About Us | Endangeredlanguages

To undertake inter departmental and inter disciplinary research related to endangered languages.
To undertake fieldwork, research, analysis, archiving and documentation of smaller indigenous/endangered languages using state-of-art speech and language technologies, in formats that are universally acceptable viz. digitized textual, audio and video formats.
To produce published monographs, grammars, grammatical sketches, dictionaries and lexicon, ethno-linguistic and theoretical descriptions, collection of oral and folk literature and scholarly books on endangered languages. To produce language and dialect atlases with special reference to minority and endangered languages.
To produce language atlases with special reference to minority and endangered languages.
To organize workshops and seminars aimed towards promoting advanced research related to endangered languages.
To train teachers and students from other departments/centres in Field Linguistics, Lexicography and in techniques for data management and documentation. Field linguistics should constitute an indispensable part of the Centre.
To serve the indigenous and endangered language communities by making accessible the products of the research of the Centre, i.e. digital and analogue archives of linguistic data, language teaching material, and language artefacts.
To promote and foster various domains of endangered languages so as to ensure minority/endangered language communities in maintaining and preserving language vitality, including the development of orthographical resources like scripts, book of letters, and primers.
To digitize data collected in the course of research in the Centre and make it available to public by internet.
To transform into an independent Centre purely devoted to the issues of endangered and indigenous languages

The Centre

In recent years, the linguistic diversity across the globe is facing serious challenge. UNESCO estimates that by the end of this century nearly half of the 6000 plus languages being spoken in the world will become extinct. UNESCO’s Atlas of the Endangered Languages, 2009 states that 192 Indian languages are potentially endangered and if nothing will become extinct very soon. Confronted with this scenario, UGC decided to take a stance to prevent the extinction of these endangered languages in India. At its behest, projects to document, describe, archive and revitalize these endangered languages and cultures were started in Central universities across India under the scheme – “Financial Assistance for setting up Centre for preservation and promotion of endangered languages” during XII plan period. Centre for Endangered Languages, Central University of Jharkhand was established under the above mentioned scheme and was allotted Rs. 360 lakhs for a period of three years for setting up its infrastructure and to work upon the aims mentioned below.