Endangered+Languages

On searching about endangered languages, I found the website http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/. What I like about it is that they have mapped out all of the endangered languages, and ranked them from 'at risk' to 'vitally unknown'. When you click on a point, you can read a profile about the language. Users can also upload samples such as videos or audio clips to curate the language. I really like this because they have created a central location for people to add resources to keep a language alive, so that it is not lost. I like that visiting the website feels like navigating through an online language museum.

This project was initially launched by Google but is now overseen by the First Peoples' Cultural Council and the Institute for Language Information and Technology and an Alliance Governance Committee. As stated in the Content Guidelines on their website, a goal of the project is to facilitate the exchange of information regarding endangered languages.

Here is a quick YouTube video titled 'Introducing the Endangered Languages Project' (2012, June): @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn2QbwcjmOI

I also watched a Ted Talk by Wade Davis on Dreams from Endangered Cultures [] where he says that loss of language is the biggest danger to endangered cultures. He says that

"when each of you in this room were born, there were 6,000 languages spoken on the planet. Now, a language is not just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. A language is a flash of the human spirit. It's a vehicle through which the soul of each particular culture comes into the material world. Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed, a thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities.

And of those 6,000 languages, as we sit here today in Monterey, fully half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children. They're no longer being taught to babies, which means, effectively, unless something changes, they're already dead. What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence, to be the last of your people to speak your language, to have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors or anticipate the promise of the children? And yet, that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody somewhere on Earth roughly every two weeks, because every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with him into the grave the last syllables of an ancient tongue."

This talk makes me sad because many of the languages from different cultures don't use technology, so I don't think they will be able to save their languages. Unfortunately, it seems that English and Western culture, who have better access to technology are evading and assimilating other cultures which have valuable insights and world views.

Shannon Everett

Endangered Languages: Globalization Languages through out history have gone through the process of disappearing or being altered, however, the rate of language endangerment is at an accelerated rate. An endangered language is defined as: a language that is at risk of falling out of use as its speakers die out or shift to speaking another language. UNESCO identifies several levels of language endangerment- "safe", "vulnerable" (not spoken by children outside the home), "definitely endangered" (children not speaking), "severely endangered" (only spoken by the oldest generations), "critically endangered" (spoken by few members of the oldest generation, often semi-speakers). [] Although there are several causes to why a language is close to extinction, globalization is one of the main causes today. The process of globalization in the world has been a negative implication on local traditional cultures. The frequent use of dominant languages such as Chinese, Russian, English, Hindi, and Spanish to name a few, have taken over in the political, economic and social interaction internationally. Thus, local languages with fewer speakers are forced to educate their children in the dominant language to ensure inclusion in the political, economic, and social areas of life. Eventually, less people use the language, which dies out eventually. [] (Farishta, Amiri)

K. David Harrison and the preservation of endangered Indigenous languages
K. David Harrison, an Associate Professor at Swarthmore College, speaks of the importance of preserving endangered languages digitally in this video posted by the AAAS (2012, February).

media type="youtube" key="GxZAbA3NuEM" width="560" height="315" //Video retrieved from:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxZAbA3NuE

In the above video, Harrison mentions talking dictionaries for the endangered Siletz Dee-Ni and Tuvan languages. Here is a link to the Siletz Dee-Ni dictionary: http://siletz.swarthmore.edu. Here is a link to a talking dictionary Harrison built for the Tuvan language: @http://tuvan.swarthmore.edu/

Take a look at this National Geographic article, //A Festival for the World's Rarest Languages//, by Andrew Howley (2013, July) which chronicles the Smithsonian Folklife Festival of which Harrison was a part.

The Enduring Voices Project (National Geographic)
K. David Harrison is involved with the Enduring Voices project which was developed through a partnership between National Geographic and The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Language. The Language Hotspots map from the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages (posted on the National Geographic website) is an interactive visualization of linguistic data regarding endangered languages.

- Bridgette Atkins