Language Resource Maps

 Lately I've been thinking about creating an interactive map resource for highlighting research on sign language varieties in North Africa, so I've been looking at lots of different maps to think about how I want to do it.


Some of my favorites that serve similar functions are these. 


Atlas of Endangered Alphabets: https://www.endangeredalphabets.net/

  • project highlighting the cultural value of writing systems
  • explores and challenges our definitions of what writing is
  • supports communities in developing literacy-building resources in indigenous scripts



The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme: https://www.eldp.net/en/our+projects/map/#

  • organization that funds language documentation programs
  • archival materials hosted through their database
  • more academia-oriented


The Endangered Languages Project: https://endangeredlanguages.com/language-search-map?field_elp_country=All&field_region=26&field_speaker_number_range=All&search_api_fulltext=&sort_by=search_api_relevance&sort_order=ASC&filter_map=true
  • organization that trains communities in language documentation
  • holds workshops and catalogues resources and revitalization projects
  • more community-oriented

Glottolog: https://glottolog.org/resource/languoid/id/sign1238

  • catalogues all the world's languages attested in scholarly publications
  • categorizes by language family
  • a good starting place, but tends to be missing attested languages reported only in gray literature and non-academic sources 
  • lists 227 sign languages (but there are more!)

You can also group by region and see relative documentation status. We can see the Egyptian Sign Language is the least documented of languages reported in Egypt.


I also like the interactive maps of these typological databases:

WALS: https://wals.info/languoid/samples/200
  • the World Atlas of Language structures
  • samples diverse languages and codes them for different grammatical features
  • can map languages by grammatical features, includes chapters about each feature, types, and areal distribution
  • has two chapters on sign language typology-- negation and question particles



APICS: https://apics-online.info/contributions#1/30/10
  • like WALS but for pidgins and creoles (and a few mixed languages)

Grambank: https://grambank.clld.org/languages
  • like WALS but newer and much larger
  • only includes a few data points from maybe 2 sign languages




So, clearly there is a need for a more comprehensive resource like these but focusing on sign languages in the region.




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