The word-collection phase of the Lotud workshop came to a close Thursday evening, with nearly 5000 raw entries collected from about 400 of the 1800 semantic domains. This is a very positive result for this situation. As I mentioned previously, the group was able to gather for only one week of word collection, instead of the two that are normally prescribed. And there were only enough people available to form three word-collection groups, instead of the normal six. Essentially, this group covered 1/4 of the ground that needs to be covered, and they will either need three more sessions like this or one that is longer in time or that involves more people, in order to finish the work begun.

There was a time of great celebration after the work came to a close. Speeches were made, donors were thanked, those of us who came from elsewhere were given a gift, and a tender young lamb from Australia gave its life to serve as the centerpiece of the grand finale--food!

Frankly, I did not expect such good progress in the time we had available. But the Lotud worked late into the night each day in order to maximize their output. Verna came here with a slot on the webonary.org website already prepared for Lotud data, so she was able to demonstrate early on that everything that got typed into the computer could be made to appear on the internet shortly afterward. That really got the Lotud people excited!! They now have an official presence on the internet, even though there are only a few thousand individuals in their ethnic group.

The only downside in all of this seems to be that there are still quite a few words that were collected that need to be glossed (translated into English and Malay) and then typed into the computer. We'll be working on that in the three days that remain to us here in Sabah, Malaysia. Hopefully, by the end of that time, it will all be done, or at least there will be only a little to do yet.