Notes from the Field: Wisconsin Walloon Documentation and Orthography
Date
2021-01
Authors
Contributor
Advisor
Department
Instructor
Depositor
Speaker
Researcher
Consultant
Interviewer
Narrator
Transcriber
Annotator
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Hawaii Press
Volume
15
Number/Issue
Starting Page
1
Ending Page
29
Alternative Title
Abstract
Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d’oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the dominant functional language. Although younger generations today have not learned the language, there remain enough Walloon speakers as well as Belgian descendants interested in their linguistic heritage to have generated community support for a Walloon documentation and conservation project. In this paper, we report on the results of over three years of collaboration between university researchers, students, and community members to document, study, and promote the language for the benefit of both scholars and community. We provide a description of the language, collaborative documentation efforts, and the development of community resources, including a phonetically-accessible Walloon orthography. We conclude with an outlook on future work with an eye toward increased community-led efforts.
Description
Keywords
language documentation, orthography, Wisconsin Walloon, collaboration
Citation
Biers, Kelly & Ellen Osterhaus. 2021. Notes from the Field: Wisconsin Walloon Documentation and Orthography. Language Documentation & Conservation 15: 1-29. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24968.
Extent
29 pages
Format
Geographic Location
Time Period
Related To
Related To (URI)
Table of Contents
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States
Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 United States
Rights Holder
Local Contexts
Email libraryada-l@lists.hawaii.edu if you need this content in ADA-compliant format.