The Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), Professor Mawutor Avoke, has appealed to the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, to provide support for intensive research into Ghanaian Languages.
He said this should include funding for publications of manuscripts that have been produced by the Departments of Ghanaian Languages in the country particularly in the one at the UEW.
Pro Avoke made the appeal at the opening of a two-week Summer School Workshop on documentary linguistics at Winneba.
It is being organized by Professor Felix Ameko of the University of Leiden, Netherlands, with sponsorship from Endangered Languages
Documentation Project (ELDP) and Arcadia Foundation, London, United Kingdom.
Thirty participants from Nigeria, Benin, Gambia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, United States of America (USA), Burkina Faso, Ghana and Australia are attending the workshop.
It is aimed at helping participants to acquire linguistic skills for proper documentation and preservation of endangered languages for use in their respective countries and communities.
Prof Avoke said many languages in the country and other parts of the world are seriously endangered and if care was not taken, they were likely to lose their values and cultures.
The workshop is not only concentrating on linguistic skills for documentation, but would go further to specifically dialogue on some of the
most threatened languages in the society, said Prof. Avoke.
He therefore appealed to participants to take the workshop serious, to enable them acquire the skills to promotion research, particularly in Africa languages.