Language preservation in the news
Austin Chronicle writer Dan Oko reports on life in remote Dharchula, India where his linguist SO is documenting the endangered Darma language. The fairly standard gringo-in-the-Subcontinent piece is interesting enough but it also includes a little second-hand info on the methods of a linguistic fieldworker.
Unfortunately the article commits my pet peeve and equates language documentation with language preservation. Has anyone ever successfully revived an extinct language from the texts and recordings of earnest academic linguists? I'm not saying that documenting a dying language is a bad idea, only that saving a language has to do with the living community of speakers, not with scribbles on paper. But I've ranted about that before.
If Dan's story intrigues you, he also has a blog called India Rebound.