Gwen Hyslop and Karma Tshering have been documenting languages in Bhutan. Gwen began with the documentation of Kuertop and provided a documentary collection and a discourse-based descriptive and historical grammar of the endangered Kurtoep language which is one of the first descriptions of language in Bhutan. In her project she collaborated closely with the speech community for the purpose of language preservation.

 

 

 

 

 

The team also documented the Olekha language. Oleka has five remaining speakers living in the remote Rukha village of south central Bhutan. Most of the community today speaks Dzongkha, the national language.Phobjip is spoken just north of the area. The community has shifted to an agricultural lifestyle from a former hunter gatherer lifestyle within the past 50 years, retaining aspects of the former culture. Among these is a rich reliance on local plant life. This project, working in collaboration with the Dzongkha Development Commission and the Bhutan Oral Literature and Language Documentation Projects, proposes to document the Olekha langugae, focusing on the ethnobotanical knowledge.