31 January, 2006, Moscow, Russia

DVD “Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia”

The new DVD “Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia” has been prepared and published by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and TV-company “ETHNO-ONLINE” with the support of the UNESCO Moscow Office.

The DVD contains:

• materials of the Round Table “Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia”, which was organized on October 27-28, 2005 by the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of RAS with the support of the UNESCO Moscow office;
• UNESCO information materials and documents including a submission form for the newest UNESCO’s initiative on the “Register of Good Practices in Language Preservation”, which can be used for purposes of presentation/description of your local or regional, both ongoing and past, projects in education, revitalisation, standardisation, community development, awareness raising, capacity building, documentation, use of new technologies, etc.;
• descriptions of 28 endangered Siberian languages as well as bibliographies on these languages with a search option via internet-connection;
• a large table “Peoples and Languages of Russian Federation”, which includes statistical data based on the materials of USSR National Population Censi of 1926, 1959, 1970, 1979, 1989, as well as of Russian National Census of 2002; it contains data on indigenous numerically small peoples of Russia included in the Universal list of indigenous numerically small peoples of Russian Federation, as well as other numerically small peoples of Russian Federation. Moreover, the table includes the data on peoples with the population exceeding 50 thousand, since some numerically small ethnic groups speak languages considered to be dialects of such languages as Russian, Altaian, Tuvinian, etc.;
• data on the current and completed projects on documenting the languages of Siberia and on foundations providing funding for education and research projects;
• presentation of technical devices, as well as software and fonts, for the work with the data on different languages including those applicable to the field work conducted by linguists and anthropologists;
• unique audio and video materials, related to Siberian cultures.

The presented materials are a part of the bi-lingual (Russian/English) information Internet portal “Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia” and at the same time an essential part of the project “Roundtable on Endangered Languages of Indigenous Peoples of Siberia”

The DVD is intended both for linguists and anthropologists, and at the same time might be of great interest to those who want to expand their knowledge about indigenous Siberian languages and cultures.

WWW lingsib.iea.ras.ru