Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5954 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French
| Message 1 of 4 21 June 2012 at 8:44pm | IP Logged |
This may be of interest to some:
Endangered Languages Project - Montreal Gazette article
"Google has set out to save the world's dying languages.
In an alliance with scholars and linguists, the Internet powerhouse on Wednesday introduced an Endangered Languages Project website where people can find, share, and store information about dialects in danger of disappearing.
"People can share their knowledge and research directly through the site and help keep the content up-to-date," project managers Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman said in a Google blog post.
"A diverse group of collaborators have already begun to contribute content ranging from 18th-century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles."
The website at endangeredlanguages.com is designed to let users upload video, audio, or text files and encourages them to memorialize recordings of rare dialects.
Only half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today are expected to survive past the end of this century, according to an Endangered Languages video posted at Google-owned video-sharing venue YouTube.
"Documenting...languages that are on the verge of extinction is an important step in preserving cultural diversity, honoring the knowledge of our elders and empowering our youth," Rodriguez and Rissman said.
"Technology can strengthen these efforts, by helping people create high-quality recordings of their elders (often the last speakers of a language), connecting Diaspora communities through social media and facilitating language learning."
Google's philanthropic arm seeded the project, leadership of which will be ceded in coming months to the First People's Cultural Council and the Institute for Language Information and Technology at Eastern Michigan University.
The Endangered Languages Catalog (ELCat), sponsored by the University of Hawaii, will also be contributing to the project."
Edited by Spanky on 21 June 2012 at 8:45pm
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Spanky Senior Member Canada Joined 5954 days ago 1021 posts - 1714 votes Studies: French
| Message 2 of 4 21 June 2012 at 8:47pm | IP Logged |
Perhaps of more utility, a link to the actual site:
Endangered Languages Project site
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Pisces Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4620 days ago 143 posts - 284 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish*, French, SwedishC1, Esperanto Studies: German, Spanish, Russian
| Message 3 of 4 22 June 2012 at 9:52am | IP Logged |
This is very interesting. I'm not quite sure what will develop out of this site, but it seems like a good effort. Glad that Google is paying attention to endangered languages.
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Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4636 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew
| Message 4 of 4 22 June 2012 at 10:41pm | IP Logged |
It seems like there's been some good work done. I'll continue to see how this project progresses over time. It's quite interesting exploring the map and discovering more languages.
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