The Most Important of All Parts of a Langauge Preservation Project--- ACTUALLY PRESERVING THE LANGUAGE!

In collaboration with the Yunnan Minority Languages & Writing Resource Library—a province-wide initiative launched by the Yunnan Government to systematically archive minority languages and writing systems—our team worked to ensure that the Khantau language is not just remembered but truly preserved.

Following the Yunnan Provincial Handbook for the Investigation of Minority Languages and Writing Systems (2020 Edition), our database now includes 2,200 lexical entries, 200 morphological items, and 200 syntactic samples, each accompanied by clear audio recordings and verified transcriptions.

We served as the bridge between the Khantau-speaking community and the government, coordinating logistics and guiding the entire recording process. Two elder speakers—the most fluent carriers of the language—and two younger learners traveled to Kunming at our invitation. Over 30 days of intensive work, we recorded, checked, and translated their speech, preserving not only vocabulary but the tone, cadence, and spirit of a living language.

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Visit https://ynmyw.cn/list/cnAppHtml/22/44/auto/12/0.html to see our full work. 

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