User:Tfeshba1/Language selection

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Language Selection

My ideal partner would be someone who mainly knows computer science, but knows some linguistics as well since I mainly know linguistics but have some computer science knowledge. I'm in EST right now, so anyone in that timezone or a timezone with only a few hours difference would be preferred. These are the languages I'm considering working on, in order of preference:

  1. Ladino, aka Judeo-Spanish
    • The morphological typology of Ladino is very similar to Spanish, its parent language. As such, it is fusional, with each verb or noun being conjugated with suffixes that can change based on the number, gender, formality, tense, aspect, and mood. Like Spanish, it is SVO and uses prepositions. There are some small differences between phonology and pronouns, as well as some loanwords from Hebrew and Arabic, but for the most part, Ladino and Spanish are morphologically the same.[1]
    • There are an estimated 60,000 - 400,000 total speakers, mostly clustered in Israel and Turkey. These speakers would likely also know Hebrew, Spanish, Turkish, or English, depending on where they live. For most, Ladino would not be their only language. Ladino is endangered, with most speakers being older and the language not being passed on to younger generations. It is mainly written in three different orthographies - the standard Latin alphabet, the Turkish variant of the Latin alphabet, and the Rashi script of the Hebrew alphabet (a variant on the standard square script). Its ISO codes for both ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 are 'lad'.[1]
    • There are multiple available resources for text in Ladino, including multiple songs, a version of the Tanakh that was written in 1553 called the Ferrara Bible, and a version of Wikipedia in Ladino.[1]
  2. Chatino
    • Chatino is strongly head-marking with somewhat agglutinating and synthetic morphology [2], since agreement markers are usually placed on the 'head' of the phrase. Chatino is primarily VSO, although other orders have been observed as well.[3] Verbs in Chatino inflect for aspect and mood, and it is tonal.[2]
    • Chatino is, in reality, a grouping of related languages spoken by the Chatino people in the south of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. There are 45,000 native speakers of the Chatino languages, but some languages in this family have as few as 300 speakers. Chatino is considered at high risk of disappearing, with language transmission being threatened by an increasing focus on Spanish. Chatino has a few written orthographies based on Spanish, since until recently it had none. These orthographies are mainly in the standard Latin alphabet, with a recent creation by Hilaria Cruz including numbers to mark tone.[4] The ISO codes of its various sublanguages in ISO 639-3 are ctp – Western Highland, cly – Eastern Highland (Lachao-Yolotepec), cya – Nopala, ctz - Zacatepec, cta - Tataltepec, and czn - Zenzontepec. The most divergent variety, Teojomulco, has no ISO code.[3]
    • The Chatino Language Documentation Page may have some written text to work with, but since Chatino does not have a long history of written works, finding text resources may be difficult. [4]
  3. Kabardian
    • Kabardian morphology appears to be highly agglutinative, since there are dozens upon dozens of verbal affixes that denote meaning of subject, direct or indirect object, adverbial, singular or plural form, negative form, mood, direction, mutuality, compatibility and reflexivity.[5] There are both suffixes and affixes, and they can cluster enough to create whole sentences.
    • There are a total of 1,712,000 speakers located in various regions of Russia, Turkey, Jordan, and Syria. It seems to be vulnerable, but not critically endangered. Kabardian is mainly written in a set form of Cyrillic, but can also be written in Latin and Arabic script. Its ISO code in both ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 is kbd.[6]
    • There appears to be a translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Kabardian, and there will likely be other large or medium-sized texts in Kabardian. [6]

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaeo-Spanish
  2. 2.0 2.1 E. Campbell, "Aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan language of Oaxaca, Mexico," The University of Texas at Austin, August 2014, https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/26021
  3. 3.0 3.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatino_language
  4. 4.0 4.1 L. Villagran, "A 'like' for linguistics: Can social media save Mexico's unwritten languages?", The Christain Science Monitor, April 2013, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0401/A-like-for-linguistics-Can-social-media-save-Mexico-s-unwritten-languages
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabardian_verbs
  6. 6.0 6.1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabardian_language
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