Northern Mali today – The Songhay encyclopedic dictionary project and its implications for collaborative research in a post-conflict context

The Songhay online dictionary is the result of field work conducted in and around Gao in 2008. Initially it was intended to “modernize” the existing wordstock by incorporating recently borrowed words from French and English. The new terms reflect the expansion of digital technologies in everyday life, in both city and country. These relate to mobile telephony and internet. Part of the exercise translating interfaces into such a language is to reconcile its speakers with technologies that so far have not learned to speak the idiom of their community. In a way, it is like holding a mirror to oneself. Seeing such a language for the first time in modern tools is like watching images where there had been only words before. Whether this be enough to save a “less-resourced language” from marginalization and inexorable decay remains an open question. Still the collaborative process through which volunteers keep building a dictionary with multimedia documentation or a virtual library should be an intriguing case study for humanities. The finality is not to showcase an exception, but to take a close look at simple, step-by-step efforts that overtime might determine that a small regional language survives and even prospers or simply disappears. The sociocultural and economic consequences of each possible scenario could be food for thought and exciting discussions.