The eighth Seminar of the ‘Endangered and Lesser Known Languages’ Series (ELKL-8) was successfully organised by Doon Library and Research Centre (DLRC), at Songtsen Library, Dehradun on 22nd and 23rd February 2020. The focus of the seminar was on the endangered languages of the Himalayas with several national and International scholars showcasing their work on Himalayan languages such as Mising, Tharu, Bhotia, Raji, Kurukh and Dogri, etc.

Prof. Madhumita Barbora, Co-coordinator, Centre for Endangered Languages, Tezpur University gave a keynote address on the Linguistic Scenario of North East India. Taking reference from the statistics of North Eastern States, she emphasized that many languages of the region are endangered and fighting for their losing identity.

As one of the collaborators of ELKL-8, SEL took this opportunity to felicitate one of its patron, Padma Shri Prof. Anvita Abbi who delivered a Plenary talk on the topic, ‘The Fight Against Linguistic Apartheid’. She emphasized that discrimination between various languages, especially those which are not written down and those which are, between those which are used as the medium of education and those which are not, between those which are dominant as the languages of rulers and those which are dominated, leads to a situation of linguistic apartheid.

On the second day of the conference during his plenary talk, Prof. Madhav Pokharel (Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal) shared his views on the challenges faced by his team in the development of the orthography for sixty-five oral mother tongues of Nepal.

On the same occasion, two books – A multilingual, (Raji – Hindi – English) multi scriptural, ( IPA – Roman – Devnagari) pictorial dictionary of an endangered Himalayan language Raji compiled by Kavita Rastogi and ‘Language Endangerment and Language Revitalization in Himalaya’ edited by B.K. Joshi, M.P. Joshi and M.P. Pokharel were released.

After the valedictory, a meeting of the society was held to welcome all the new members.