Transcribed and Translated Kusunda Recordings

Kusunda Data

These data were collected by Uday Raj Aaley and Tim Bodt, with cooperation from videographer Sonam Tashi Chhumare, between July 29^th and August 12^th, 2019, in Sitapaila, Kathmandu, Nepal.

The two resource persons are the then last two speakers of Kusunda, Gyani Maiya Sen Kusunda (speaker code: GM) and Kamala Khatri (Sen Kusunda) (speaker code: K). Several months after these recordings were made, Gyani Maiya passed away.

The transcriptions in IPA and the Nepali translations were made by Uday Raj Aaley, while English translations were provided by Tim Bodt with assistance from Chungda Chhumare.

These transcribed and translated recordings have a total length of 1 hour, 57 minutes and 29 seconds.

The metadata of the individual recordings are provided in the table below.

For the time being, these data will remain under a restricted access regime. We will only provide access to (parts of) this deposit upon specific written request. Anyone with a genuine interest in these data can submit such a request to bodttim@gmail.com (Tim Bodt), with CC to aarambhkhabar@gmail.com (Uday Raj Aaley). We will discuss every request with Kamala Khatri (Sen Kusunda), the remaining speaker in the recordings, and the Chairperson of the Nepal Kusunda Development Society. Every request will be judged on an individual basis. We expect anyone requesting access to provide a full justification of their interest in the data, including at a minimum: their name and occupation; their (academic) background and affiliation; their purpose of requesting access to the data; the project, project duration, project objectives and project funding for which they will use the data; and the individuals who will work with these data. We expect everyone accessing these data to: fully acknowledge the speakers and the transcribers/translators of the recordings; not share these data beyond those individuals mentioned as part of the project; not use the data for purposes other than stated in the project; and not in any way commercialise these data or the project outcomes based on them.

We ideally would share the recordings, transcriptions and translations with a PhD student or a postdoc on a dedicated, fully funded project who will further analyse them to augment the existing descriptions of Kusunda, in particular, Watters (2006). We are also happy to share these data (for example, transcripts of the recordings and their translations) with ethnographers, anthropologists and others interested to learn more about the Kusunda culture and history.

The data are contained in zip files that most commonly consist of an .eaf ELAN project file, an .pfsx ELAN preferences file, an .mp4 video file, a .wav sound file, and one or several a .doc Word files with the initial transcription and translation. If saved in the same folder, opening the ELAN project file will simultaneously open the correct corresponding video file.

ELAN tier set-up: The basic ELAN project files (.eaf) contain six basic tiers, in which X refers to the speaker, A for Gyani Maiya, and B for Kamala:

1)      X_phrase-txt-kgg-fonipa: the standardised and corrected IPA transcription of the utterance

2)      X_phrase-lit-kgg-Deva-x-Com: the Devanagari transcription of the utterance by Uday

3)      X_phrase-lit-kgg-x-Com: the IPA transcription of the utterance by Uday

4)      X_phrase-gls-ne: the Nepali translation of the utterance by Uday

5)      X_phrase-gls-en: the English translation of the utterance by Tim

6)      X_phrase-note-en: any notes on the utterance

One ELAN project file (KGG_290719_A2.eaf) has been (partially) annotated in FLEx and shows additional word- and morpheme level tiers.

The remaining recordings with a total length of 2 hours, 36 minutes and 20 seconds have been only partially transcribed and translated. We will add these ELAN files as and when we complete them. These recordings are mostly comments on children’s picture books. Unlike the recordings that have already been processed, they are useful for linguistic analysis but do not contribute much to our knowledge of Kusunda culture and history.

We are greatly indebted to late Gyani Maiya Sen Kusunda and to Kamala Sen Kusunda for sharing their knowledge and wisdom, and to Kamala Sen Kusunda for patiently working on the transcription and translation of the recordings. We also acknowledge the support of the British Academy through Postdoctoral Fellowship PF20\100076 “Substrate language influence in the southern Himalayas”, the SOAS Seedcorn fund X074, the Endangered Language Fund (http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/), Dr. Johann-Mattis List and the European Research Council Starting Grant 715618 “Computer-Assisted Language Comparison” (http://calc.digling.org), and contributions from donors, some of whom preferred to remain anonymous, through our GoFundMe crowdfunding website at https://www.gofundme.com/f/saving-the-kusunda-language-in-nepal.