Our free event series Unheard Of! Languages and Literatures from Around the World continues. There’s no event on May 16 has been cancelled, but the last event of the season (NYC Poetry in Every Language) will be live at ELA on June 13, 6:30 pm (3 W 18th Street, 6th Fl). Details and free RSVP here:…
Join us on April 4 at 6:30 for Teaching Endangered Languages Against the Odds, part of our continuing event series Unheard Of! Languages and Literatures from Around the World. It’s free and open all to all — just let us know you’re coming by RSVPing here. The location is ELA’s office in Manhattan at 3 W 18th Street (6th…
Next week comes the next installement of our free event series Unheard Of! Languages and Literatures from Around the World. It’s free and open all to all — just let us know you’re coming by RSVPing here. The location is ELA’s office in Manhattan at 3 W 18th Street (6th Floor), close to Union Square and a…
Come celebrate International Mother Language Day (2/21) live at ELA in NYC! Throughout the day, we have three in-person events throughout the day. RSVP here and drop in for any or all. 1:30-2:30 pm: “Why and how should we protect multilingualism?” A panel discussion hosted virtually by Manchester City of Languages as part of the Muslim Arts &…
Save the dates! Announcing the return of ELA’s long-running event series “Unheard Of! Languages and Literatures From Around the World”—one per month, Tuesday evenings, live in NYC, free and open to all, about, in, around, and for Language.
With #GivingTuesday next week and the holidays coming up, give the person you love who loves languages a unique gift—by supporting our year-end Facebook fundraiser! (You can also give with a credit card via Paypal or by mailing us a check.) Donate just $40 ($10 off) to get an all-color, full-scale (24” x 36”, standard-frame-size)…
ELA is looking for a short-term, part-time volunteer to help catalog and organize its print and digital collections, with any needed training and supervision provided. This will take place in person at our 18th Street office in Manhattan, beginning as soon as possible, with flexible scheduling but some weekday availability preferred. No experience required, but…
On September 25, ELA was invited to table at the annual Bronx Native American Festival in Pelham Bay Park. For over 25 years, master of ceremonies Bobby Gonzalez has led the celebration, inviting a number of musicians, dancers, and storytellers to share traditions from a wide range of Native cultures. Indigenous representation ranged from Taino…
In July, ELA launched a slew of new programs run by and centered on East Harlem’s Indigenous community, where Tu’un Savi (Mixtec), Mam, Nahuatl, and other Indigenous Latin American languages are spoken. Health—and particularly health literacy—has been at the heart of these programs, which are all about the connections between health on the one hand…
On June 15, ELA was at Queens Borough Hall with the founders of the Queens Night Market, the Queens Historical Society, the Queens Library, students from Newcomers High School, and a number of other groups as part of the inaugural Festival of NY. We showed the language map, introduced ELA’s work, and met an amazing…
On May 1, ELA Co-Director Daniel Kaufman and long-time ELA collaborator and Tu’un Savi (Mixtec) speaker Ismael Alvarez take on the grueling 40-mile Five Boro Bike Tour for the cause of Indigenous languages. Support our small fundraiser here: https://gofund.me/75117eee Every dollar raised will go to compensating speakers of Ismael’s mother tongue, Tu’un Savi (Mixteco), to record, transcribe and translate…
Let’s be realistic. When a year begins with an attempted insurrection intent on replacing the few remnants of democracy with a fascist ethnostate, it leaves a lot of room for improvement over the next 11 months. Under such circumstances, just keeping the lights on can feel like landing on Mars! For the second year in…
To say thank you for your donations, we have gifts at special prices through the end of the year: language maps, t-shirts, and storybooks. Children’s books, recordings with elders, free public events, digital mapping, public health messages in Indigenous languages by and for Indigenous communities — these are just some of the things that ELA…
Join us this coming Saturday October 16 from 1 pm to celebrate the closing of two artist installations at the ELA house on Governors Island: Mother Tongues by Yuri Marder and The Migration Codex by Cinthya Santos Briones. Meet the artists and come hear music and poetry in the Indigenous languages of Mexico! Mixtec music master…
Early fall is one of the most beautiful times out on Governors Island, and ELA will still be in residency at our house in Nolan Park (building 4A) through October. But with a twist: with summer crowds thinning and NYC taking more precautions around Covid, we’ll be more in residency-mode with fewer events and without…
It’s been a busy summer! ELA’s house on Governors Island will be closed this weekend (August 7-8) for a little R&R, but we’ll be back next weekend (August 14-15).
It was supposed to be our 10th anniversary, but this wasn’t a year for celebration. It was a year of doing what we could to continue our work, despite limitations.
In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a piece of Nahuatl graffiti spotted by ELA board member Juliette Blevins in South Mountain Reserve, New Jersey: “I love you.”
ELA’s work is all about what happens when communities, linguists, artists, students, and language lovers come together — usually in person, in a room, at a community center, at a festival, up a mountain or on a Brooklyn street corner… But in the meantime a lot of amazing work is going on virtually, opening up new…
Varieties of what became Judeo-Spanish (now widely known as Ladino) were once spoken by Sephardim, the Jews of Spain — approximately 100,000-175,000 of whom were expelled from Spain in 1492. While some went to Portugal and others to Morocco, the vast majority went to the Ottoman Empire, maintaining and developing their distinctive language for over 500 years. By the…
For the next few months, the Endangered Language Alliance will be hosting a small residency program on Governors Island, the exciting new arts and culture hub in the middle of New York Harbor, giving space to linguists, language activists, and other creators doing related work at a challenging time. Residents will work on ongoing projects documenting…