Five-day Tetso College workshop develops digital resources for 12 Nagaland languages.
DIMAPUR — A five-day national workshop on “Crafting digital resources for languages of Nagaland” began at Tetso College, Sovima, Chümoukedima, on Tuesday, bringing together native language speakers, community resource persons, linguists, language teachers and technology experts to strengthen the digital presence of indigenous languages of the state.
The workshop, organised jointly by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysuru, through the Centre of North Eastern Language Development (C-NELD), and the Department of Linguistics, Tetso College, will continue till August 22.
According to an update, it aims to develop prototype digital resources for 12 Nagaland languages to support language learning, documentation, intergenerational transmission and wider digital engagement.
The inaugural programme was attended by Padma Shri awardee and State Convenor of INTACH, Nagaland Chapter, Sentila T Yanger as the chief guest. Professor-cum-Deputy Director and Programme Coordinator, CIIL, Mysuru, Umarani Pappuswamy and Principal of Tetso College Dr. Hewasa L. Khing were also present.
Programme coordinator of the workshop and Head of the Department of Linguistics, Tetso College, Dr. Wichamdinbo Mataina stressed the need to ensure that indigenous languages have a meaningful presence in the digital world, noting that each language has its own linguistic, orthographic, technological and community-specific challenges.
Sentila T Yanger highlighted the relationship between language, cultural identity and intergenerational transmission, while pointing to the potential of digital dictionaries, language archives, fonts, keyboards and artificial intelligence for transcription, translation, speech recognition and documentation.
She, however, stressed that languages must continue to be spoken, taught and used by their communities.
Umarani Pappuswamy said many indigenous languages remain under-documented, and most continue to be low-resourced in the digital domain.
During the workshop, participants will develop prototype resources for 12 languages using approximately 500 words, 20 phrases and 50 example sentences, along with relevant audio and linguistic information, subject to community and linguistic verification.
The resources being explored include a talking children's dictionary, vocabulary activities, language games, quizzes, phrase and sentence resources, listening and speaking activities and a digital language starter kit.
The workshop has 26 native speakers and community resource persons, eight linguists, two language teachers and three software and technology developers.
The organisers said the resources would provide a foundation for further expansion and help establish a sustainable digital presence for Nagaland languages.