The Dictionary: Preventing Himalayan Language Extinction , Occidental College William Chen, United States (Many thanks to Dr. Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa and Dr. Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia) a. A two-sentence summary of the goals of your project. This project intends to promote the use and study of Himalayan languages by creating digital learning resources for the computers and mobile phones. After creating prototypes of these resources, during the grant-supported stage of the project I traveled to Sikkim to learn more about local culture and work with community organizations to solicit feedback on our work to date to ensure these resources will be useful for them. b. Did other fund-raising efforts contribute to your project? What were they? No, we were funded solely through this grant. We received seed funding for the initial dictionary website from Occidental College during Summer of 2018. This grant funded further research and the development of a mobile app. c. How did you come up with the idea for your project? I started working last summer on a basic website dictionary for an endangered language. This project was initially developed out of my collaboration with two professors at my school (Dr. Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa and Dr. Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia) who wanted to develop digital resources for Himalayan languages in the eastern Indian Himalayan state of Sikkim. My responsibility was technical development, while they wrote the dictionary content for Bhutia (Lho kay), one Sikkimese language. When the summer was over, we felt like we could continue refining and expanding the project to fully deploy in the near future. I proposed we not only create a companion mobile app, but combine the refined website and app into a framework that can be used to create different dictionaries for other at-risk languages. Dr. Holmes- Tagchungdarpa and Dr. Bhutia hoped that we could pilot this using other languages in Sikkim. If this framework were to be successful it could be adapted for use by those who wish to help promote their own at-risk languages. d. Why do you think the issue your project is responding to exists? It could be argued that the issue began hundreds of years ago because of British colonialism. As a centrally located state between China and India, Sikkim was enough of a strategic zone to be controlled by the British Empire under the “Princely States” system. Simultaneously, Christian missionaries exploited Bhutia assumptions that Europeans were highly skilled in medicine to gain influence and prestige. As a result, English took ahold in Sikkim and has stayed ever since. As a state of India, which itself was once a British territory, Sikkim’s private and state schools continues to instruct students in English. More than ever, minority groups are interacting with larger ethnic, cultural and social groups. It’s inevitable that some culture and language from both groups are exchanged. However, it’s likely that the majority group’s language and culture overshadows the minority group’s. With that, the minority group’s languages start to fall into disuse. e. Why did you choose your host site to work in? I wanted to utilize my programming skills to help support communities. Meeting Dr. Amy Holmes-Tagchungdarpa and Dr. Kalzang Dorjee Bhutia provided a direction for that goal when I learned about their dedication to Sikkim due to their research topics and personal connections. I could contribute to their work by addressing how minority languages (like Bhutia) are marginalized. Consequently, we chose to work in to better serve these minority languages. Unlike other parts of Sikkim, Pelling is an urban center where Bhutia is widely spoken. In doing so, I could learn directly from Bhutia speakers and solicit feedback about our project. f. What was it like to work in your host site? Living in Pelling was visually surreal. Pelling was situated on the mountain side, surrounded by a sub-tropical jungle and high enough in elevation to be above the cloud cover. It often felt like I lived in a fable about a faraway civilization. I didn’t understand the local languages, was new to the local customs and also had to cope with problems I never thought I would need to, like landslides, intermittent electricity and leeches. g. Did you feel at any point that the project was not going to work? In what ways? I was mostly concerned about the technical components of the project considering I had never attempted such a substantial software project like this. It’s easy to come up with ideas for an approach but the implementation of it in actual code can completely derail it. I had never dealt with this sort of programming before so I had to quickly learn more about topics like mobile app development. I often questioned if I could figure out how things worked in time. Furthermore, since there are a lot of moving parts that you can’t possibly code from scratch in a reasonable amount of time, you often end up relying on using other people’s code (libraries). However, because you’re combining so many different libraries, compatibility issues often arise. That led to delays upon delays, which made me even more worried that I wouldn’t make adequate progress. h. What were the challenges you encountered in communicating with people? I had an enormous challenge in that I couldn’t speak any of the local languages there, save for the few who could speak English. Instead I had to rely almost entirely on my local guide and my collaborator to help translate what people were saying. Since I could pass for Sikkimese, I may have also confused some local by not properly responding to them. i. How do you define peace? I define peace as the state of being able to co-exist with others whilst having disagreements that can be resolved without violence or aggression. j. How does or will your project contribute to peace? Short-term? Long-term? I believe my project will contribute to peace in the short term by promoting Bhutia language. With more publicized, accessible and convenient resources I can foresee more people learning how to speak Bhutia. This can prevent Bhutia from declining while also preventing conflict between Bhutia communities and neighboring ethnic communities. Additionally, this project also has significance and applicability for other language groups. Since this dictionary framework is intended such that anybody can use it to develop their own dictionary resources for a language, this project could help stop endangered languages worldwide from being forgotten. In doing so we can not only help communities who use these languages but also prevent conflicts caused by loss of language. k. Has your project changed the way you think about the world? How has it changed you? This project has helped me internalize the power that even a small and collective effort has on a major problem. Although the goal to prevent the Bhutia language from falling into disuse is far from achieved, I’m taken aback at just how appreciative people are for just trying to make a change. Furthermore, I’m surprised at how willing people are willing to help us even when there’s no direct reward for them. With that, I feel a renewed faith in humanity and their capacity for good. l. Please provide a 1-2 personal statement sentence, suitable for use as a quotation, addressing how and why this project was valuable and what was the most important thing you learned as a result. Indicate the student’s name (yours or your teammate’s) for quote attribution.

“After seeing the joy a basic dictionary prototype brings to the speakers of Bhutia, I’m even more convinced of the importance of expanding this framework to other at-risk languages. A lack of a digital dictionary may seem like a simple problem to you and I, but it’s a real problem that faces entire communities.” - William Chen