 Wonderful. It's already been a wonderful discussion, so I'm really excited and looking forward to it. So, can you all hear me well? Yes. Wonderful. Yeah, first of all, I just would like to thank Yunfan for organizing such a historical event. As you said, I think it's wonderful to have people from so many different backgrounds and I am not a scholar, but a native speaker of one of the regions and have been really interested in the area of language documentation and revitalization. So, I will first do a short introduction because today's talk is going to be about me and myself. So, my name is Ayala in Tibetan you call Yala, which means Turquoise Goddess. And I am from Abbasitran and the county is Zhantang. In Chinese is Zhantang. It borders with Jintran County if you're familiar with the geography, but I will show a map later. I'm currently living in Chengdu and it's been super hot here. It's like almost 40 Celsius every day, so trying to have my brain working. So, today's topic is about my three roles in this language revitalization journey that I took on around my high school age. So, first, I am a native speaker of one of the Yaron kingdoms or the king that she mentioned is Choskya. So, a native speaker of Choskya and also a linguistic student and a dedicated and pretty determined language activist. So, this is a brief agenda of my talk today. And if you have anything that you just think of now, you don't really have to wait for me to the end. I think that's generally how I prefer, but if you prefer to wait till the end, also that's fine. First, I will just briefly introduce each of the roles. And I think that lays the foundation for how these three different roles are interconnected and how they are related. And through some interesting stories, and I will explain each different role in more details. And these roles that I have, sometimes they contradict and sometimes they complement. So, it's just kind of my thought process. So, I appreciate if you have input about how you would approach certain things or you as also a native speaker of one of the dialect or languages and however you would approach different things. So, my first hat as a native speaker of Choskya and Choskya is written in this way in IPA in Latin orthography and in Tibetan script. And as you can see on this map, it's generally where the red dot is. And I was born and raised in a village of 500 people, grew up as a sheep herder, not a really good one. And the population of this language is estimated about 10,000, which is a pretty old data. So, we're looking for like renewing or recollecting the actual number of the speakers. And some language contact in the region. First is Amdo Tibetan. Amdo Tibetan is in the local actually environment. We don't really say Amdo or Choskya. We just say Ronskit and Draskit, which basically means nomads tongue versus like farmers tongue or something like that. And then we have the southwestern Mandarin. And then Putonghua is the medium of language of instruction at school. And first, my kind of turning point how I got into engage into the linguistic, how do I got engaged to be a linguistic student? It was around high school age. I didn't want to go to high school. So I went to an English training program where I was conducting some fieldwork back in my village, which I will explain a little more later. And I got to meet someone who has linguistic background. And she was teaching me IPA. And it was my first time seeing IPA charts. And that really, she told me I could use this tool to write out my language. And I was writing out, as you can see at the bottom, writing out some proverbs, collecting tongue twisters, a lot of interesting oral cultures. And seeing my own language like really written and visible. It was really empowering and a really different experience as someone from just the oral culture and all the written languages that I see are written Tibetan, which we can't really write our dialect. And then written Chinese, we also can't really write our dialect. So all of a sudden I was like, wow, I want to learn more about linguistics. And I want to pursue this past. So that was the first turning point of me kind of making a really bold decision, traveling to U.S. and studying linguistics for a village like this small, the villagers were like, you're crazy and you're insane. And at the time, actually, I also didn't really know much about linguistics. I just say, oh, I'm going to study about languages. And I didn't know what linguistics encompasses. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. So this is like a foreshadowing. Okay, this is the part where I felt as the initial, you know, the excitement of like, oh, I'm going to do something exotic, something great. As the initial excitement wears off. I was like, wow, linguistics is hard. It's really hardcore. It's like a science. And I didn't expect that at all. And remember vividly, we were like, measuring those all different, like vowel qualities and like consonants, like frequencies. And I was like, wow, this is, this is crazy. So I, to summarize, I was really struggling. I was like, I'm more of a, what do you say? Like I can grasp a general concept pretty fast, but like small details, I'm not like super great. So I was really struggling with the course. And I started to question myself, why did I, why did I decide to study linguistics? Why did I travel half of the globe to go to US and pursue linguistics? So as I was struggling, I was talking to my advisors about my struggles. And he set up weekly meetings. This is Scott Delancey that was my advisor. He set up weekly meetings where I would write a piece of a description, like a grammar piece description of my language and meet with him and talk to him about my language. And that really, like, really helped me to gain my confidence and gain my kind of focus back and then re-accessing. Like, why did I study linguistics? And why did I do this? So with UNIFIN as well, we went to attend some international conferences at the time. I wasn't, like, I didn't have a lot of linguistic knowledge, even till this point. My linguistic knowledge is very, very basic. But kind of going to see these people, I'm talking to these people about my language and how fascinated they are, kind of regained. I regained some of the confidence and the initial spark that I had for studying linguistics. So the third hat, the third row is a language documentation journey that I pursue. As I was telling earlier, in this English training program after my high school that I joined, we did this quote, unquote, I shouldn't say homework, but we would go back home with recorder and a camera. So we would interview people and ask them to tell a folk tale or tongue twister or riddle. And this homework initially was, it was kind of, first of all, I treated it as a homework. But then later, as I learned more about how much I don't know about my own culture and how much I am ignored about my culture, I got really like I wanted to learn more and so that I can, first of all, go back to the English training program, tell my teachers about these amazing stories that I hear. So through this process, as an example, I was, I found out that the village name, the village name is Siouhu, which basically means like a like a millstone. So where you would like you would sharpen your like not millstone, what do you do call like you where you would sharpen your swords. So the villagers, the legend is all the King Kesar came to the village and that's where he and his soldiers sharpened the sword. So that's got the village name. And I found out more story like this. And I felt a sense of like self finding and self making through this process. And later I pursued it like further. I made mother tongue like short video clips, which if we have time later when I finish, I can show you one of those mother tongue videos. And I soon realized first when I went in there, I was really when in as an outsider, when in as like a, I think I enjoyed it actually, I was like, oh, this is fun. Like I'm acting like someone like, oh, from outside interviewing people. But as I was doing it more, I actually really immersed myself into it. And I would forget or I would intentionally not turning on the recorders. And it would be actually at some point, it felt weird as an insider going into my community and like, hey, hey, tell me a story or like, well, they wanted to like, talk to me about how my study goes. And they want to gossip about like village events or things that are happening in the village. So I soon, sometimes I would just not turn on my recorder and just really enjoy those moments. So this is a kind of a brief introduction of some of the highlights of each roles that I'm engaged in. So now I will tell three short stories and how these three different roles kind of play out in one another. So the first scenario or the first incident was when I finished my undergrad at University of Oregon in linguistics, my advisor said, do you have the plan and do you have the will to stay and do graduate school? And eventually what that means is you will be working on a grammar book. And I was really excited, first of all, because I think, yeah, that's very valuable. But then as I pulled down a little bit, first of all, I think to be honest, being away from home for so long, I was a bit homesick. So there's absolutely like emotional things involved. But second of all, I remember this moment so vividly, I was sitting in Scott Delance's office. And I see these really big, giant, thick grammar books sitting on his shelf. And I was imagining, okay, in seven, eight years, I will be maybe producing something like that, which is great. But the villagers won't even know I did this. And I won't like they won't be able to read. They won't be able to access it. So I made a decision. I was like, no, I think I just would like to go home at that point. And also, as I was mentioning, when I was attending the conferences, one of the touching moments was hearing the Native American and the aboriginal communities, their story about their language revitalization. It gave me a sense of like urgency. And I just feel like I saw this, my community's fate in like maybe 50 years or 100 years. So I was like, no, I need to go home and do something about it. But like right now, rather than sitting in a classroom, working on a grammar. So this was the first incident. And then the second incident, it's kind of funny, kind of was a little relevant to the first talk. I get this question a lot. They will say, so do you think Yaron is a dialect of Tibetan, or it's a different language? And I get this question asked by Tibetans a lot of the times, especially when they hear that I studied linguistics. And I'm interested in language documentation. So they would ask me this question first, do you have any guesses how I would respond or how you would respond to this question? I don't know, we have we do have a lot of linguists or anyone you want to give a shot? Anyone? I'm not a linguist, but I would like to say this is a question I met in my field work. Actually, a lot of it's very controversial. Yeah, but most of the I have to say most of the male that I met as a local at it really believe that Yaron is a dialect of Tibetan and they explain to me several times what are what are their differences and what are their similarities. But I really want to hear from local females. Because frankly speaking, when I speak with some women, they don't have they don't use to speak their opinion. They don't think their opinion matters. Sometimes I have this kind of impression. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, the authority or the voice most often you hear is definitely male dominant in especially in this context. And yeah, as an insider, actually, as you pointed out, this is actually a really difficult question. And I think first of you in incident like first of you encounters, I just kind of really didn't answer or like put it under the rug and said like I don't know talk about the weather or like something like that. But soon enough, I had to like I really had to give a response. And something that I said, did you have a comment or a question? I do have something. I mean, there's something I'd like to share because I because throughout the almost 20 years in the Jaron area, I could actually see that the viewpoints have been changing. Like right now, I mean, there are more people who believe or who would like to think that Jaron is a dialect of Tibetan. And but I vividly remember, like in about 10 years ago, when I was working with a with a language teacher who spoke who's a native who's a native speaker of like really, I mean, a real Tibetan dialect spoken in Zorke. I was working with him and he is married to a I mean, his wife is a general speaker is a speaker of Situ general. And I remember at a point, I was, I actually asked him whether he could understand what his wife was talking about. And he was saying something like, nah, there's no way for me to understand his that their language. So that was his response at that time. But I remember I brought up the same question about two years ago. And we now have we can communicate through chat at this point. So I actually, because now we're confronting, we were having, we're being asked this question so much. So I, since I remember what he was saying years ago, so I would like to check again, what he's thinking about the Jaron language. So I asked him, so do you think Jaron is an independent language or is it a dialect of Tibetan? And he, he like quickly responded saying, of course, it's a dialect of Tibetan. Although, and that's I'm like, but you said you couldn't understand what they're talking about. And he's like, yeah, yeah, that's true. But there are many elements that that that there are many old Tibetan elements that are preserved in the Jaron dialect. So you can see this web chain of viewpoints throughout the past 10 or yeah, especially throughout the past 10 to 15 years, you can see that people are actually changing their viewpoint. That's what it looks like. It's kind of similar to our first talk. It really echoes with this, I think, because like, like, there's the problem of ethnicity. And there's a problem of, like, everything else around it. So yeah, it for me, I as a linguistic student, I would, especially if I was talking to, like, Tibetan scholars who have some linguistic background, I was kind of really patient at the beginning, I would kind of explain a little bit of the difference in grammatical structures and all of that. And of course, the two most important criteria for defining language versus dialect, at least for linguists is the first is all the grammatical features, right. And then second is it mutually intelligible in the mutual intelligibility is a main factor. So I would just kind of like, oh, this is how we say things. And in general, I would give some sentences, but then like, I mean, Jaron has so many different varieties, I should refrain myself using language dialect, but there's so many varieties. And some scholars just Tibetan scholars just go there and pick Tibetan words. And they're like, look, it's not Tibetan. Yeah, look at all these even basic words are Tibetan, which in my variant, it's, it's not, it's not even a cognate. So they would be like, oh, your is yours is some difference like weird variant. So let's just talk about the standard the suit to or the like the main your own language, not the anything else type. So yeah, I think through the through this process, it made me sometimes patient and kind of trying to see different angles as an insider trying to be a little more patient, rather than just really giving even ignoring it. At some point, I mean, I have this WeChat blog. So sometimes I ignore it, but sometimes I can't. So I try really hard to to give an answer. And it being this position is kind of like a blessing and also a curse. Because I mean, people are maybe sometimes genuinely interested. And sometimes they just want to give you a hard time. But all in all, I think something that I feel I strongly feel is when we think about these kind of questions, defining language versus dialect, those social linguistic factors, such as like how people themselves want like how they want to be defined, how they want to define this language as a dialect and history and connecting all these, I think is very important in this in this case. Can I intervene here? Just I wonder if one way that might make more people understand the degree of difference there is between garonk languages and Tibetan might be to have more written documents in garonk languages but written using Tibetan script. You see what I mean? Because this way it becomes immediately visible. I mean, the degree of difference because more visible. And so for instance, having entire not just, you know, small text but entire books written in Tibetan script, in trusty up or in other garonk languages. Yeah, so I don't know if you guys know the, what's his name, the older Tibetan scholar, I forget. He initiated like this project in based in Bacom, which they produce these grammar, not grammar, language teaching materials like textbooks. But I mean, he obviously has a really like he has a really predefined agenda so all the things that he picks even in the examples, even in everything is like you can it's either Tibetan cognates or Tibetan long words, or even the way how they write sentences is like very leaning towards like just aligning with the bigger narrative about like, hey, we're like not that much different from Tibetan. So absolutely, I think having a different version of this is going to contribute to this dialogue a lot. So I've been designing my orthography for a long time. It's an ongoing process. So hopefully in the next a few months I can finalize and see how this goes and if this will contribute to something that you mentioned. Yeah, Yojin has a comment. Okay. Yeah, yeah, because well, the the the work of our teacher, well, right now, my teacher, Yang Dongfang, he has been, well, I remember last year when we came here he was actually very enthusiastic about all these like, you know, these textbook materials that was prepared by Awan Chuchun. And this year, I saw that he was actually working on his working on his wardrobe materials, like dancing and singing materials and using Tibetan scripts as well. And I was like, why don't you have why don't you ask Professor Awan Chuchun to take a look at it. And and his response was like, well, he he he's native, he's native tongue is zen la and minds to say they're different. So that's why I can't really make out what his materials are about. So that that was actually his his feedback on the materials. So it's just like you said, he intentionally he does have an agenda of showing that Jiarong is exactly the same or is really a dialect of Tibetan. But while at the same time, if some Jiarong speaker trying to learn to read Tibetan and to read the materials, they find that it's it's it just doesn't represent their their mother tongue. So that's some that's actually the case. So I was I was just yeah, so it's a good it's actually a good idea that you're preparing materials that are going to be represented in in in Tibetan script. And I think that will that would be something for Tibetan speakers who can read Tibetan. And then if they read the materials, they will figure out that these are actually really different speech forms. Yeah, I mean, the orthography design is intentionally pretty different from the standard besides it's based on the offer Tibetan alphabet. It's designed to be pretty different. So it initially I think the implementation stage and accepting it I don't know how that will go but but yes, stay tuned. I will keep you updated. We'll need help on like, I don't know, advices or things like that. Okay, so the last story is as I kind of mentioned, I've been maintaining a WeChat public account where I write like small short blogs. Sometimes I share all those videos that I make. And the one of the biggest like goal for this is creating contents that are tailored towards more like general public and kind of gain their interest into the linguistic, the limited linguistic knowledge I have and kind of showcasing the language as and this is an album but I don't know if, oh, it works. There is a video of different dialects. So kind of really fun and like engaging general audience type of material. So I think I don't yeah, I don't know if I'm going over time but I think this is the last slide. So yeah, as the conclusion slide. So yeah, I think as a native speaker and someone who's really wanting to do something that can help the communities maintain the language and I already know, I think me saying this like grammatical paradigms or sentence constructions are meaningless is based on that I already know Yinfan has been doing such a great job on describing my dialect, my tongue. So I feel like I have the energy or I can sit time aside and do something that I myself is really interested. And if I knew like there's no grammar exist or nothing of this language, like description, description exists, then I have to go in and have to be doing the most important and the foundational work. And throughout this process, things that I've learned, which I kind of also hinted is I became kind of more accepting of each versions of myself, each voices in my head, and kind of trying to see from different perspectives, even with long conversation with Tibetan scholars, I try really hard to kind of not get emotional but trying to see from their perspective as well. And through this process, yeah, I feel pretty empowered. So it's also a self empowering journey for me as well. And lastly, I feel as kind of the overarching goal for even for this conference or this workshop is the importance of really connecting people from different fields, even having native speakers who are really like dedicated into studying linguistics and trying to take the initiation to do this kind of work themselves. I think these are eventually really blurring the traditional role of linguistics, linguists or traditional role of like just speakers are just the informants or like you just ask some questions and that's it, that kind of type of thing. So I believe with this kind of work and this kind of workshop and this kind of talks and it's blurring the traditional roles of these. And yeah, that's a brief talk that I prepared. Hopefully, yeah, I didn't go over time too much. Okay, that's funny too, Dilha. Okay, that's a very enthusiastic talk. And yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah, Dilha is one of the best individuals I've ever met and we've been working together for eight years and really, to him, I'm very grateful. And questions, please. Yeah, I have a question. I'm a musician, not a linguist. So maybe it's quite funny. The question is, I'm just thinking about the boundaries. When you think about boundaries, when you want to sustain one culture, one language, and developed a script, because I know actually the Miao language is like commissioners, they went there, they make the language for the Miao people, read the language. So I'm thinking about the boundaries to what extent we need to sustain and to what extent we actually need to categorize because, you know, my own problem, my previous project, I promised I learned two languages, one is the Miao, basic Miao, one is the basic Yi. But actually, I felt all like four years, I get all the information. But I only remember one Miao language is the Bonganga, that means hug a baby. That's the only language I learned I mean remembered. So but my current project, I promise only one language. But actually, I found it difficult because Yi, they had Yunnan, the Yi, and Liangshan, the Yi. And Yunnan, the Yi, they thought, okay, Chu Zhong is the mother place for the Yi language. Then from this mountain to another mountain, they are all different. They couldn't understand each other. So I just feel quite confused. If like I'm outside, I try to learn which language I should learn if they have so many subcategories. So what's your opinion? I would like to know. So next time I can save a bit of time to make that decision. Okay, that's a really interesting and difficult question. I think from the perspective of language documentation or language revitalization, I think each variant is worth the attention and worth engaging and describing. But if you're asking as an outsider who just goes in and just want to learn about a variant, it would probably really be pretty subjective. I don't think there's a guideline which one you should pick. A one that is accessible, the one that you have connection, like actual human connection. Because I think for like doing whether that's linguistic work, whether that's like anthropological work, the connection, the trust, the building, the trust between you and the community is the key. So I would think if you already know someone from one of the regions, I think that would be a first option for you. But I don't know from just purely from linguistic perspective. I don't think there is, I mean, socially there will be a lot of people even in Trotsky, they would say, oh, go study Wobsi, which is the very, the very, the dialect that you can find in studying native speakers, they would say, oh, that one is the more standard one. I don't even know how they define that. It's probably not like non-linguistic reasons, but they will say, oh, go study that one. So I don't know how much you should trust the locals on their suggestions as well. So if anyone else has any additional comments on this, please feel free to. Yeah, I think people just believe that, oh, my dialect is surely not the standard one. It happens to Chinese people in the Qing dynasty or something, and foreigners came and wanted to learn their Mandarin. They say, oh, no, my Mandarin is not that standard. Go to the north and find some standard varieties. My suspicion is, you know, if you went in as a linguist, they would know you will be asking tons of questions that like wanting to elicit questions or like need a lot of time. Last question. Okay, I would like to ask a question because actually the relationship between Tibet and the Garon languages are very complicated. And so in schools, whether he nowadays in your area, how people, because in my area, the people kind of refused, they don't pay any attention to learn Tibetan. You know, they told me that because the Tibetan that taught in school is Kambagi, it's a Kambagi dialect. So it's not their dialect, not their language. So, and it's useless. So that's why in Kambagi County, that's why the other Tibetan called them Sinanized, Sinanized Tibetan, Sinanized Garon. So how is about your situation? How is the situation in your hometown? I see. Graphically, we're really close to, close to Sejta monastery. Do you know where that is? It's in Sejta. So what's been happening is, I mean, traditionally or like in the, in the, in history, people are literate in Tibetan in the sense that they read scriptures like Tibetan, like a Buddhism scriptures, they chant mantra. So a lot of the older people are literate in some sense, but like if you ask them to write something in Tibetan, they wouldn't be able to write it. But a phenomenon that's been happening for the almost past 10, I would say years is, so the Sejta monastery, they would send out monks each winter, right before the new year, to volunteer and teach Tibetan, to teach the local community how to read, write and memorize these. I don't, I don't know if you have seen these new dictionary books. So it encompasses anything like that you would need loan words for it, so anything that are out of vocabulary. Like cell phones, television, coffee, tomato. My mom would say, oh, tonight we are making Deng Gong Gong Tang, which is Xihong Shi Dantang. Like all of a sudden I would be like, I don't know what she's saying, because she would like, she got, she hands these medals each, end of the each session usually is one month. They teach one month, the villagers Tibetan and recite all these dictionary entries, and then they do exams, whoever scores high, they get, you know, different medals like gold and silver and so my mom has a like a section, you know, where she hangs all her medals. She just tried to show off in front of me. So in general, I mean, I think the picture is pretty different from Deng Bao. So you mean, but for the students, most of them are elder people like your mother, not the young people, the young people are sent to school, right? So our county is in Deng Teng, which is around Tang County. So we do have one middle school is Tibetan and Chinese medium. So they have Tibetan as a language and used to be they would teach like chemistry, physics and some subject in in Tibetan. But I think now is only they have it as a language. It's more like under their left. Okay. Thank you.