Endangered Language Research Project

[Eginhard]

This spring I graduate from high school and to fill the free time I'll have during summer, I (successfully) applied for funding for a "research travel project". I'll go to Lithuania (mainly Vilnius and Trakai) for about 4-5 weeks. Aim of the whole thing is to find out about the current status of the Karaim language; i.e. how many people can speak it, use it, learn it; what measures are taken to preserve/revive the language; what the general population in Lithuania knows about Karaim and how they think about it; in general what struggles an endangered language (and culture) has to face.

It's not really supposed to be anything professional or academical, just to get an understanding of the topic and write a report about it. Also it's about the situation of the language, not really learning or documenting it. I'll mainly get in touch with local groups and communities to experience everything at first hand. I've also contacted some organisations and I plan to ask politicians, journalists etc. as well.

Now my question is what suggestions you have for my project. Is there anything else important that I should try to find out? Have you any tips how I should go about my project? Any "methods", what people I should talk to etc.? And what are you interested in, what should I find out for you about the Karaim language?

Help from anyone living in Lithuania is also very much appreciated. And please don't start ranting about how useless, stupid or whatever that language is!

[Eginhard]

Come on Unilangers, now you can show that you're not only interested in separating masculine from feminine languages and discussing your favourite language family, but that you actually do care about endangered languages as well!

[Saim]

How are you going to go about doing this? Will you get a Lithuanian interpreter? And according to Wikipedia there are less than 50 speakers of Karaim so you have your work cut out for you in finding them... what sparked the interest in the Karaites and their language?

[Eginhard]

I will get along mainly with English and my little Lithuanian and in case that's not enough, I will have to ask a friend to interpret for me.

Finding native speakers will indeed be quite a challenge, but the two main Karaim communities live in Trakai and Vilnius and I have already found some contacts and starting points in both cities.

I have already been interested in doing such a project about endangered languages for a longer time, but couldn't decide on a suitable language. When I was in Lithuania this February I found out about Karaim and saw that it would be perfect. Outside Lithuania almost nobody ever heard of it, it is severely endangered, but recently started to receive some support from the EU, the government and Vilnius University, where it is being researched and the two main communities don't live in a remote village, but close together in two important cities, which makes access to native speakers easier for me.

Do you have any other ideas for my project?

[Saim]

No, sorry, but I'd be interested to read what you gather.

[zeme]

I suggest you gather audio or video samples of the language if you manage to find speakers. You could then upload them to archive.org

[Eginhard]

Great idea, thanks! But unfortunately I doubt that it would be really within the scope of my project. Main aim is to find out about the status of Karaim.

I'll keep it in mind though and try to use this possibility to make at least a couple of short recordings if the speakers agree to that, so that other people could hear the language as well.

[aaakknu]

What are the results of the project?