HELP for Endangered Legacy Collections : the Jakaltek archives

  Contact person

Colette GRINEVALD

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Scientific framework and objectives

This is the experimental phase of the new program HELP for Endangered Legacy Collections of the Committee on Endangered Languages and their Preservation (CELP) of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA), program led by Kate Lindsey and Jorge Rosés.
Grinevald (DDL, Lyon) and Vernon Chow (U. Virginia) have been selected as one of the first two pairs of senior/junior linguists to test the program (fall 2020-Spring 2021).
Jakaltek (Popti’) is a Mayan language of Guatemala now clearly endangered. The Jakaltek materials is from fieldwork in Jacaltenango, for Grinevald’s PhD thesis in the 70ies (when then Craig PhD Harvard 1974, later faculty at U Oregon 74-96). Reel to reel recordings were archived at AILLA in the early 2000, and would need to be matched with transcriptions/translations which exist now only on paper copies, in Lyon. The work will involve the Academia de Lengua Popti’ of Jacaltenango, interested in helping out. It will include updating and translating into Spanish various papers inaccessible to the community.

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