Gamifying a digital dialect glossary to attract and motivate young people to retain their dialect
Greek dialects on the island of Rhodes are still alive today, mainly in provincial areas. However, it is a well-known fact that dialects are used by less and less people and their shrinkage and disappearance will contribute a great deal to the loss of diversity of local communities. Most of the research that has been encountered for their rescue mainly includes printed collections of dialectic material. Digital technology can be an opportunity to increase student confidence in speaking their local language which will result in saving and promoting the Greek language heritage as part of its cultural heritage. The purpose of this research is to investigate the recording and digital registration of a dialect in open access websites and databases. Furthermore, a main goal is to highlight dialects through digital games that can be used easily and with fun from young people (mainly). The current research is on the dialect of the Afantou village of the Greek island of Rhodes. The first phase involves finding and collecting the dialectic language material to be used for the construction of the dialectic database. The material is the result of existing printed resources of the Afantou dialect, vocabularies and original language material, in oral and written form, collected by elderly residents of the community as a result of an on-going field-study. The second phase involves the organization of the collected material and the construction of a database of the dialectic language. The third phase focuses on the construction of open-access, via a webpage, games that are attractive to students and young people in general and could motivate them to use their dialect. The dialect webpage, already operating in a pilot mode, is dynamic, with periodical updating with new material as this is obtained, documented and processed.
Linguistics and Knowledge about Language in Education 