Survey team and work

The purpose of my trip to Buka this time was to be a part of a language survey team to find out about some languages and dialects on the west coast of Buka and on islands off the coast. The team consisted of myself, Bonnie (USA) and Mariela (Argentina). Here are the three of us travelling on a boat during the survey.

L to R: Bonnie, me, Mariela

Our work involved doing many questionnaires and taking a list of words in the local dialect everywhere we went for later comparison. We also had some recordings in local languages to see how the people could understand other dialects. We did questionnaires on the following topics: language use, contact patterns, church, school, community education levels, and culture. We each had certain jobs to do, and it was my responsibility to do the language use and contact patterns (eg. travel and movement outside of the language area) questionnaire. It was hard work, especially when I had to get the figures for immigration and emigration, as there was a lot of people who have moved to different areas or come in from somewhere else.

Here are some photos of me hard at work in the villages.

Having a bit of a laugh with the people

Preparing to go to Bougainville

It's less than a week now till we go to Bougainville! Rebekah and I have been doing a bit of research on the Teop language. We found some wordlists in both Teop and the neighbouring language (Tinputz) and its dialects. It has been useful to have a look at those lists and compare the words to see similarities and differences.

One of the things we want to do when we visit the Teop area is to try to understand the dialect situation a bit more, so that we (or other potential teams) can know what is needed in terms of translation. For example, would a translation in the main coastal dialect be acceptable and useful for people who speak the dialects in the mountains, or would they need a separate translation?

We are hoping to visit several villages and dialects and we plan to write down lists of words in each place and compare them later. We will also ask questions about the language – its use, and how much people can understand the other dialects.