Jejueo Talking Dictionary: A collaborative online database for language revitalization

Abstract

The Jejueo Talking Dictionary features audio clips of Jejueo words, and video clips of natural language use to allow Jejueo learners to see each word within the context of its cultural and historical significance, as well as in Jejueo grammatical constructions. The dictionary compiles existing annotated video corpora of Jejueo songs, conversational genres and regional mythology (Kim, Yang, Rositano, Tran) into a multimedia database, supplemented by original annotated video recordings. Words and definitions are accompanied by audio files of their pronunciation and occasional photos, in the case of items native to Jeju. The audio and video data is tagged in Jejueo, Korean, Japanese and English so that users may search or browse the dictionary in any of these languages. Our intention for the Jejueo Talking Dictionary is to create a language revitalization tool suited to the needs of diverse user groups, such as elder speakers within the community, young semi-speakers in schools, and the international scientific community.