Michif Language Documentation Project
Donation protected
Hi, my name is Dale McCreery, and I'm going to spend the month of August and part of September documenting the Michif language with elders in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota, making recordings for the benefit of all learners of the language, as well as linguists and other interested parties.
Michif, a mixed language spoken by some 200 (maybe?) Métis in Canada and the United States, is a language in danger. All but a few speakers are in their 60s or older, and it remains under-documented. Similarly, what documentation has been done is not always readily available or accessible. This needs to change.
As for me, I'm a Métis documentational linguist, a Michif speaker and sometimes teacher. I currently work documenting the Nuxalk language, and I've spent two summers directly documenting and learning Michif. Since those two summers, I've worked documenting two other languages, created curriculum, and have finished my MA, focusing on the challenges associated with learning Cree. This means, I have a very good idea of both what has been done in terms of documentation, but also, a good idea of what still needs to be done.
I also have a good idea of the expenses involved in documenting. Over the hopefully six weeks of recording, I fully expect to spend a thousand dollars on fuel alone. I camp or stay with friends or elders as much as possible, but when I'm staying with elders and recording them, I do help out financially, and expect to gift those I stay with with food and cash coming to around $600.00 over the weeks I'll be recording. On top of this, I would like to be able to give Elders money for their time, as this is a very mentally exhausting process, especially for those who do not speak on a day to day basis. Even at a minimum of $15.00/hour, over the 100 hours I would like to record, that's 1,500.00. Add in wear and tear on my vehicle, emergencies, food, and my expenses will be around $4,000.00.
Beyond these expenses, there's also a lot of work on my part. For each hour of recording, I will have to prepare. To make the recordings useful to learners I will have to clean them, provide relevant metadata, and make them available online, all of which takes time. If I am to transcribe the recordings, that will take another four hours per hour of recording, up to 400 hours of work. Being already in possession of contract work, much of this is likely to get pushed by the wayside if I'm doing it all for free. If I was doing this work contract rather than on my own time, I would give an estimate of $25,000.00, or $7,000.00 for just the recording and associated work.
Now, let's make one thing clear. I am going to do this work one way or the other because I'm passionate about it, but I think that in a situation like this, where I am doing the work directly for the benefit of the Métis community, for the benefit of learners, historians, linguists, or just the curious, it makes sense to involve people directly not only in the planning of what to record, but also in covering the real cost of the research. I think this is a model for funding language documentation that has the potential to do what needs doing in a timely fashion for the benefit of those who actually need it. I'm also a full time student, and to do this without support will be very hard.
Michif, a mixed language spoken by some 200 (maybe?) Métis in Canada and the United States, is a language in danger. All but a few speakers are in their 60s or older, and it remains under-documented. Similarly, what documentation has been done is not always readily available or accessible. This needs to change.
As for me, I'm a Métis documentational linguist, a Michif speaker and sometimes teacher. I currently work documenting the Nuxalk language, and I've spent two summers directly documenting and learning Michif. Since those two summers, I've worked documenting two other languages, created curriculum, and have finished my MA, focusing on the challenges associated with learning Cree. This means, I have a very good idea of both what has been done in terms of documentation, but also, a good idea of what still needs to be done.
I also have a good idea of the expenses involved in documenting. Over the hopefully six weeks of recording, I fully expect to spend a thousand dollars on fuel alone. I camp or stay with friends or elders as much as possible, but when I'm staying with elders and recording them, I do help out financially, and expect to gift those I stay with with food and cash coming to around $600.00 over the weeks I'll be recording. On top of this, I would like to be able to give Elders money for their time, as this is a very mentally exhausting process, especially for those who do not speak on a day to day basis. Even at a minimum of $15.00/hour, over the 100 hours I would like to record, that's 1,500.00. Add in wear and tear on my vehicle, emergencies, food, and my expenses will be around $4,000.00.
Beyond these expenses, there's also a lot of work on my part. For each hour of recording, I will have to prepare. To make the recordings useful to learners I will have to clean them, provide relevant metadata, and make them available online, all of which takes time. If I am to transcribe the recordings, that will take another four hours per hour of recording, up to 400 hours of work. Being already in possession of contract work, much of this is likely to get pushed by the wayside if I'm doing it all for free. If I was doing this work contract rather than on my own time, I would give an estimate of $25,000.00, or $7,000.00 for just the recording and associated work.
Now, let's make one thing clear. I am going to do this work one way or the other because I'm passionate about it, but I think that in a situation like this, where I am doing the work directly for the benefit of the Métis community, for the benefit of learners, historians, linguists, or just the curious, it makes sense to involve people directly not only in the planning of what to record, but also in covering the real cost of the research. I think this is a model for funding language documentation that has the potential to do what needs doing in a timely fashion for the benefit of those who actually need it. I'm also a full time student, and to do this without support will be very hard.
Organizer
Dale McCreery
Organizer