

'Will the cohort be available
in other languages besides English?"

D: The cohort will be available primarily
in English and Spanish this year.

A certain like basic level of English

is good for being able to benefit fully
from all of the resources that we provide.

We're working on localizing this
in more and more languages.

So last year, this current cycle
is available primarily in English.

Next year will be in English and Spanish.

And we're hoping the year after that
we can add more languages.

That said, this year we have a member
of the cohort who does not speak English.

One of her collaborators, a linguist
working in her community, does.

And they applied together

and they attend
all of our cohort calls together.

So.

It is not necessary to be fluent
in English by any means.

Some English proficiency will be helpful,

but if someone else in your community
is an English speaker,

then that is fine.

And we're going to be offering a good deal
of Spanish language support this year.

And in fact, if you go
to the application page

for the Language Revitalization
Accelerator as of yesterday,

there is also a translation in Spanish

and you can now apply
fully in Spanish as well.

And we will do our best to subtitle
this video in a few different languages

so that more people have access to it.

Ch: Yeah.

And so if you know someone
who's interested in applying

or would be interested
in applying, you believe,

and they do not speak English,
please still encourage them to apply.

We will not turn down
someone's application

just because they don't speak English.

They can even apply in different
languages if they need to.

If if they don't feel comfortable
writing out their answers in English,

or they can partner with someone
to write out those answers,

we are very happy to have people
of all languages to join our cohort,

but we just won't be able to provide full
translation in all the quarterly check ins

and things like that
for certain languages.

But we will do our best.

Webinars we will get subtitled.

For example, last week we had a webinar
for our current cohort members

and it was conducted in English,

but some of our cohort members
preferred to use Spanish or French.

So we're currently captioning
that video in Spanish and French

and it should be available next week
so they can play it back and watch it.

And we are going to start incorporate
like some more live transcriptions

and things like that.

So there are some some
great technology to use with Zoom,

but you will get benefit
most from the cohort

or be able to use
all the facilities of the cohort,

if you do have a somewhat worked

or somewhat conversational
level of English,

but we will adapt as necessary
and work with you

so you can be a part of it.

D: Yeah!

And our long term goal is to localize this
in as many lingua franca as possible.

So, in an ideal world, being available
in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese,

Russian, Arabic, Indonesian, Swahili.

But there are limitations
on that as we grow.

So we thank you for your patience.

If English is a challenge for you,

we are working on this
and will improve this from year to year.

Ch: Yeah! This past cohort, we really
tried to go all in from the beginning

and did not realize
that live translating or live interpreting

was more of a thing than we expected,
especially on Zoom.

So if anyone is very good
at working live interpretation in Zoom,

please reach out to us over email.

I would love to talk to you about it

and get tips on how to make that
run smoothly and navigate that.

So if anyone has done that before,
please email us at [e-mail]

and I would love to have your advice
and pick your way with some questions.

Yeah, so we've gotten
some more questions.

Someone wrote in our YouTube
channel as an example,

"So if I applied for this,

I'd have a much better chance
to work on Irish or Scots Gaelic

as opposed to Manchu,
since both of the former are ancestral,

and Manchu isn't.

D: That really depends
on what your relationship to Manchu is.

If you are a linguist, for example,

working closely with a member
of the Manchu community

who wants to revitalize their language,
and you're there to support and help them,

you might actually have
a better chance applying

for Manchu

than Scottish Gaelic

or Irish,

depending on what you want
to do with Scottish Gaelic or Irish.

So it really, really depends...

Again, what's important
is a relationship to the community,

whether that means
it's your ancestral language

or you are working closely with someone
whose ancestral language it is.

Right? And then also
the uniqueness of your project.

So I think one of the challenges
that you might have in applying for Irish

is that this is a language
that obviously needs support,

but it's also a language that has
a lot of active revitalization projects.

Including a national government
that supports it, right? So...

You would have to demonstrate
a certain uniqueness of your project

that would be relevant.

So it really depends
on the uniqueness of each project

and your relationship to Manchu
if it's not your ancestral language.

But the answer is no, not necessarily.

Yeah, so one other question we have is,
"Could this count for college stock?"

That depends on your school.

I don't see why not in certain situations,
that really depends on the class.

So if you have a language documentation
class and you need to do field work,

I'm sure you could talk to your professors
about it and get credit for that.

In terms of like an internship,

I don't think you could
count as an internship,

although maybe it depends
on your where you're from.

It depends on the country you're from

and what the situation is with
like grant receiving a grant money

and what the taxes are
and if there is any.

Reason, you know, like any blockage

between like an educational
and receiving a grant, I'm not sure.

It really depends on where
you're based in the situation,

but I think there is a possibility of it
getting counted as like a project

or even being able to use the output
of what you create during this grant

as a school project.

There's no reason you kind
of write like you will be able

to keep all the data for yourself,
will have access to things,

but all the output is copyrighted

and stays within your name
or within the community,

whatever you create or whatever
you agree to from the beginning.

So you can use it for other purposes also.

Okay. And someone asked
if we could share the slides.

Yes. There is... Let me make sure.

Let me get that.
I think that link should work.

So you should be able to see
a view-only version of the slides there.

I hope that works for you.

Okay, and one more question
someone asked on our Instagram.

if they can apply for a project that's
focused on language normalization.

D: So Christine and I actually spoke
about this not long before the stream.

You certainly can apply for a project
focused on linguistic normalization

as we understand the term
'linguistic normalization'

is part of language revitalization.

Because after your community
reclaims their language,

they need to feel comfortable and proud
using their language in their daily lives.

And in some cases, you may also want
to educate outsiders about your language.

A really interesting example of this
is in San Francisco.

You are starting to see signs

in the Ohlone language
that teach non-indigenous people

about the indigenous language
of San Francisco

and in the San Francisco Bay area.

And this is partly
to normalize the language,

but also to educate people
who aren't Ohlone about Ohlone, right?

So there are all kinds of projects
like this in Cornwall, England.

There were efforts to get
restaurants and bars

to put their bathroom signs
and menus and stuff like that in Cornish.

to normalize the language
and raise awareness about it.

So this is a part of language
revitalization in many cases,

and we see no reason
why you couldn't apply for a project

that was focused on normalization goals.

Ch: Yeah! So it looks like
that's all of our questions.

If you have any other questions,
you can send us an email.

It's in the slides.
It's also [e-mail].

Or you can write us on social media:
on Twitter, Instagram,

all of those places, YouTube,
but we're quickest to reply by email.

So just send us an email
to ask any questions

if you've already sent
in your application this year,

but some ideas popped in your head
after watching this live stream,

send us an email and we can
share your answers with you.

And you can update them.

We can go through one edit round

so that you can see them
based on the questions

that were posed in this live stream
and the answer it's received.

Yeah, so thank you all for tuning in.

We're very excited
to receive your applications.

You have until January 23rd, 2023.

There'll be lots of reminders until then
and the time deadline is 11:59 p.m. GMT.

Of course that changes based
on where you are in the world

by the end of the day.

GMT is when they're due,
so we'll be sending out reminders.

Feel free to ask any questions
about the application

and we're excited to go through them
and see what ideas you all have.

D: Fantastic. Thank you, everyone.

Or in one of my ancestral
languages, Yiddish,

"A sheynem dank!" (Thank you very much!)

Ch: Kiitos! (in Finnish: Thank you!)