masarak summer

This summer, with some people in my department at NYU, we'll be doing field work on Masalit, an African language spoken primarily in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Eastern Chad. The war in Darfur (which has been described as a genocide of black African populations under the pro-Arab government of Sudan) caused many Masalit speakers of the Darfur region to flee to Chad. Many Masalit speakers live in refugee camps, while others live in the Diaspora in several countries, including the United States. Due to the conflict, the subsequent forced migration, and the incursion of the Arabic language in the region, Masalit is a severely endangered language. The number of speakers has decreased dramatically over the past decade. If nothing is done, the revitalization prospects are grim and the language may disappear within one generation or two. Our project intends to reverse that trend by taking some actions: (i) Creating a written and (annotated) sound lexicon of the Masalit language. This will be a first step towards creating a paper and electronic dictionary of the language. (ii) Audio and video recording of folktales, narratives, and cultural aspects of the Masalit. These data will be transcribed, glossed, and translated into English. (iii)  Providing an orthographic system for the language. Currently, there is no orthography. This limits the possibility of creating materials to teach Masalit to children and to promote the language. (iv) Writing a grammar of the Masalit language.

All of these goals will serve to empower the Masalit community. The first three are of direct and immediate use to the community, which may use the project materials for practical purposes, including the teaching of the language to future generations. Moreover, the intent is to use the resulting materials to create paper and electronic dictionaries as well as linguistic games for the Masalit children, thus crucially helping this underdocumented language’s preservation and revitalization. The fourth goal is also intended to serve the linguistic community. All of the electronic files, glossed transcriptions and translations produced by our research will be made available to general and specialized audiences for further research through a permanent NYU-hosted website. As a follow-on to this project, some of us will run a workshop on various aspects of our work at the African Linguistics School (ALS), held biennially by the NYU Office of Special Programs in Africa, and at the Annual Conference of African Linguistics (ACAL). These venues will serve as a platform to communicate the results of our project to the wider African and linguistics communities.

This is probably the best thing I have done in my life at a professional level and I feel very happy to be part of it.