Shiyue Wu, a member of Francesco Perono Cacciafoco’s analysis workforce at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool College (XJTLU), who’s at present growing intensive fieldwork in Alor Island to doc and protect endangered languages, found and first documented Kape throughout a Language Documentation fieldwork in August 2024 and subsequently actively contributed to this examine.
As of 2025, greater than 7000 languages are spoken the world over. Nonetheless, solely about half of them are correctly documented, leaving the remainder prone to disappearing.
Globalisation has propelled languages akin to English and Chinese language into the mainstream, they usually now dominate international communication.
Mother and father at present choose their kids be taught widely-spoken languages. In the meantime, indigenous languages, akin to Copainalá Zoque in Mexico and Northern Ndebele in Zimbabwe, will not be even constantly taught in colleges.
Indigenous folks typically didn’t use writing for hundreds of years and, subsequently, their languages would not have historic written information. This has contributed to their gradual disappearance.
To forestall the lack of endangered languages, subject linguists – or language documentarists – work to make sure that new generations have entry to their cultural heritage. Their efforts reveal the vocabulary and construction of those languages and the tales and traditions embedded inside them.
My analysis workforce and I’ve spent over 13 years documenting endangered Papuan languages in Southeast and East Indonesia, significantly within the Alor-Pantar Archipelago, close to Timor, and the Maluku Islands. One in all our vital and really current discoveries is Kape, a beforehand undocumented and uncared for language spoken by small coastal communities in Central-Northern Alor.
Not solely is the invention vital for mapping the linguistic context of the island, nevertheless it additionally highlights the urgency of preserving endangered languages by using Language Documentation strategies.
The invention of Kape
In August 2024, whereas working with our Abui consultants, Shiyue Wu, my Analysis Assistant at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool College, found a previously-ignored, presumably undocumented Papuan language from Alor, ‘Kape’.
On the time, she was gathering details about the names and places of formality altars often called ‘maasang’ within the Abui space, with help from our most important advisor and a number of other native audio system. In Central Alor, each village has a ‘maasang’.
Throughout conversations concerning the variants in altar names throughout Alor languages and Abui dialects, some audio system talked about the identify of the ‘maasang’ (‘mata’) in Kape—a language beforehand unrecorded and neglected in linguistic documentation.
‘Kape’ interprets to ‘rope’, symbolising how the language connects its audio system throughout the island, from the mountains to the ocean. Geographically and linguistically, it’s related to Kabola within the east and Abui and Kamang in Central Alor.
At this stage, it’s unclear whether or not Kape is a definite language or a dialect of Kamang, as the 2 are mutually intelligible. A lot of Kape’s primary lexicon (the gathering of phrases in a single language), certainly, shares cognates (associated phrases amongst languages) with Kamang.
Nonetheless, Kape is spoken as the first (native) language by the entire Kape ethnic group of Alor, and the audio system contemplate themselves an impartial linguistic and ethnic group. This might function a component for concerning Kape as a language.
Kape additionally reveals connections with Suboo, Tiyei, and Adang, different Papuan languages from Alor Island. The audio system, often called ‘Kafel’ in Abui, are multilingual, fluent, to some extent, in Kape, Kamang, Bahasa Indonesia, Alor Malay, and, typically, Abui.
To this point, no historic information have been discovered for Kape, although archival analysis could reveal extra about its origins. Based mostly on its typology and lexical traits, Kape seems as historic as different languages spoken in Alor. Like many Papuan languages, it’s critically endangered and requires pressing documentation to protect its legacy.
Abui folks performing the ritual ‘lego lego’ dance in Takpàla village, Alor Island.
Writer offered. Courtesy of the analysis workforce
Documenting languages: An ongoing problem
Language Documentation goals to reconstruct the unwritten historical past of indigenous peoples and to ensure the way forward for their cultures and languages. That is completed by preserving endangered, scarcely documented or totally undocumented languages in deprived and distant areas.
Exterior sources, like diaries by missionaries and documentation produced by colonisers, may also help reconstruct some historic occasions. Nonetheless, they’re inadequate for offering dependable linguistic information because the authors weren’t linguists.
Our Language Documentation Staff at work in Alor Island.
Writer offered. Courtesy of the analysis workforce
My analysis workforce and I doc endangered languages, beginning with their lexicon and grammar. Ultimately, we additionally discover the traditional traditions and ancestral knowledge of the native audio system we work with.
We’ve contributed to the documentation of a number of Papuan languages from Alor Island, particularly Abui, Kula, and Sawila. These languages are spoken amongst small, typically dispersed communities of indigenous peoples belonging to totally different however associated ethnic clusters.
They convey with one another principally in Bahasa Indonesia and Alor Malay. It is because their native languages are virtually by no means taught in colleges and are hardly ever used exterior their teams.
Over time, along with documenting their lexicons and grammars, we labored to reconstruct their place-names and panorama names, oral traditions, basis myths, ancestral legends and the names of vegetation and bushes they use.
We additionally explored their conventional medical practices and native ethnobotany, together with their musical tradition and quantity techniques.
Linguistic map of the Alor-Pantar Archipelago (Southeast Indonesia)
Writer offered. Courtesy of the analysis workforce
Safeguarding Kape is not only linguistically related. Its preservation and documentation will not be nearly testifying its existence – additionally they contribute to revitalising the language, maintaining it alive, and permitting the area people to rediscover its historical past, information, and traditions to cross all the way down to the subsequent generations.
This journey has simply begun, however my workforce and I – with the indispensable collaboration from our native consultants and native audio system – are ready to go all the way in which in direction of its completion.
