By Jeyanthi–People & Nature Collective
Introduction to Language Documentation Efforts
In the last few years, the Community Researchers and Foundations at our programme have forayed into the documentation of their languages and cultural traditions. With support from the ILED and GAGGA network, we held our first Barefoot Linguist Programme last August with Irula speakers to understand the processes involved in developing a community-endorsed writing system.
Collaborative Workshop with Linguistics Students
This year, we collaborated with the Council for Diversity and Innovation / Unreal Tece LLP to host a workshop with linguistics students in India on “Field Methods for Speech Technologies (Dravidian)” as a part of their Words, Worlds, Models (W2M) Programme.
The Field Methods for Speech Technology Workshop
The Field Methods for Speech Technology (Irula) workshop was held from 23rd-28th of June 2025. As a part of this workshop, 6 students of Linguistics came together with 6 members of the Irula community (Sigur, Pillur, and Kotagiri regions) along with 4 Linguistics Experts to participate in a collaborative exercise on recordings and transcribing Irula speech and its variations, as a part of this workshop. Some of the participants, especially from the Irula community, remarked that “this workshop was very useful. Irula words and sentences were collected from Kotagiri, Sigur, and Pillur areas. We learned some of the speech technology from the workshop.”
Understanding Linguistic Diversity and Ethics
We can observe that a language is spoken in different ways and with different accents in a particular region, that a word has different meanings, and that the meaning of the same word varies according to the place. Therefore, it was important for the linguists to follow and adhere to the ethics, sensitivities, and procedures to follow when documenting a language. At the same time, we had to understand the grammatical structures of the language and collect words and sentences for the language.
Field Visit to Aracode and Kwol Radio
On one of the days, we also visited one of the field areas, Aracode, and had a chance to introduce our work at Porivarai Community Centre and talk about the simple technologies at Kwol Radio that support the recording of community-centric Irula language records.
Preserving Language Through Technology
The workshop aimed to explore how to preserve the Irula language by documenting it using machine learning tools and automated speech technologies. Technical knowledge and knowledge of the people who speak that particular language are important for documenting or recording a language, but equally important was the need to technically transcribe it in the International Phonetic Alphabet with support from the students, without losing the integrity of the sounds or their meanings. This workshop was a novel attempt to stride forward with language revitalisation attempts, combining learnings from both areas of expertise.
Phopt Credit by : Ranjini
