3 Endangered Languages Preserved on YouTube (Video Slideshow)

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The modern world and globalization have too often been the enemies of traditional, local cultures. But researchers are using digital tools such as YouTube, Facebook and texting to save some of the world’s endangered languages. By 2100, it is predicted that half of the 7,000 languages spoken on our planet will have disappeared and linguists are racing against time to preserve as many of them as they can.

Using Software and Social Media To Keep Endangered Languages Alive

Microsoft is developing interfaces for Microsoft Office that are completely in Inuktitut, an Inuit language largely spoken above the tree line. The advantage of creating such software is that younger people have more ways to use the language. Gavin Nesbitt is the operations director for the Piruvik Centre, which promotes efforts to teach Inuktitut; he notes that a young man who is learning the language told him “I think that I text more in the language than I speak in it.”

Margaret Noori is an expert in Native American studies at the University of Michigan and a speaker of Anishinaabemowin, which is the sovereign language of about 200 indigenous communities in the Great Lakes, in Canada and the U.S. Only about 5,000 people speak Anishinaabemowin today; Noori and her colleagues have a website, Noongwa e-Anishinaabemjig: People Who Speak Anishinaabemowin Today, via which they are seeking to revitalize the use of the language. She notes that these communities are heavy users of Facebook and that they are seeking ways to use technology to help “connect people.”

K. David Harrison, an associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, is working with National Geographic’s Enduring Voices project to develop online tools (including a YouTube channel) to record the sounds and syntax and vocabulary of languages such as Matukar Panau (spoken by only about 600 people in Papua New Guinea) and Siletz Dee-ni (spoken by fewer than a thousand people in Oregon). So far, the project has developed “talking dictionaries” for eight endangered languages, with 32,000 words, 24,000 audio recordings, and photographs of objects mentioned in the languages.

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Photo by Sébastien Lapointe (Sébastien Lapointe, Iqaluit, Nunavut) via Wikimedia Commons

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Donna S.

8:32PM PST on Feb 26, 2012

The first step in putting a halt to losing any other language or culture is the recognition of that language and culture as being equal to all others and a necessary part of the ONE HUMAN FAMILY. When we climb back down from the pedestal and meet our brothers and sisters eye to eye and see that we are ALL the same ESSENTIAL LIVING, BREATHING BEINGS on a human journey across time and space, then we can begin to allow others the RIGHT to get their needs met while we, at the same time get ours met, NEEDS, not GREED!

Once these languages and cultures are gone, we can only vaguely remember them in stories and legends, often inaccurately and with prejudice. We, too, will one day be eradicated and remembered in this same way, because what goes around also comes around.

We have the power to enrich our lives tremendously by celebrating the story of each sojourner here; who wants another version of ROCKY and his seriously over-rated FIGHTING MOVIES, when we can watch masterpieces not on film before our eyes?!

send a green star

New G.

7:52PM PST on Feb 24, 2012

Agree with Virginia P.

James B.

7:40PM PST on Feb 24, 2012

Thanks

Angel C.

8:23AM PST on Feb 23, 2012

interesting, thanks.

Samantha C.

11:40AM PST on Feb 21, 2012

Interesting article

Donna H.

7:43AM PST on Feb 21, 2012

Interesting article - thanks for posting.

Mary L.

3:34AM PST on Feb 21, 2012

Will R., Babel is like thunder, Donner, being an attribute of Thor. It explains why there are so many different groups when "everyone knows Adam and Eve were the progenitors of all people". If all people are one people, why don't they all speak the same language? Answer, babel!

Everyone feels better and the story gets ingrained in a particular group's mythos.

Danuta W.

3:20AM PST on Feb 21, 2012

Thanks for this great article.

Will R.

12:15AM PST on Feb 21, 2012

It's good to preserve old languages, knowledge should be kept, though the real dream should be for all of us to speak the same language eventually. And I am aware of the cautionary biblical tale of the tower of babel and I have always been suspicious why the powers that be didn't want to see a united populous, in the story it seems that God was scared that we would build a tower and conquer Heaven! A crazy crazy tale!

Marie W.

7:31PM PST on Feb 20, 2012

In the end all languages die.