Monthly Newsletter

November 2023!!

LJL is excited to share the updates we collectively achieved!! Below is the summary:

The Linguistics Justice League advocated for language diversity at the AWSL fall conference, expanding support for bilingual education and hosting a Social Interaction workshop with the Refugee Resettlement Office. We collaborated with Visit.org for corporate training in linguistic justice, addressing workplace bias.

This month’s volunteer spotlight is on Sravani! She made valuable contributions, translating books for refugees, fixing EduLang bugs, and adding lessons to the CurriculumBuilder app.

Our editorial for this month emphasizes Salvage Linguistics, highlighting the importance of preserving endangered languages, inspired by Prof. Krauss’s work with the Eyak language. We aim to empower people with low-resource languages to preserve their cultural heritage.

Language Advocacy at AWSL Fall Conference 2023

The Linguistics Justice League had a fantastic experience advocating for the crucial importance of language diversity in our dynamic world during the Association of Washington Student Leaders (AWSL) fall conference in 2023. Engaging in insightful discussions with youth leaders from different school districts across Washington State was truly inspiring!

The AWSL youth leaders expressed interest in promoting LJL’s offerings in their respective school districts. LJL is enthusiastic about broadening our impact, extending support for bilingual education, and assisting English Language Learners (ELL) in additional school districts.

Play Video about AWSL

Social Interaction Workshop

Linguistics Justice League hosted Social Interaction workshop in partnership with the Refugee Resettlement Office on Nov 18th. LJL planned fun activities related to language and culture to engage kids!

World COngress 2023 - Science and factual

At the recent World Science Congress Forum, Subha Vadlamannati from LJL presented our work on Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology, emphasizing its commitment to linguistic justice and supporting refugees and immigrants. The presentation successfully connected with film producers, documentary creators, and entrepreneurs, providing valuable insights and opportunities for LJL’s expansion. The key takeaways include plans to expand in Central/South America, prevent cultural assimilation through technology, and enhance services with voice/video translation. These goals are immediate priorities shaped by insights and feedback from the Congress. LJL expresses gratitude for the opportunity and looks forward to continued collaboration in promoting linguistic justice and language diversity worldwide.

Volunteer Spotlight!

Sravani has made impressive improvements at LJL over the past month. She has successfully translated over 30+ books into Pashto, Arabic, and Ukranian for refugee families to read, as part of her helpful contributions to EduLang. She fixed several backend bugs in EduLang to make the books easily translatable into all 108 languages.

Lastly, she also collaborated with other team members to add 5 new lessons to our latest Curriculum web app, spanning cleaning supplies to gardening. These lessons will be invaluable for the day laborers at organizations like Casa Latina! Thank you Sravani for all your hard work!

Editorial - Salvage Linguistics

By Subha Vadlamannati

A language dies every 15 days! Language is inseparable from cultural identity. When a language dies, part of a community’s history, customs, and values vanish with it. Language is the vessel through which traditions, folklore, and stories are passed down from one generation to the next. Losing a language is akin to losing a large chunk of one’s cultural heritage.

Several root causes may be behind a language’s extinction ranging from globalization, economic factors and blatant language suppression due to colonization and political factors.

Salvage Linguistics is a field of study that focuses on the documentation, preservation, and retrieval of key elements of endangered or nearly extinct languages. This field of study is fraught with challenges. Linguists need to identify the small number of people that still possess proficiency in the language, reverse language patterns by working with speakers who would have already moved on from speaking the language and revitalize it by teaching it to new generations. For example, Prof. Krauss from University of Alaska, Fairbanks Alaska did pivotal work in preserving the Eyak language by working with a small number of elders that remained in the native tribes from Alaska.

Prof. Krauss is a role model to us. At Linguistics Justice League we are striving to help people who speak low resource languages so we can enable them preserve their languages and cultures while still engaging in a society that has a different dominant language.

Submit an Article

We are pleased to present our monthly newsletter! Every month, we will feature an editorial article relating to linguistics and latest NLP innovations in this space. Please contact us if you would like to submit an article