Descendents of semi-nomadic tribesman who conquered China in the 17th century, they are the last living link to a language that for more than two-and-a-half centuries was the official voice of the Qing Dynasty, the final imperial house to rule from Beijing and one of the richest and most powerful empires the world has known. With the passing of these villagers, Manchu will also die, experts say.

Like a biologist gathering the specimens of an endangered species, the linguist Siripen Ungsitipoonporn sits in a bamboo hut taking down Chong words from a native speaker. Sarong- clad Chinpanpai, 62, whose bronzed skin and wavy hair mark her as belonging to the Chong, is helping Siripen compile the first Chong dictionary. She is one of the 3,000 or so speakers in their community fluent in Chong, roughly one fifth of the tribe.Today, Chong is taught three times a week in the tribe's primary schools. As a result, many schoolchildren can now speak a smattering of their mother tongue. "I was embarrassed to speak it, I felt just like a dot of ink among others," says Chen Phanpai, a former village head, when asked about the success of the language revitalization program. "But now I feel unique because nobody else speaks Chong."Sheldon Shaeffer, director of Unesco's Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, says that "Learning their mother tongue makes minorities more confident in themselves, and more approving of government initiatives."

50 Awesome Open Source Resources for Online Writers Published on Tuesday April 29th , 2008By Christina Laun With the popularity of blogging and online journals, writers working in the online realm have a growing number of opportunities all the time to practice and refine their craft, and maybe even get paid for it. And if you're working online, why not take advantage of all the opportunities to get great free and open source resources that can help you to write, edit and organize your work? Here's a list of fifty open source tools that you can use to make your writing even better.

Internet Download Manager (IDM) is a tool to increase download speeds by up to 5 times, resume and schedule downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost connections, network problems, computer shutdowns, or unexpected power outages. Simple graphic user interface makes IDM user friendly and easy to use.Internet Download Manager has a smart download logic accelerator that features intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology to accelerate your downloads. Unlike other download managers and accelerators Internet Download Manager segments downloaded files dynamically during download process and reuses available connections without additional connect and login stages to achieve best acceleration performance.

Take Note! The LSA needs a new liaison representative to the Unicode Consortium. Applications accepted until 15 April, 2008. The Executive Committee of the LSA will be holding its Spring meeting on 9-10 May, 2008, in Washington, DC. For further information, contact Katha Kissman. Nominations for the Leonard Bloomfield Book Award are due 1 June, 2008. Nominations for the LSA's "Linguistics, Language and the Public" Award will be accepted until 1 June, 2008. LANGUAGE is published quarterly by the Linguistic Society of America. Subscription to Language is a benefit solely available to members of the LSA. For information about joining the LSA, click here. Subscriptions are not sold without membership. Back issues of Language (subject to availability) may be purchased through the LSA; for details or to request a back issue, contact the Language office. Change of address notices should be sent to the LSA at the above address; please allow six weeks for a change of address request to take effect.

Language is the official peer reviewed journal of the Linguistic Society of America, published since 1925. It is published quarterly and contains articles and reviews on all aspects of linguistics, focusing on the area of theoretical linguistics. Its current editor is Prof. Brian D. Joseph (Ohio State University).