User:Mcostag1/Language selection

By the beginning of the Thursday class during the first week of classes (this semester: 11:20 on 19 January 2016), turn in the following:

List in order of preference three languages you would like to work on this semester.

1. Lingala

Basic Information

• Number of speakers: 2,040,000 in Democratic Republic of the Congo (2000). Total users in all countries: 2,146,210.

(wikipedia says over 10 million??)

• Location: Spoken primarily in the Southern Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo.
• Other languages native speakers may know:
• Current status of the language: Its main center of use, the city of Kinasha, has grown in size and importance and the language has grown with it. It is also Statutory provincial language in northwestern regions (2006, Constitution, Article 1(8)).
• Orthography: Written in the Latin alphabet CITE
• ISO code: [lin]

Language Data Availability

Very likely - I found an online bible translation as well as a number of Chamorro songs with accompanying lyrics. CITE

2. Chamorro

Morphological typology

VSO sometimes SVO

is it primarily isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know? Are there patterns in that language that reflect more than one morphological type?

Basic Information

• Number of speakers: 25,800 in Guam (2013 UNSD). Total users in all countries: 58,000
• Location: Spoken primarily in Guam although also spoken in The Northern Mariana Islands and the United States.
• Other languages native speakers may know: English
• Current status of the language: Severely threatened - with a significant drop in fluency over the past century. Approximately 75% of the population of Guam knew the Chamorro language in 1898 (when the US captured Guam in the Spanish-American War). As of the 2000 U.S. Census, less than 20% of Guam inhabitants speak the language, and of that 20% most are over the age of 55. However, it is gaining in importance again, as it is taught at the University of Guam.
• Orthography: Written with the Latin alphabet. CITE
• ISO code: [cha]

Language Data Availability

Very likely - I found an online bible translation as well as a number of Chamorro songs with accompanying lyrics. CITE

1. Lingala

Morphological typology

is it primarily isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know? Are there patterns in that language that reflect more than one morphological type?

Basic Information

How many speakers are there, where do they live, what other languages might they know, what is the status of the language in terms of its transmission to current and future generations, is there a normative orthography of some sort? Provide ISO codes used for the language, especially three-letter ones. Basically all of this information should be findable on ethnologue and wikipedia (in one language or other), but feel free to use any source that seems reliable (academic papers, census data, etc.). Cite the sources you use.

Language Data Availability Give some estimation of how likely it will be for you to find about a page's worth of text in this language. (If it's not at all likely, you probably should find some other language to work on.)

3. Chamorro

Morphological typology

Is it primarily isolating, agglutinative, etc., and how do you know? Are there patterns in that language that reflect more than one morphological type?

Basic Information

How many speakers are there, where do they live, what other languages might they know, what is the status of the language in terms of its transmission to current and future generations, is there a normative orthography of some sort? Provide ISO codes used for the language, especially three-letter ones. Basically all of this information should be findable on ethnologue and wikipedia (in one language or other), but feel free to use any source that seems reliable (academic papers, census data, etc.). Cite the sources you use.

Language Data Availability

Give some estimation of how likely it will be for you to find about a page's worth of text in this language. (If it's not at all likely, you probably should find some other language to work on.)