Will Googles Endangered Languages Project hold off the inevitable?
Google has embarked on documenting about 3,500 languages likely to disappear within a century. Of the worlds approximately 7,000 languages,this half comprises languages at risk,endangered,severely endangered and of vitality unknown. The Endangered Languages Project website was launched last Thursday,coinciding with Canadas National Aboriginal Day,inviting experts to collaborate on recording,sharing and accessing threatened languages using the gamut of Googles tools,such as Google Maps,Google Groups and YouTube. Google collaborated with universities and linguistic interest groups to launch the project.
Globalisation and its accompanying disappearance of cultural boundaries has undoubtedly hastened the process of linguistic acculturation. However,this is also an easy blame to lay. Languages have been dying since they began to be spoken. And whatever the cause,at the end,theres usually the Lawrentian lament of The undeliverable secret,/ Dead with a dead race and a dead speech8230;. If Google muted that lament for its 3,054 languages,by putting information about them at one instantly accessible location,it would do a lot of good.