The Western Institute for Endangered Language Documentation, or WIELD, is a California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to the documentation, preservation, revitalization, and revival of fragmented languages, especially the

Native American languages The Indigenous languages of the Americas are the languages that were used by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas Pre-Columbian era, before the arrival of non-Indigenous peoples. Over a thousand of these languages are still used today, while m ...

of western North America. It was founded in 2013 by four linguists: Uldis Balodis, who has since published a grammar of the Yuki language, Jessica Kirchner, whose doctoral work had included engagement with the Kʷak̓ʷala language, Timothy Henry-Rodriguez, who had written a pedagogical grammar of Ventureño Chumash for his dissertation, and Neil Alexander Walker, who has since published a grammar of the

Southern Pomo Southern Pomo is one of seven mutually unintelligible Pomoan languages which were spoken by the Pomo people in Northern California along the Russian River and Clear Lake. The Pomo languages have been grouped together with other so-called Hokan ...

language. These four founding board members are symbolized on the WIELD corporate seal via phonetic symbols drawn from the four aforementioned languages studied by each scholar. Since its founding, WIELD has overseen several projects. In 2014, a WIELD board member located the last fluent speaker of the

Wappo The Wappo (endonym: ''Micewal'') are an Indigenous people of northern California. Their traditional homelands are in Napa Valley, the south shore of Clear Lake, Alexander Valley, and Russian River valley. They are distantly related to the Yu ...

language, and he and another board member made two trips to make audio recordings of Wappo before the speaker died. At around the same time, WIELD entered into an agreement with th
California Indian Museum and Cultural Center
(CIMCC) in which WIELD taught Southern Pomo language classes to heritage students in the CIMCC's facilities. Additional long-term projects by WIELD have included support for archival work on the extinct Northeastern Pomo language and the creation of a Purisimeño Chumash dictionary. WIELD has created a careful standard for

Americanist Phonetic Notation Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American ...

, which is a system in more common use for North American languages than is the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation ...

. WIELD has also innovated a Twitter-based model for hosting and archiving presentations for international workshops on fragmented languages.

References

{{reflist Linguistic research institutes Endangered languages projects Language advocacy organizations Language revival Research institutes in California Indigenous languages of California Research institutes established in 2013 2013 establishments in California