Acknowlegements

This site drew inspiration from Paul Heggarty's Sound Comparisons. See

Heggarty, Paul et al. 2019. Sound Comparisons: A new online database and resource for research in phonetic diversity. Proceedings of ICPhS 19, Melbourne, pp. 280-284, see paper for full list of authors.

We wish to thank our many collaborators at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila, Vanuatu (especially, Director Richard Shing, Kaitip Kami, Henline Mala, Evelyne Bulegih, Iarawai Philipp, and Edson Willie) as well as the Cultural Centre fieldworkers on each individual island, without whom this project would not have been possible.

The following people contributed to the Vanuatu Voices dataset:

Name Role
Giovanni Abete Provided detailed phonetic transcription for many Malekula languages
Sandrine Bessis Edited and transcribed all languages of Epi Island
Hans-Jörg Bibiko Programmer and maintainer of the data repository, assisted with data curation and data converting
Heidi Colleran Co-directed the Vanuatu Languages and Lifeways project from 2016-2018
Daria Dërmaku Provided audio post-processing and mark-up from 2016-2020
Marie-France Duhamel Provided the recordings of the Raga and Lolkasai languages on Pentecost island
Tom Ennever Together with Iveth Rodriguez, recorded and transcribed phonetically 28 languages from Ambae and Maewo Islands
Tom Fitzpatrick Provided the recordings of 6 dialects of the Sa language on Pentecost island
Robert Forkel Data curation and website implementation
Russell Gray Co-Director of the Vanuatu Languages and Lifeways project (2016-2018) and Director of the Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution, which fully supported data collection and processing for the Vanuatu study.
Paul Heggarty Founded and manages https://soundcomparisons.com where this data was initially published. Managed and co-ordinated the data processing work to create the Vanuatu database.
Kaitip W. Kami Coordinated and assisted with recordings of many Malekula languages
Iveth Rodriguez Together with Tom Ennever, recorded and transcribed phonetically 28 languages from Ambae and Maewo Islands
Aviva Shimelman Recorded and phonetically transcribed all of the Malekula languages from 2015 to 2017
Lana Takau Translated the Vanuatu study into Bislama, edited and transcribed all languages of Pentecost Island
Laura Wägerle Provided audio post-processing and mark-up 2016-2018
Mary Walworth Coordinator (since 2017) of the Vanuatu study and its expansion from Malekula island to other islands of Vanuatu. Directed fieldworkers to Maewo, Ambae, and Pentecost and obtained legacy recordings for Pentecost Island.

Lana Takau also provided the Bislama translations for this website.