Dr. Inge Genee; Rachel Hoof; Mahaliah Peddle; Russell Blaise; Myles Shirakawa; a
Dr. Inge Genee; Rachel Hoof; Mahaliah Peddle; Russell Blaise; Myles Shirakawa; and joerdis
The Teaching Centre in a conversation with the The Blackfoot Language Resources and Digital Dictionary project Summer 2017 Team members on how their work contributes to the learning and teaching of the Blackfoot language and culture (August 2017).
The Blackfoot Language Resources and Digital Dictionary project[1] is a freely accessible learning resource for anyone with an interest in the Blackfoot language and culture. It has made great progress since its inception due to the help of a fantastic group of dedicated Blackfoot speakers, research assistants, students and volunteers. Although functional at this stage, the dictionary is a work-in-progress that is continuously being enhanced with multimedia items to support language learning and other content for more specific research interests. The Blackfoot project also feeds into a larger, nationwide research project studying Algonquin languages – the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas[2].
1. What is the intention behind the Blackfoot Dictionary Project and how did it get started?
Inge Genee: The idea for the project was conceived at a time when I was doing linguistic work with speakers of Blackfoot, some of whom would periodically mention the Blackfoot Dictionary by Donald Frantz, also saying that they hardly ever accessed it for some reason or other. The first few times, I ignored those comments until I realized what the actual reasons were that kept my work contacts from using this dictionary. That’s when I started to wonder whether a change in its formats could help the users overcome some of the challenges that they were facing. The most prominent of those challenges are the inconsistencies in the spelling system, multiple-morpheme-words with multiple meanings, or the large set of older words, which were gathered in the 60s and 70s but are now out of use and therefore no longer prepare learners for communication of contemporary matters. Overall, the print book format did not seem the best fit for the Blackfoot language and its primarily oral ways of transmission, which is why I decided to go digital.
Dictionaries clearly play a role in trying to revitalize and preserve languages for the future, and I thought that the simple act of digitizing the existing paper resource would inevitably improve its access and usability. Soon after the inception of our digital dictionary project, I learned that what we now do falls into a category referred to as ‘digital repatriation’, which intends to describe all those materials which undergo conversions from their original forms that can then be easily shared back to the community. While I was initially just going to digitize the written book to allow for easier searches, I soon also started to think about other enrichments like audio, video and stories. While I was writing the grant proposal, I started to look ahead by pondering the research question what steps we could take t