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The Workshop on Documenting Minority Languages in Nusa Tenggara Timur was held 7-13 May 2018 in Kupang, NTT at the Universitas Kristen Artha Wacana (UKAW). The goal of the workshop was to provide practical training in language documentation for people from Nusa Tenggara Timur with an interest in their local and regional languages, and have the potential to play a major role in documenting these languages. In addition to classroom study, the workshop included three days of field study by eight different teams. These teams visited Desa Bolok (Bahasa Helong), Nekmese and Burain (Bahasa Uab Meto), Pukdale (Bahasa Termanu), and Rote (Bahasa Thie and Bahasa Lole). In addition, Bahasa Abui was studied with Abui speakers living in the Kupang area, and Bahasa Sar was studied with a speaker who was visiting from Pantar. The documentation deposited here was compiled in a single day on 13 May 2018 and as such should not be considered to be final products. Still, these data demonstrate the enormous potential of well-trained local documentation teams to complete professional quality documentation in a relatively short amount of time. One of the greatest challenges for documentary linguistics is the lack of capacity, especially in regions were language endangerment is most severe. It is our hope that the workshop participants will continue in their efforts to document local languages and preserve the rich linguistic heritage of NTT.
This workshop would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. We would especially like to thank UKAW for hosting the workshop and providing meeting space on campus. We are indebted to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research and the United States National Science Foundation for providing the funding which made this workshop possible. And we thank the Language Documentation Training Center at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa for providing equipment and training modules. Finally, we express our greatest thanks to the speakers and language communities in NTT for sharing their homes and the languages with the workshop participants.
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