The Formosan Language Archive: Development of a Multimedia Tool to Salvage the Languages and Oral Traditions of the Indigenous Tribes of Taiwan

Abstract

We introduce the newly developed Formosan Language Archive and show how it has been built up through examples drawn from Rukai, a Formosan language spoken across southern Taiwan and including six main dialects (Mantauran, Maga, Tona, Budai, Labuan, and Tanan) that exhibit great variation. After displaying the layout of the archive, we explain how texts and sound files are recorded and digitalized, how words are tagged, and what the purpose of the search system is. Last, we compare the Formosan language archive to other well-established language archives and show how and why we have adopted a layout that is somewhat different but enables us to capture, through thorough linguistic analysis, the variations displayed in the Rukai dialects (and in Formosan languages in general).