LANGUAGE JOURNEY

Our first piece of advice is that you should prioritise the documentation of your language first. This makes YOU STRONG and sets the foundation for everything else to come.

The time spent gathering, organising and documenting your language and upskilling your team in best practice methods for recording sets the foundation for quality work, which makes the resource production so much easier!

You have had a discussion amongst family, friends and community about your language situation, where it stands today and how the outside world would look at your language status. You have talked about who has language knowledge and possible speakers. Maybe people who have heard words and who either in the past or today has written words down or documented the language in some way.

Our methodology involves the following Language Journey. There is obviously some overlap in these activities but it helps you as a starting point for planning your Miromaa language work. You will find these points expanded further in 2.2 Language Journey Stages.

1. GATHER EVERYTHING and CREATE YOUR LIBRARY

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• Gather your sources
• Digitise your sources that are non-electronic
• Create your Miromaa digital library
• Back up your digital files and protect your originals

2. MANAGE

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• Consider and discuss the protocols for working with language in your community
• Familiarise yourself with the features of Miromaa that were designed to help you comply with these protocols
• Set up Miromaa for your language. This includes:
  - Creating your database
  - Setting up your support network and/or team
  - Assigning access rights, roles and passwords
  - Customising Miromaa if necessary

3. EQUIPMENT and TECHNOLOGY

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• Find out what equipment best matches your needs. e.g. a camera for creating images and an audio device for recording speakers
• Learn to use your equipment
• Work out which computer(s) you will be using
• Learn to use software programs

4. COMMUNTY DOCUMENTATION

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• Decide on your documentation methods which will depend on the resources you have available to draw from
• Document your language by entering words and knowledge into Miromaa
• Document your language by making audio and visual language recordings
• Enrich your entries with images, audio and video

5. LISTEN, UNDERSTAND and LEARN

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• Listen and share knowledge between the generations
• Respect and acknowledge the documentations of the past
• Understand the mechanics of your language by doing language detective work •
• Learn more about your language

6. CREATE and SHARE

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Once you have worked through the above you have built a strong foundation and equipt yourself to help and teach others

• Create resources such as wordlists, dictionaries, Apps and knowledge books
• Share your language with family and community
• Service language requests