Confederacy of a Dunce

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

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The past week or two have been really busy as we prepare for the launch of the new research centre where I am gainfully employed. This week is National Science Week so it's a very sensible time to launch a major new centre. The launch also (very nearly) coincides with the third anniversary of the British government's formal recognition of BSL as a language in its own right (18 March 2003; press release from the RNID, official government statement).*

To give you an idea of what the centre is all about, here is the official press release announcing the Centre award. I will be working primarily on projects related to language processing in signed and spoken languages (ok, not ALL signed and spoken languages, but starting off with BSL and English). More on that once the projects are actually underway -- at the moment I'm doing a lot of work wrapping up an assortment of previous projects.

*I should note that official recognition of BSL does not mean that BSL is an official language of the UK. Only that the government has recognized that BSL is a "real language". BSL is still not mentioned on the UK DirectGov pages concerning official languages, even though it's indisputably a British language, with thousands of native signers living in the country. So what is mentioned? English, Welsh, Scots Gaelic are definitely official (when we took the "Life in the UK" test, we were given the option of taking it in any of these three languages). The DirectGov page also gives space to Cornish, even though the last native Cornish speaker apparently died in 1777, and thus it can really be considered only a historical curiosity rather than a true language (check out this excellent post on Language Log for more info about the case of Cornish).

language

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:35:11 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)