COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND ENDANGERED LANGUAGES

Abstract

This Special Issue of IARS International Research Journal contains eight articles which investigate diverse aspects of Endangered Languages and COVID-19. The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has redefined the way we live, work, and think. Consequently, it has become necessary for leaders, specialists, scholars, and academics of various fields to re-examine their positions and research objectives and methodologies in the context of this pandemic. The field of endangered languages is no different: It was soon realised that the effect of the pandemic on endangered languages is far reaching.

In many countries, government and non-government institutions and agencies have attempted to make information about the virus available in minority languages. Sebastian Drude (2020) in a Foundation of Endangered languages blog reports on the effort of Pakistani social activist Zubair Torwali, who worked with the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, to produce a series of information videos in a number of local languages and also of Malaysian Rusaslina Idrus who has co-ordinated teams of translators, medical specialists and native speakers to make Covid-19 information posters available in a number of Malaysian indigenous languages.