Just like that five months of 2020 has gone, of which two of them have been spent in a state of lockdown or semi-lockdown. Even thought the Covid-19 pandemic has caused most of us to adjust our lifestyles and work life, it has also brought on some positive changes.

In this time there as been a surge of events and activities for both social and work related reasons, moving to an online space. We have seen artists and celebrities hosting concerts and talk shows on their social media platforms and here at SADiLaR we have been exploring the option of online workshops. Both the Carpentries workshop and the RAIL workshop took place in an online capacity and as you will read in the newsletter, both were a success.

Change may be scary and intimidating, because it usually takes us out of our comfort zone, but it also gives us access to new opportunities. Online platforms can give SADiLaR the opportunity to spread its ideas and research to a bigger audience and tell the important story of Digital Humanities.

Here in the Communication Office, we are glad to have our team leader, Liane van den Bergh back on board after her maternity leave and we would like to wish her well with the year ahead.

We hope everyone is holding strong and keeping positive!

Warm Regards

Communication Team

First online Carpentries workshop midst the COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has changed the scope of the world and business as we know it in just a few months. Needless to say all business practices, including workshops needed to be adapted to this new climate and reality. On May 5th – May 7th SADiLaR collaborated with The Carpentries on hosting a workshop focused on equipping graduate students and researchers with the necessary data skills to conduct efficient research. Read the full article about the event here:

Resources for African Indigenous Languages (RAIL) online workshop

The South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) organised a workshop (originally expected to be held at the LREC 2020 conference in Marseille, France) in the field of African Indigenous Language Resources. This workshop aimed at bringing together researchers who are interested in showcasing their research and thereby boosting the field of African indigenous languages. It provided an overview of the current state-of-the-art and emphasises availability of African indigenous language resources, including both data and tools. Additionally, it allowed for information sharing among researchers interested in African indigenous languages as well as starting discussions on improving the quality and availability of the resources. Many African indigenous languages currently have no or very limited resources available and, additionally, they are often structurally quite different from more well-resourced languages, requiring the development and use of specialised techniques. By bringing together researchers from different fields (e.g., (computational) linguistics, sociolinguistics, language technology) to discuss the development of language resources for African indigenous languages, we hoped the workshop would boost research in this field. Read the full article here:

A video series on intensified adjectives in Afrikaans

In this blog, Afrikaans researcher Benito Trollip introduces a video series on intensified adjectives in Afrikaans. Interesting questions about these words are raised, including but not limited to who decides when a compound becomes and intensified adjective and where do these intensified adjectives originate from? The motivation for the videos is given, as well as the disclaimer that the content of the videos is not intended to say what is right and wrong or to change school curricula. The reader is urged to think about the questions raised in the videos as it highlights the complexities of intensified adjectives in Afrikaans. Read the full article here:

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