Language Reclamation through Dictionary-Building Along the Brazil-Bolivia Border
Dr. Joshua Birchall
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 | 03:00 pm - 04:00 pm
Latin American and Iberian Institute (801 Yale Blvd NE)
801 Yale Blvd NE (campus building #165)
About:
Join LAII for a discussion about language reclamation on the Brazil-Bolivia border led by Professor Birchall.
The Moré and Kuyubim communities each live on different sides of the Guaporé/Iténez River that forms a border between Brazil and Bolivia, and despite sharing a traditional language and having starkly different colonial histories, they are both shifting to the dominant languages of the countries they live in. This talk discusses how the production of a first dictionary of this language has helped support larger community efforts of language reclamation and cultural revival.
Joshua Birchall is an Assistant Professor in the UNM Linguistics Department. He is a specialist in Amazonian languages and linguistic typology. For the last 15 years, he has been working with a number of communities in the southwest Amazon to document and describe their languages.
Notes:
This event is free and open to the public.
