LADORES (Language Documentation and Revitalization Space), provides students experience with language documentation (including making and editing recordings), linguistic fieldwork, and less-commonly taught languages and at the same time support language revitalization and maintenance efforts, providing a space for community members to document their own language and culture (with assistance from students) and for this work to be showcased and shared, a potential point of pride and visibility for the university. Based on data from two needs-assessment symposia at Cal State LA demonstrating need and desire for such spaces, our overall goal is to create the first, only, and, without question, best center for documenting the linguistic and cultural diversity of the city of Los Angeles. Additionally, it has increased the college’s social media visibility.
In the spring of 2018, Professor Sonnenschein, along with two anthropology students (Claudio Hernandez and B. Hall Hernandez), began work on LADORES. Working in conjunction with the Center for the Study and Development of the Indigenous Languages of Oaxaca (CEDELIO), we focus initially on the indigenous languages of Oaxaca, creating a standardized set audiovisual materials and publishing them on various social media. (See https://www.facebook.com/L-A-D-O-R-E-S-Language-Documentation-Revitalization-Space-191339901479124/.) The first two languages covered by LADORES are Tsome (Highland Chontal as spoken in Santo Domingo Chontecomatlan) and Ñuu Saavi (Mixteco de San Juan Mixtepec) and we have since expanded to Lowland Chontal of Oaxaca. Additionally, students have worked on their own projects using the lab’s facilities, including collaboration with Dr. Sonnenschein on a dialect survey conducted in 2016 and thesis work on the ethnolinguistic documentation of the patron saint’s day festival of San Lucas Quiavini. We are currently refurbishing the former Anthropology library as a lab space.
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