The Language Engineering Resources for the Indigenous Minority Languages of the British Isles and Ireland Project

A bunch of scientists at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California are working on a way for people to talk without making a sound or opening their mouths (we know you’re secretly going to miss all those people chattering away on their cellies during movies and meals). Basically it’s a new subvocal speech system that uses sensors attached to the neck that measure nerve signals used to control your vocal chords and other muscles used for speech. The sensors pick up the activity of neurons which fire whether or not you’re actually verbalizing something, so essentially you can just think what you want to say and the system will translate that into words.

It sounds like NASA defines subvocal speech as the neuromuscular processes involved in activities like whispering, or reading to yourself. The technology appears to be fairly new at this point, but it looks like it might have some interesting applications

At least six of every thousand words in New Zealand English are borrowed from Maori.

The centre just released A Dictionary of Maori Words in New Zealand English, authored by Dr John Macalister.

See the press release here.

Two master’s degrees in Hawaiian Studies approved

As of fall 2005, the University of Hawai`i at Manoa will be offering two new master’s degrees for graduate students in Hawaiian Language and Literature and Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Studies. The Board of Regents approved the master’s degrees in Hawaiian Studies in its last monthly meeting.

A Manx Note Book has a wealth of Manx-related resources, including a number of full texts. Sadly, only the intro to Cregeen’s 1835 A Dictionary of the Manks Language is available, but surely there is something that will catch your interest here.

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