Within these demographic groups, we required subjects to meet four screening criteria for wordlists and the RTT:
1. The subject is “from the village,” defined as having grown up in the village, living in the village at present, and, if they have lived elsewhere, it was not for a significant amount of recent time.
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2. Subject has at least one parent from target variety. 3. Subject has at least one parent who is a mother-tongue speaker of the variety, is from the village
under study, and that parent spoke the variety with himher when heshe was a child. 4. Subject speaks the variety first and best.
Only criteria one and two were required for a subject to be eligible to respond to the informal interview schedule. Note that the fourth criterion was relaxed in Dhupu. Since Lohorung language
vitality is so low there, it was difficult to find speakers who could fit this criterion.
3.3 Research methods
Background research was conducted in Kathmandu prior to fieldwork. Lohorung speakers from Pangma village and Yamphu speakers from Hedangna and Num villages were interviewed and assisted with
preparing various tools. The participatory methods used in this survey were facilitated by Santa Man Lawoti and Dal Bahadur Limbu in Sankhuwasabha and Dhankuta districts in September 2009. During
fieldwork, wordlists, recorded text tests RTT, and informal interviews were administered in Gairi Pangma, Dhupu
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, Angala, and Hedangna, Sankhuwasabha district, and Rajarani, Dhankuta district.
3.3.1 Wordlist comparisons
Description and Purpose: A comparison of wordlists to estimate the degree of lexical similarity between the speech varieties the word lists represent.
Procedure: Wordlists were elicited in Nepali from mother-tongue Lohorung and Yamphu speakers and were transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA. In order to ensure that the wordlists
represent the speech variety in each location, a group of at least three speakers was involved in the wordlist elicitation. A lexical similarity analysis was carried out on each pair of wordlists. A complete
description of wordlist comparison and the data collected can be found in Appendix A.
Advantages: Data collection is relatively efficient. Wordlists can provide some broad insights into possible dialect groupings.
Disadvantages: Above certain levels of lexical similarity, wordlists cannot give conclusive evidence of intelligibility between speech varieties compared.
3.3.2 Recorded Text Test RTT
Description and Purpose: Subjects listen to recorded stories, with comprehension questions asked within the stories. After the subject has listened to the stories, questions regarding language attitudes are
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This criterion was extended in a few cases to include subjects who had grown up in nearby villages, where the speech variety is still the same as the village where the interview took place. It is difficult to define a specific time
period e.g. more than the last five years for a significant amount of recent time. Thus, this criterion is intentionally subjective as it depends on how long the subject lived elsewhere and how long they have been back in
the village relative to their age.
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The RTT was not administered in Dhupu due to low Lohorung language use in that village.
asked. This helps in the assessment of subjects’ understanding of and attitudes toward actual samples of the language from various areas.
Procedure: We recorded a narrative story from a Lohorung speaker and a Yamphu speaker. It was then played for people, in other Lohorung and Yamphu communities, who were not told the story’s place of
origin. As subjects listened to each story, they answered comprehension questions recorded in their own dialect about the story. After listening to each story, subjects answered questions about their
understanding of and opinions toward the speech variety used by the storyteller. The tests were administered first in the community the speaker was from to ensure we had a representative recorded
text from that variety. This is referred to as the home town test HTT. The stories used and responses for the RTT can be found in Appendix B.
Advantages: By using actual samples of selected speech varieties, an initial assessment of intelligibility and attitudes can be made.
Disadvantages: This test can be time consuming to develop. The type of RTT used in this survey only evaluates basic understanding of narrative texts. In addition it does not measure reading and writing
ability in the second dialect.
3.3.3 Informal interviews
