Will you be any worse off the moment humans cease to speak in
Aragonese? How about Navajo or Ojibwa? Or Koro, a language only just
discovered in a tiny corner of northeast India?
No, you probably wouldn’t, not in that moment. But humanity would be.
Science, art and culture would be. If, as the phrase goes, another
language equals another soul, then some 3,054 souls — 50% of the world’s
total languages — are set to die out by 2100.
If there is hope, it lies in the world’s centers of information —
such as Google. The search giant’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has
launched the Endangered Language project, a website devoted to preserving those ancient tongues that are now only spoken by a few thousand of us.
The site, launched early Thursday, features videos and an interactive
map. The curious can click on any one of the dots that hang over each
country (including a suprising number in the US), each representing a
whole language.
You can hear the heartbreaking, beautiful sound of Koro being sung,
or read 18th century manuscripts written in a nearly-dead Native
American tongue. “Documenting the 3,000+ languages that are on the verge
of extinction is an important step in preserving cultural diversity,”
write project managers Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman.
The idea is to unite a lot of smaller preservation efforts under the
Google.org banner. “By bridging independent efforts from around the
world we hope to make an important advancement in confronting language
endangerment,” said Rodriguez and Rissman. “We hope you’ll join us.”
Check out the project’s video below, and let us know in the comments:
how else can 21st century technology help save ancient language?
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