‘Dumberdash’ is an old Cheshire term for a short but violent storm. A ‘lumpenhole’ is a deep trench for fluid farmyard waste. The man who remembers these words is among the scores of people who have written to Dr Robert Macfarlane in response to his latest book, Landmarks.
A Cambridge academic devoted to the documentation of endangered languages has returned to a remote Nepali village to hand over a two-volume dictionary and grammar – the first ever written record of Thangmi – as part of a new three-part series on the world’s vanishing voices.
A campaign to republish an out-of-print classic on the subject of African culture, using funds donated by academics, enthusiasts and general readers, has been launched online.
A new project is recording and making accessible the endangered oral literatures of indigenous peoples before they are lost forever.
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