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Frequently Asked Questions

What qualifications do I need to do a course in Studies in Language Endangerment?

It depends on which course you wish to apply for. To start with a Graduate Certificate, you do not need tertiary (university or TAFE) qualifications, but you should have at least 5 years of relevant community or professional expertise. You also have to meet Monash University English Language Requirements.

If you want to apply for a Masters in Language Endangerment, you should have a Bachelor's credit degree, or a pass degree with at least 5 years of relevant community or professional experience at a senior level.

Click here for more information about entry requirements and application procedures.

What does a 'credit average' mean?

There are four grades (above fail): Pass (P: 50-59), Credit (C: 60-69), Distinction (D: 70-79), High Distinction (HD: 80-100). Your grades are also usually given in percentage terms. You will receive a grade for each unit. A 'credit average' means that your grade average for the units you study in a given semester and for your whole course is equal to a credit (60-69).

For more information about the Monash grading and assessment system, click here .

What do all these course names like 'certificate' and 'diploma' mean?

The best place to get an understanding of university language is here .

What is 'distance education'?

Distance education means studying a course without actually going to the university for lectures and tutorials. At Monash University, this type of study is called 'off-campus learning '.

What is 'off-campus learning'?

'Off-campus learning' means studying a course without actually going to the university for lectures and tutorials.

Off-campus students receive their study materials via the internet and do their study at home. They send their work to their lecturer in the post or online through the internet.

Off-campus learning is very flexible. Provided students have access to the internet, Studies in Language Endangerment can be done almost anywhere in the world.

More information about off-campus learning options for Studies in Language Endangerment can be found here.

What is 'on-line learning'?

'On-line learning' at Monash University is conducted through MUSO (Monash University Studies Online). Study materials are available for students to download, and discussions and assessments can be done online. Off-campus students get to be involved in class discussions through MUSO, which is complementary to lectures for on-campus students.

What is 'MUSO'?

MUSO stands for Monash University Studies Online. It refers to a teaching and learning style which involves lecturers making course materials available online for students, and students participating in discussions and assessment online. Off-campus students get to be involved in class discussions through MUSO, which is complementary to lectures for on-campus students.

More information about how to access and use MUSO is detailed in the Study Handbook sent to all successful applicants.

Can I get credit for previous study?

Credit may be awarded for previous relevant study. That is, students who have completed undergraduate studies in Linguistics will be exempted from the core unit ALM4110 General Linguistics.

Students who have completed other core units in Language Endangerment Studies in their undergraduate studies at Monash University will be exempt from these units.

Students exempted from core units are required to select additional electives. Students who transfer from the Graduate Certificate or the Postgraduate Diploma to the Masters of Linguistics in Language Endangerment Studies will be awarded advanced standing and are not required to complete additional elective subjects.

Students wishing to apply for credit for other previous qualifications or experience should contact the Coordinator for Studies in Language Endangerment.

More information about credit arrangements for each course in Language Endangerment studies can be found on the pages for those courses. Click on the links in the navigation bar on the left.

Is there support for International Students?

Information about University support services for International Students is available here .

The Monash University International Students Service is concerned with upholding the welfare of international students. This can include issues such as health, housing, financial aid, and safety on campus.

If you need help to write in English, especially in an academic style,Language and Academic Skills Support can help you with your work. You will need to contact them early for help though, as they can get very busy.

Monash University's site for prospective International Students.

Is there support for Indigenous Students?

The Indigenous Student Support Unit at The Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies (CAIS) offers companionship and support to Indigenous undergraduate students at any campus undertaking any degree course at Monash University.

The Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies has a list of scholarships and bursaries available to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and provides support for Australian Indigenous students.

If you need help to write in English, especially in an academic style, the Arts Academic Language and Learning Unit can help you with your work. You will need to contact them early for help though, as they can get very busy.

Do I need to speak another language to do the course?

As with all study in Linguistics, you do not need to be able to speak another language in order to study of language itself. Although it is an advantage to have some knowledge of another language, it is not presumed or expected that students are able to speak another language.

Will I have to learn another language?

While you will be expected to become familiar with features of languages of the world, you will not be required to learn another language.

Students in Language Endangerment are required to develop an affiliation with a language community or relevant organisation which is engaged in language maintenance/revitalisation/renewal. Through project work with these organisations, you should also become familiar with features of their community language(s).

How do I find an endangered language organisation I can be associated with?

Some links to Endangered Language organisations can be found on our links page. Other networks and organisations concerned with connecting linguists and endangered language communites and organisations are listed under the next question.

Who can I talk to about working with endangered languages?

The Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD) is specifically set up to assist with queries related to working with endangered languages. The mailing list is the venue for asking questions related to practicalities of working with endangered languages, but you can also address the convenors of the network by emailing ReNeLD@rnld.org

Other organisations which also support endangered languages in many ways are listed on our links page.

It might also be useful for you or your organisation to take part in a meeting, workshop or conference focused on endangered languages. For example, the Foundation for Endangered Languages has an annual conference at which language maintenance practitioners discuss both theoretical issues and very practical concerns.

Where can I find out more about language X?

There are a number of good websites which can help get you started in learning more about a language.

The Ethnologue : Languages of the World provides basic information about a great many of the world's languages. The site allows users to search by region or by a particular language name. Information includes location of the language, approximate speaker numbers, classification within a language family, relationship to other languages, and vitality of the language. SIL is primarily a Bible translation organisation, and therefore information is included on religion of speakers and whether portions of the bible have been translated.

A number of communities which speak an endangered language have created websites giving information about the language and the community.

David Nathan maintains an on-line library of resources for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Languages.

David Nash also maintains a website with a lot of information about Aboriginal Languages and linguistics in Australia.

There are several universities which are particularly good sources for information about the languages of Australia, Indonesia, the Pacific, and New Guinea. They are:

Where can I do linguistic fieldwork in the region?

There are many minority languages in Australia, Indonesia, East Timor and Melanesia that need concerted study. You can contact the Linguistics Program staff at Monash University, as they have links to some of these communities and organisations which represent minority language groups.

The RNLD website can put you in touch with linguists in linguistics programs which have an emphasis on language endangerment and language documentation. See also the university web links under the question on "Where can I find out more about language X?".

What's different about language documentation with endangered languages?

Linguists and language maintenance practitioners working with endangered languages have discovered many levels of complexity about this task - some of them linguistic, and some of them socio-cultural and political. There are some references at the end of this section which can provide you with more insights into the issues we raise here.

Fieldwork with endangered languages involves a certain urgency to optimise documentation as this might be the only opportunity to document a particular language and associated cultural practices. While all language documentation ideally is as rich as possible, there is a special onus on the recording of endangered languages to include information in different genres, spoken by men and women of different ages, and including traditional knowledge specific to the local culture and environment. The different genres should include monologic storytelling, the most usual type of discourse recorded by linguists, but also other kinds of interactions using the language. These could include village or community meetings, performances, conversations, songs, religious events and so on.

Fieldworkers may confront the enormity of the task of trying to record the wide range of socio-cultural knowledge encoded in an endangered language (e.g. kinship systems, indigenous medical knowledge, the structure of song and dance styles, etc.). Drawing on the expertise of others by undertaking collaborative research can be a way of meeting this challenge (for example, with anthropologists, ethnobiologists, ethnomusicologists, etc.). However collaborative research also brings its own challenges - of finding the experts, learning to work in an interdisciplinary mode, and the expense of a large scale documentation project.

Linguists documenting endangered languages also need to understand local conceptions of knowledge which determine for each community who is a speaker (knowledge) and who has the right to speak (ownership). These issues may (de)limit the linguist's access to speakers. Linguists are beginning to discuss the issues of finding and working with consultants, identifying so-called 'last speakers' and working with linguistic resources which may be less than perfect from a linguistic perspective.

Language endangerment frequently occurs in an environment of conflict, transition and transformation. Fieldworkers may find themselves confronted by a wide variety of challenges, such as becoming involved in advocacy and community development, and needing to reassess a more conventional relationship between linguist and consultant and community in order to work within an 'empowering' framework. We also may realise that we need specialised training to teach us how to do the applied work that communities may ask us to do.

References

Cameron, Deborah, Elizabeth Frazer, Penelope Harvey, Ben Rampton and Kay Richardson. 1993. Ethics, Advocacy and empowerment: issues of method in researching language. Language and Communication 13: 81-94.

Craig, Colette. 1993. Fieldwork on endangered languages: a forward look at ethical issues. In Andre Cochetiere, Jean-Claude Boulanger, and Conrad Ouellon, eds, Proceedings of the XVth International Congress of Linguists, Vol. 1: 33-42. Quebec: Presses de l'Universite de Laval.

Dauenhauer, Nora Marks and Richard Dauenhauer. 1998. Technical, emotional, and ideological issues in reversing language shift: examples from Southeast Asia. In Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley, eds, Endangered languages: language loss and community response: 57-98. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Evans, Nicholas. 2001. The last speaker is dead? Long live the last speaker! In Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff (eds.). Linguistic fieldwork : 250-281. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gerdts, Donna B. 1998. Beyond expertise: the role of the linguist in language revitalization programs. In Nicholas Ostler, ed, Endangered languages: what role for the specialist?: 13-22. Proceedings of the second FEL Conference, U. of Edinburgh, 25-27 September 1998.

Grinevald, Colette. 1998. Language endangerment in South America: a programmatic approach. In Lenore A. Grenoble and Lindsday J. Whaley, eds,Endangered languages: language loss and community response: 124-159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Himmelmann, N.P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics(36). 161-195.

How can I work on my language?

The courses in Language Endangerment at Monash University have been specifically designed to help people from minority language groups record and maintain their languages. The knowledge and skills you'll gain from these courses will directly help your language programs, but there are some things you can do in the meantime. You can record stories and transcribe them (write down the words from the recording and include a translation into a lingua franca or majority language, such as English, Indonesia, Tok Pisin, Kriol). You can start working on a dictionary, collecting words for as many different things as you can. It is important to start right now! Speakers of an endangered language are in an ideal position to record a variety of speech events. Training and advice from linguists is strongly advised so that the recordings can be the best possible quality.

Where can I get advice on what technology I need to do recordings and store the language data?

Using available technologies to make the best recordings, store the data safely and manage it in software programs to do useful analyses is a feature of the program in Studies in Language Endangerment.

The RNLD site has a a series of FAQ s dealing with issues about using technology in language endangerment, as well as links to other sites where these issues are discussed in more detail.

What kind of activites are involved in 'Language Maintenance and Revitalisation'?

There are many different kinds of language maintenance and revitalisation programs. It is important to think carefully about the goal, or purpose of the activity, but the shape and form is really only limited by imagination.

Some of the activities which people do for language maintenance and revitalisation include: making recordings of language speakers, writing new songs in the language, making resources (e.g. story books, a dictionary), language awareness classes (building general knowledge about the language and languages to which it is related), language learning classes, setting up language nests for children, educating the general community about the minority issues and even publishing (e.g. novels, newspapers).

References

Argenter, Joan A., and Brown, R. McKenna eds. 2004. On the margins of nations: endangered languages and linguistic rights. Barcelona (Catalonia), Spain: Foundation for Endangered Languages.

Austin, Peter K. ed. Language documentation and description. vols. 1-5. London: SOAS.

Brenzinger, M. ed. 1998. Endangered Languages in Africa. Köln: Rüdiger Küppe Verlag.

Cameron, Deborah, Frazer, Elizabeth, Harvey, Penelope, Rampton, Ben, and Richardson, Kay. 1993. Ethics, Advocacy and empowerment: issues of method in researching language. Language and Communication 13:81-94.

Crystal, David. 2000. Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fishman, Joshua A. 2001. Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing language shift, revisited: a 21st century perspective. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.

Gippert, Jost, Himmelmann, Nikolaus P., and Mosel, Ulrike eds. 2006. Essentials of language documentation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition: SIL International.

Grenoble, L. A., and Whaley, L. J. 1998. Endangered languages: language loss and community response. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Grenoble, Lenore A., and Whaley, Lindsay J. 2006. Saving languages: an introduction to language revitalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Himmelmann, Nikolaus P. 1998. Documentary and descriptive linguistics. Linguistics 36:161-195.

Hinton, Leanne. 1994. Flutes of Fire: essays on California Indian Languages. Heydey books: Berkeley.

Hinton, Leanne. 2002. How to keep your language alive. Berkeley: Heydey books.

Hinton, Leanne, and Hale, Ken eds. 2001. The green book of language revitalization in practice. New York: Academic Press.
Janse, Mark, and Tol, Sijmen eds. 2003. Language Death and Language Maintenance: Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Miyaoka, Osahito, Sakiyama, Osamu, and Krauss, Michael E. eds.2007. The Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nettle, Daniel, and Romaine, Suzanne. 2000. Vanishing voices: the extinction of the world's languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rau, D. Victoria and Florey, Margaret (eds.). 2007. Documenting and revitalising Austronesian languages. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press.

Tsunoda, Tasaku. 2005. Language Endangerment and Language Revitalization. Mouton de Gruyter.

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