Even in the middle of the summer, our team at Sorosoro is hard at work finding breaking news to report on our website!

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Video of the week:

The appropriately-themed video on death and widowhood marks the end of our video series on marriage among the Akele. One last time, Papa Kédine, the patriarch of a small Akele community in Gabon, gives us insight into the practice of levirate mariage and the fate of widows…

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Sorosoro news:

Sorosoro is once again making media headlines: Rozenn Milin will be discussing endangered languages on France Inter, this coming Monday, 2 August 2010, during « L’été en pente douce » presented by Guillaume Erner, from 9:10 to 10 :00. Tune in for what is sure to be a fascinating discussion… and ride the radio waves! Read.

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Agenda:

A reminder to linguists who are elbow-deep in their summer research: you only have a few more hours to submit your entries for the 12th « Language & Society » Conference, which will be held in Auckland, New Zealand this coming November 2010. The deadline for submissions is on 31 July 2010! Read.

While you’re at it, write this down in your diaries: the Second International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation is being held in February 2011 at the University of Hawaii in Manoa, Hawaii. The deadline for entry submissions (31 August 2010) is fast approaching. Read.

And finally, you only have until the 1 September 2010 to send in your presentation proposals (in English) for the Conference on the Phonology of Endangered Languages, taking place in January 2011 in New York. Read.

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Languages & language families:

Thanks to the generosity of AUSTLANG, a highly recommended website that specializes in indigenous languages of Australia, Sorosoro has finally been able to expand its data on that part of the world. For starters, we have added eight new language indexes for Macro-Pama-Nyungan languages to our website:

• Adnyamathanha

• Antekerrepenh

• Alyawarr

• Arabana

• Dyirbal

• Guugu Yimidihrr

• Kaytetye

• Wangkangurru

Back on the European side of things, Camilla Louise Dahl, a historian at Copenhagen University, has given us a new opportunity to reflect on the definition of ‘regional language’ – a term that sets off many heated debates all across the world. This topic is presented within her language index on Scanian, which is spoken in Eastern Denmark and Southern Sweden.

For once, all of these indexes are in English! But to all of those the French speakers out there: don’t worry, the French translations are on their way…

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Last but not least…

• Our new word of the week should put a smile on your face: « laugh » is now online, so get translating!

• And don’t forget our Soroquiz, always for you to find on our homepage!

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We wish you all a great week!

The Sorosoro crew