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Printer Friendly Print On-line language resource will help preserve minority languages in Scotland.

On-line language resource will help preserve minority languages in Scotland.

May 14, 2002

An electronic archive is being compiled that will introduce new ways of studying languages using the internet.

Information technologists and linguists have teamed up to build a comprehensive electronic record of written and spoken texts for the languages of Scotland.

The project has two principal strands: To put written and spoken texts into an electronic format, and then to enable the public to analyse the information over the Internet.

The project, entitled SCOTS - Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech, is a collaboration involving the Division of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh and the Department of English Language and the STELLA (Software for Teaching English Language and Literature and its Assessment) project at the University of Glasgow. This pilot study to ascertain the feasibility of the approach as a model for other languages is being funded by the Swindon based Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

The project is initially concentrating on the two language varieties Scots and Scottish English. While these share their roots with modern English, over the centuries they have developed a unique vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and pronunciation, and a rich literary heritage.

While SCOTS will initially focus on Scottish English and Scots, the aim in due course is to include other languages spoken in Scotland, particularly Gaelic and non-indigenous languages such as Punjabi, Urdu and Chinese.

One of the project's principal investigators is Henry S. Thompson, of the University of Edinburgh. "This pilot project will assess both the availability of material and the degree of effort needed to collate it and present it in a coherent and consistent form as an on-line language resource."

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)




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