Events

August 2014: JKM presenting a talk on negation patterns in Nsambaan at the annual Colloquium for African Languages and Linguistics in Leiden (Netherlands).

May-June 2014: Greet Habraken joins our team in the field to prepare a documentary film on our documentation project.

March 2014: Start-up of the fieldwork aiming at the documentation of speech events in Nsambaan. The project's motorcycle is waiting to be taken across the Kwilu River by canoe at Kikandji. Fieldwork is taking place in the Nkara sector on the river's east bank.                     

July 2013: Lectures at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique of Kikwit in order to raise awareness about the project's first documentation results and initiation of MA-research.  JKM taught different classes in African linguistics to first and second year students of the French and African languages program. He encouraged students to become involved themselves in the project's effort to document local endangered languages. At least one student will write a dissertation on this topic next academic year.                                   

April-August 2013: First transcription and translation of newly collected Nsong recordings. This task already started in the villages where fieldwork was carried out and continued later on in the project's headquarters in Kikwit. It involved the close collaboration of different language informants, especially our principal language assistant for Nsong, i.e. Makwati Ngwabwal, the main consultant of the traditional chief. The picture shows JKM transcribing together with Makwati and Boubacar, the teacher at the secondary school of Kabamba.                                   

April 2013: Construction of the project's headquarters in Kikwit according to local building techniques and its occupation for research purposes.                                    

April 2013: Construction of the project's headquarters in Kikwit according to local building techniques and its occupation for research purposes.                                     

March-April 2013: first fieldwork aiming at the documentation of Nsong speech events in the villages of Kabamba, Kisala, and Kafumba. The picture shows Marie Mbulu Kizela, Madeleine Kapungu Luyoyo, Sousane Kingwaya Kisula, Marie Maziya Azimbila and Gaby Kazika from Kabamba village disscussing Nsong mushroom names.rposes.       

On the 9th of March 2013, Joseph Koni Muluwa animated, together with our local project collaborators Prof. Jacques Nkiene (ISP Kikwit) and Crispin Ngulu (ISP Kikwit), a seminar on endangered languages at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique of Kikwit.  This conference was massively attended by students in (African) linguistics, some of whom might carry out MA-research on a Nsong, Ngong or Tsambaan in the future.

Between the 4th and 11th of March 2013, Joseph Koni Muluwa animated several broadcasts on Radio Tomisa, a local communal radio station in Kikwit. The programs were broadcasted in Kikongo, the vehicular language of the Kwilu area. It aimed at sensitizing the listeners from Kikwit and surrounding areas on the problem of endangered languages and at raising local awareness of our documentation project.

On the 21st of February 2013, International Mother Language Day, the Observatoire des langues (OBLA) organized, under the patronage of the Minister of Culture and Arts, a conference entitled “Technologies de l’information et de la communication pour la sauvegarde et la promotion des langues et la diversité linguistique” in the cultural circle of Kinshasa zoo. Joseph Koni Muluwa (UGent) presented our endangered language documentation project on Nsong, Ngong and Tsambaan. Prof. Mukash Kalel (UNIKIN) gave our project airplay on Radio Okapi (DRC).

On the 29th of January 2013, Prof. Mukash-Kalel and Joseph Koni Muluwa organized a seminar at the Observatoire des langues (OBLA) in Kinshasa. The seminar aimed at presenting our DoBeS documentation project to the academic community of Kinshasa, especially linguists from UNIKIN, UPN, ISP/Gombe, CELTA and OBLA. Joseph Koni Muluwa presented a talk entitled “Les langues en danger: documentation et sauvegarde”. The gathering took more than two hours and raised much interest and discussion.