Skip to main content

Seminar: Standardization and Teaching of Endangered Languages in Northern Eurasia

25, 26 November 2016 - Symposium: Documentation, Standardization and Teaching of Endangered Languages in Northern Eurasia, organized by the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and made possible by the joint efforts of Russian and Dutch institutions, including Mercator Research Centre.

The Foundation for Endangered Languages exists to support, enable and assist the documentation, protection and promotion of endangered languages worldwide. One of the possibilities to accomplish this is to bring specialists together in a Regional Interest Group with representatives of certain endangered languages communities in a specific area of the world. With this in mind, a symposium on Documentation, Standardization and Teaching of Endangered Languages in Northern Eurasia has been organised in Murmansk, 25-26 November. During the first day of the conference participants from Germany, England, the Netherlands and the Russian Federation discussed topics related to the minority languages in Northern Russia, in particular Saami and neighbouring languages . The programme for this day can be found here. The second day was devoted to a field trip to Lovozero, where the participants could meet with representatives of the Saami and Izhva-Komi community. The symposium has been organized as a result of collaboration between academic institutions based in Russia and the Netherlands: the Murmansk Arctic State University , the Mercator Research Centre of the Fryske Akademy and the Centre for Russian Studies of Groningen University. It took place in the framework of the city partnership between Murmansk and Groningen, which also supported the symposium financially. A further exchange of information between the participants will lead to specific  proposals for the intended Regional Interest Group.

Some photo impressions of the stay in St.Petersburg, Murmansk and Lovozero can be found here.