- 🏠 Archive Dashboard Home — Transcription reading gallery, hardware background, and pipeline telemetry.
- 📕 Chinuk Wawa Dictionary — Searchable concordance index featuring active audio snippet links.
- 🔬 Research Observations Log — Searchable field log engine tracking grammatical and cultural observations.
- 🔊 Dialect Variations Index — Isolated pronunciation variants compared against Grand Ronde references.
- Current Progress: 9/30 recordings transcribed.
- Project History: 3 years of active transcription completed.
- Estimated Completion: 2032 (Approx. 6 years remaining).
This repository preserves and digitizes a unique linguistic encounter from 1941. The recordings feature Jack Marr reciting English sentences from Franz Boas’s Chinookan Texts (1894), followed by Joe Peter, an Indigenous elder, providing the equivalent in Chinook Jargon.
Our goal is to transform these historical metal disc recordings into accessible, searchable, and educational formats for language revitalization.
The project is organized to provide both raw technical data and user-friendly exports:
[Disc-ID]/: (e.g.,682-S1) Contains the original ELAN (.eaf) linguistic transcription files.exports/: The central hub for accessing the transcriptions in various formats:audio-previews/: Low-bitrate MP3s for reference (Full WAVs stored externally).metadata/: Contains the Master Transcription List—a searchable index of every line spoken.scripts/: Python tools used to automate the data pipeline.
If you want to read or print the stories, navigate to the exports/ folder.
- Use the PDFs for high-quality printing.
- Use the Word Docs if you want to create your own learning materials or vocabulary lists.
The raw transcription data is available in the .eaf format within the disc-specific folders. These can be opened using ELAN for deep phonetic or structural analysis.
To maintain consistency across the archive, the following notations are used to indicate audio quality, speaker behavior, and transcription confidence within the primary transcription lines:
| Notation | Description |
|---|---|
<text> |
Low confidence due to poor audio quality or group disagreement |
<<text>> |
Very low confidence due to extremely poor audio quality |
tex(t) |
Part of the word was not heard or dropped from speech |
{text} |
English word used within Chinuk-Wawa speech |
{{text}} |
English word(s) spoken by Joe Peter in conversation with Jack Marr |
<...> |
Unknown word(s) or voiced sound(s) |
text/ |
Pause in speech following the word |
<text A/text B> |
Ambiguous; group members hear either A or B in even numbers |
.. |
Hesitation or stutter |
The parsing engine reads the Notes_Text fields directly, sorting entries dynamically into specialized tracking files using these exact bracketed identifiers and syntax wrappers:
| Tag Indicator | Associated Category / Structural Rule | Core Purpose |
|---|---|---|
[LING] |
🗣️ Linguistic & Phonetic Observations | Tracks shifts in pronunciation, phonetic deviations, and grammar logs. |
[HIST] |
📜 Cultural & Historical Context Logs | Captures background context, historical references, and community anecdotes. |
[INFO] |
💡 General Informational Notes | General observations, track metadata markers, or structural explanations. |
[TEX] |
🎓 Exemplary Teaching Examples | Highlights excellent data segments optimized for language learning materials. |
[VEX] |
🎵 High-Quality Vocalization Examples | Isolates distinct vocal inflections, expressions, or exceptional audio clarity. |
[OTL] |
🌐 Other Languages Utilized | Notes where English, Marr, or outside linguistic fragments overlap text segments. |
[NOTE] |
📝 Workspace Footnotes & Comments | General internal commentary, alignment flags, or raw project reminders. |
[?] / [UNCERTAIN] |
❓ Uncertain Segments Requiring Review | Flags questionable translations or unclear phonetics requiring peer review. |
|text| |
Phonetic Deviation Indicator | Applied inside notes to isolate specific speech variants from standard dictionary records. |
[[text]] |
Standard GR Spelling Variant | Applied inside notes to link non-standard pronunciations back to standard Grand Ronde spellings. |
- Active Insights: 424 specific linguistic observations.
- Dialect Variations: 137 identified pronunciation patterns.
- Logs: Research Log | Variation Report
All transcriptions in this archive are created and managed using ELAN, developed by the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
To cite the software used in this project:
ELAN (Version 7.1) [Computer software]. (2026). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Retrieved from https://archive.mpi.nl/tla/elan
Current Completion: 9/30 recordings processed.
| Recording ID | Description | Status | Formats Available |
|---|---|---|---|
| 682-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 682-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 683-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 683-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 684-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 684-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 685-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 685-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 686-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 686-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 687-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 687-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 688-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 688-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 689-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 689-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 690-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 690-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 691-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 691-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 692-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 692-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 693-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 693-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 694-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 694-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | ✅ Completed | PDF, MD, DOCX |
| 695-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 695-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 696-S1 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress | |
| 696-S2 | Boas Text Recitation | 🟡 In Progress |
This is a public archive. If you find a transcription error or have historical context to add:
- Fork the repository.
- Create a new Branch.
- Submit a Pull Request for review.
Special thanks to the community members and linguists dedicated to the preservation of Chinook Jargon.