Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dying Languages, Fading Formats

Posted by michael on from the rosetta-cd-rom dept.

utopyr writes "A story on BBC News looks briefly at the problems in preserving human languages in digital formats. The scope of the problem? Of the world's roughly 6,500 languages (of which, fewer than 500 are listed here), half will be extinct within the century, as the last speakers die. However, formats are proving even more ephemeral than human memory."

1 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is a bit harsh... by Randolpho · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    A tribal dialect of swahili used by a tribal village of canabals that died off by eating themselves and never had any texts, OTOH, should not be something worth keeping and studying...


    Agreed.
    --
    "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
    -Marilyn Manson