Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Mansa Musa was the ruler of the Mali Empire in West Africa. Details recorded here should be sourced; unknown information is left blank.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Language documentation (also: documentary linguistics) is a subfield of linguistics which aims to describe the grammar and use of human languages. It aims to provide a comprehensive record of the linguistic practices characteristic of a given speech community. Language documentation seeks to create as thorough a record as possible of the speech community for both posterity and language revitalization. This record can be public or private depending on the needs of the community and the purpose of the documentation. In practice, language documentation can range from solo linguistic anthropological fieldwork to the creation of vast online archives that contain dozens of different languages, such as FirstVoices or OLAC. Language documentation provides a firmer foundation for linguistic analysis in that it creates a corpus of materials in the language. The materials in question can range from vocabulary lists and grammar rules to children's books and translated works. These materials can then support claims about the structure of the language and its usage. This should be seen as a basic taxonomic task for linguistics, identifying the range of languages and their characteristics. While various linguists had already been practising language documentation during the 20th century, the discipline was established as a specific field within linguistics following a 1998 publication by Nikolaus Himmelmann, which many understand as foundational.
Language Documentation & Conservation is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all topics related to language documentation and conservation, including the goals of data management, field-work methods, ethics, orthography design, reference grammar design, lexicography, methods of assessing ethnolinguistic vitality, archiving matters, language planning, areal survey reports, short field reports on underdocumented or endangered languages, reports on language maintenance, preservation, and revitalization efforts, plus reviews of software, hardware, and books. The journal was established in 2007, sponsored by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (University of Hawaii), and published by the University of Hawaii Press. The founding editor-in-chief was Kenneth L. Rehg (University of Hawaii). From 2011 to 2021, the editor was Nicholas Thieberger (University of Melbourne). Since 2022, the editor is Racquel-María Sapién, University of Oklahoma, U.S. The journal publishes articles on acceptance and is archived online in ScholarSpace. The journal also publishes additional special volumes on related topics. It is indexed in Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts and the MLA International Bibliography.
The field of language documentation in the modern context involves a complex and ever-evolving set of tools and methods, and the study and development of their use – and, especially, identification and promotion of best practices – can be considered a sub-field of language documentation proper. Among these are ethical and recording principles, workflows and methods, hardware tools, and software tools.
Language revitalization, also referred to as language revival or reversing language shift, is an attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive an extinct one. Those involved can include linguists, cultural or community groups, or governments. Some argue for a distinction between language revival (the resurrection of an extinct language with no existing native speakers) and language revitalization (the rescue of a declining or moribund language). Languages targeted for language revitalization include those whose use and prominence is severely limited. Sometimes various tactics of language revitalization can even be used to try to revive extinct languages. Though the goals of language revitalization vary greatly from case to case, they typically involve attempting to expand the number of speakers and use of a language, or trying to maintain the current level of use to protect the language from extinction. Language revitalization can face significant barriers, not the least of which can come from governments, such as a general lack of support or funding for the projects, or a system that may actively repress the minority language. Other barriers could be a lack of speakers, a lack of relevant teaching material, or vocabulary loss. Reasons for revitalization vary: they can include physical danger affecting those whose language is dying, economic danger such as the exploitation of indigenous natural resources, political danger such as genocide, or cultural danger/assimilation. For example, between first contact with Europeans and around 2000, it is thought that the number of Indigenous languages in Canada fell from 450 to 60 and in Australia from 250 to 145. In 2012, the UN estimated that more than half of the languages spoken had fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter had fewer than 1,000 speakers—and that, without some efforts to maintain them, most of these would become extinct within a century. These figures are often cited as reasons why language revitalization is necessary to preserve linguistic diversity. Culture and identity are also frequently cited reasons for language revitalization, when a language is perceived as a unique "cultural treasure". A community often sees language as a unique part of its culture, connecting it with its ancestors or with the land, making up an essential part of its history and self-image. Endangered or at risk languages can be elevated by making them into a national language, for example the Quechua language of Peru. Language revitalization is also closely tied to the linguistic field of language documentation. In this field, linguists try to create a complete record of a language's grammar, vocabulary, and linguistic features. The task of documentation is often taken on with the goal of revitalization in mind, or can otherwise encourage concern for revitalization.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Mae Jemison, aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1992.