Moira Saltzman
PhD ’20, Linguistics
Talking dictionaries are online tools for language acquisition and revitalization, which feature audio and video materials along with words and definitions. Jejueo is a critically endangered language spoken by 5,000-10,000 people on Jeju Island, South Korea, and in a diasporic enclave in Osaka, Japan. Under contact pressure from Korean, Jejueo has undergone rapid attrition (Kang 2005, Kang 2007), and most fluent speakers of Jejueo are now over 75 years old (UNESCO 2010). The present situation in Jeju is one of language shift, where fewer than 10,000 people out of a population of 600,000 are fluent in Jejueo, and Jejueo rapidly shifting structurally to Korean (Kang 2005). The Jejueo Talking Dictionary features audio clips of Jejueo words, and video clips of natural language use to allow Jejueo learners to see each word within the context of its cultural and historical significance, as well as in Jejueo grammatical constructions. The dictionary compiles existing annotated video corpora of Jejueo songs, conversational genres and regional mythology (Kim, Yang, Rositano, Tran) into a multimedia database, supplemented by original annotated video recordings. Words and definitions are accompanied by audio files of their pronunciation and occasional photos, in the case of items native to Jeju. The audio and video data is tagged in Jejueo, Korean, Japanese and English so that users may search or browse the dictionary in any of these languages. Our intention for the Jejueo Talking Dictionary is to create a language revitalization tool suited to the needs of diverse user groups, such as elder speakers within the community, young semi-speakers in schools, and the international scientific community.
Library Mentors: Yunah Sung and Jennifer Nason-Davis