This month’s episode is with Ana D. Alonso Ortiz, a Zapotec researcher and translator from Oaxaca, Mexico. Ana is an Associate Professor and Graduate Program Director of the Amerindian Studies and Bilingual Education master’s program at the University of Queretaro. Her research focuses on the language description and language revitalization of Yalalag Zapotec, specifically promoting the language by working with child language acquisition.

She is currently developing a language course of Zapotec as a Second Language. Ana has worked on the production of educational materials in Zapotec in coordination with the Dill Yel Nbán Collective, a group of Zapotec scholars who seek to promote the Zapotec language. Ana received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2021.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Zapotec Languages 
• Yalálag Zapotec
• Ana on Academia
• Ana on Twitter: @AnaAlonsoOrtiz 

Listen to this episode here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

This month’s episode is with Dr. Azeb Amha from the University of Leiden. Azeb is a linguist with interest in the morphology and syntax of Afroasiatic languages, linguistic typology and in the interdisciplinary fields of anthropological linguistics and sociolinguistics. She has worked extensively on the documentation of  languages in Ethiopia, inclunding  Oyda, Wolaitta and Zargulla. She is an ELDP grant recipient, and a depositor with Dobes and the Endangered Languages Archive. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Oyda language
• Aramaic language
• Wolaitta language
• Amharic language
• Semitic language family
• Omotic language family
• Cushitic language family
• Zargulla language deposit at ELAR:Documentation of house construction and terrace farming in Zargulla, an endangered Omotic language

Listen to this episode here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

This month’s episode is with Michael Karani from the University of Dar es Salaam. Michael teaches linguistics and communication studies at Dar es Salaam. He holds a BA and an MA in Linguistics from the University of Dar es Salaam and a PhD in African Languages from Stellenbosch University. Michael conducted fieldwork for his native language, Arusa, which is a Maasai dialect spoken in Arusha, northern Tanzania, where he studied the Arusa verb system during his MA studies. For his PhD research he investigated verb morphology and argument structure in the Parakuyo dialect, another Maasai dialect spoken in northern and coastal areas in Tanzania.

In this episode, we discuss Micheal’s current research with Dr Alexander Andrason (Stellenbosch University) on Arusa ‘expressive grammar’, particularly ideophones, interjections and gestures.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Maasai language
• Swahili
• The Arusa Verb System by Micheal Karani (2013)
• Micheal on Academia, Google Scholar & ResearchGate
• Ep 20: Andrew Harvey & Richard Griscom on Teamwork in the Field
• Field Notes Patreon

Listen to this episode here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

This month’s episode is with Guillem Belmar from UC Santa Barbara. Guillem focuses his research on language revitalization strategies as well as documentation of endangered or minoritized languages. He has worked on language promotion for many European languages and runs the #europeminoritylanguages project on social media. He is currently involved with the project Maintaining Indigenous Languages within Immigrant Oaxacan Communities in the United States.

In this episode we discuss Guillem’s work with his native language, Catalan, as well as Basque and Frisian. Guillem shares with us his experience working with minority languages in Europe, including his work on New Speaker motivation and language policy and planning.

Next month Field Notes will be taking a short break, if you’d like to hear more from the pod, check out the Field Notes Patreon. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Catalan language 
• Indo-European language family 
• Frisian language 
• Basque language 
• Galician language 
• Amami Ōshima language 
• Ergative–absolutive alignment 
• Guillem on twitter: @GuillemBelmar
• Guillem’s website

Listen to this episode here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

This month’s episode is with Pedro Mateo Pedro from University of Toronto.

Pedro is a native speaker of Q’anjob’al, a Mayan language of Guatemala. His research focuses on the documentation and description of Mayan languages, specifically language acquisition, Mayan languages in contact and dialectal variation. 

Pedro received his PhD in linguistics at the University of Kansas in 2010 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. Pedro has taught at universities in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. 

Additionally, Pedro has worked on the production of educational materials in Mayan languages in coordination with different institutions in Guatemala, such as the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Maya Languages of Guatemala (ALMG in Spanish). In 2019, Pedro received an award as a distinguished professor at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Campus Altiplano.

Things mentioned in this episode

• Mayan language family
• Qʼanjobʼal language 
• Yucatec Maya language
• Chuj language
• Kʼicheʼ language
• Mam language
• Guatemala Field Station

Listen to this episode here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

This month’s episode is with Jaime Pérez González is a Tseltal (Maya) researcher, writer, and translator from Tenango, Ocosingo, Chiapas, Mexico. He is a PhD candidate in Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his master’s in American-Indian Linguistics at the Center for Research and Higher Studies in Social Anthropology (CIESAS, Mexico). His MA thesis Predicados expresivos e ideófonos en tseltal won the 2013 Wigberto Jiménez Moreno Prize, awarded by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) for the best master’s thesis in linguistics. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literatures at the Michoacan University of San Nicolas de Hidalgo (UMICH, Morelia, Michoacan, Mexico).

Since 2008, he has worked on different Tseltal language documentation projects as a collaborator and as a research assistant, and as a researcher. Among the topics he has worked on during these projects are Dialectology and Lexicography (building dictionaries). He started to work on Mocho’ (a cousin Mayan language) in 2015, and he is currently the Principal Investigator of the project “Documentation of Mocho’ (Mayan): Language Preservation through Community Awareness and Engagement” sponsored by the Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP). His research goes from Descriptive Linguistics, Language Documentation and Language revitalization. He has written about fieldwork methodologies, and he is currently working on a Descriptive Grammar of Mocho’. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Tseltal language
• Mochoʼ language
• Yucatec Maya language
• Quechua language family
• Mayan language family
• Jaime’s ELAR deposit: Documentation of Mocho’ (Mayan): Language Preservation through Community Awareness and Engagement
• Jaime’s Academia page
• Mocho’ materials at AILLA

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

Today’s episode is with Michinori Shimoji, an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Kyushu University in Japan. He has a PhD from the Australian National University (ANU). He has published extensively on fieldwork-based descriptions of Ryukyuan languages, particularly Irabu Miyako, which is his father’s native language. His research focuses on empirical and inductive generalizations of linguistic systems and structures, with a particular emphasis on typological generalizations. With Patrick Heinrich and Shinsho Miyara, he is the editor of the Handbook of the Ryukyuan Languages History, Structure, and Use (2015). He is also the editor of An Introduction to Ryukyuan Languages (2011), along with Thomas Pellard. 

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Ryukyuan language family
• Miyako language
• Yaeyama language
• Yonaguni language
• Amami languages
• Palauan language
• Michinori’s website

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

The second episode of Season 3 is with Hilaria Cruz from the University of  Louisville. Hilaria is a native speaker of Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language, spoken in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico and by Chatino who have migrated to the Southeastern United states including Durham, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia, and Huntsville, Alabama. She has collected and archived more than one hundred hours of audio recordings of naturalistic speech in formal and informal settings. She is currently researching  the Chatino concepts of the dead in four Eastern Chatino communities. Hilaria and her sister, Emiliana Cruz, created an orthography for the Chatino language and in 2018 created a monolingual children book series to be used as language teaching materials. 

This live show was recorded as part of LingFest, a program of online linguistics events aimed at a general audience, on Saturday, April 24, 2021. Access to the unabridged video live stream is available on the Field Notes Patreon.

Things mentioned in this episode

• Hilaria’s Chatino deposit at AILLA & ELAR
• Chatino language family
• Zacatepec Chatino
• Tataltepec Chatino
• Zenzontepec Chatino
• Teojomulco Chatino
• Chatino children’s books to purchase & download
• Chatino verbs on Wiktionary
• “Documenting Sign Language Structure and Language Socialization in the San Juan Quiahije Chatino Signing Community” ELAR deposit by Lynn Hou
• “Gesture, Speech and Sign in Chatino Communities” ELAR deposit by Kate Mesh
• Hilaria on the Vocal Fries Podcast & Lingthusiasm Podcast

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

Welcome to Season 3 of Field Notes! Field Notes episodes will now be released monthly. This season will feature one insider linguist each month. If you would like to hear more Field Notes content, you can now support Field Notes on Patreon! 

This special first episode features Professor Nancy Kula studied phonology for her PhD at the University of Leiden. She has an MA in Linguistics from SOAS, University of London, and a BA in Education with African Languages and Linguistics from the University of Zambia. Following her PhD, she held a post-doctoral position in Leiden and at SOAS for three years and now works at the University of Essex since 2007. She has worked on many topics in phonology including tone and intonation and theoretically works on element theory. She is also interested in Language Policy as it applies to education in multilingual contexts and is currently running a project covering Botswana, Tanzania and Zambia. She has published in international linguistics journals, has edited a number of volumes and serves on international editorial boards.

Things mentioned in this episode:

• Nancy’s profile at The Uni of Essex 
• Bemba language
• Bantu language family
• Nancy on Twitter @nancyckula & @bringing_in
• Nancy’s work on ResearchGate & academia.edu
• Field Notes Episode 5 with Khairunnisa on Insider Researcher Language Documentation on Sasak
• Field Notes Episode 11 with Alex Garcia on Monolingual Fieldwork in The Philippines

Listen here, or on your favorite podcast app! Field Notes is available on Apple Podcasts app (iPhone), Google Play Music (Android), Google Podcasts app (Android), Stitcher, Spotify, Podbean, Podcast Republic, Castbox, Player FM, and several other apps via RSS.

Field Notes will be holding its first ever live show at LingFest! Field Notes host & producer Martha Tsutsui Billins will chat with special guest Professor Hilaria Cruz on her work with her native language Chatino, an endangered Zapotecan language spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico. This live show will explore endangered language documentation and revitalization, particularly from the Insider Researcher perspective. No prior linguistics or language documentation knowledge required to attend. Questions from listeners are welcome and will also be discussed.

This event is open to all. Registration and attendance is free, but if you would like to support Field Notes, you can now do so on Patreon! Please register here, to sign up to receive the zoom link to attend. Registration will CLOSE 24 hours prior to the start of the live show (April 23 1:00 PM PDT). Registration is now closed. Stay tuned for the next Field Notes live show by following us on Twitter @lingfieldnotes. Thank you for supporting the pod!

Event will take place on April 24th at 1:00 PM PDT. Convert to your local time zone here.