Newswise — The University of Kentucky is partnering with Khorog State University in Tajikistan to preserve the endangered language of Shughni, along with its cultural traditions. The language, which has no written tradition, is spoken by approximately 40,000 people in the Pamir Mountains of Eastern Tajikistan and another 20,000 in Afghanistan. During the month of July, UK hosted three members of the faculty from Khorog State University in Tajikistan who are partnering with UK faculty from the Linguistics Program to create the first comprehensive written grammar of Shughni. The three visitors from Tajikistan " Muqbilsho Alamshoev, Shohnazar Mirzoev, and Gulnoro Mirzovafoeva " are all native speakers of Shughni. All three also speak Tajik and Russian, the official languages of Tajikistan. Mirzovafoeva is fluent in English.
Collaborating with the Khorog State visitors are four members of the UK Linguistics Program faculty: Andrew Hippisley and Gregory Stump (both with primary appointments in the Department of English) and Mark Lauersdorf and Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby (both with primary appointments in Modern & Classical Languages). Graduate student Amanda Barie and undergraduates James Mastin and Dustin Zerrer are also involved in the project. Together, the members of this team are conducting a month-long workshop in which they have begun research for the proposed volume and are making plans for grant applications that will allow them to continue this work in the future, both in Lexington and in Khorog.
RSS