Dying Languages, Fading Formats

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."

Comments

Re:Rosetta Stone

[Mister Black]

Translating the bible? And here I've been thinking that it helped in translating Egyptian hieroglyphs. Boy is my face red.

Re:Is this really a big deal?

[Iguanaphobic]

I agree. Let's start by retraining the 275 million people in the United States to all use the metric system like the other 5.8 billion people on the planet do. Then we'll move on to language.

BABEL II

[Thud457]

There's several criteria for picking the one world language. Lessee:

• English : used by the (currently) richest/most powerful/most technologically advanced country
• Chinese : used by the most people
• French :once was in line to be the "linga franca" as you would say
• Welsh : we could then speak to our alien overlords in their own language
• Spanish : Most of the Western hemisphere speaks this
• Japaneese : they were going own the world for a couple of years in the 80's
• German : another outrageous accent, suitable for ranting
• Esperanto : cripes, no!
• Klingon : I wasn't aware there were nerdwarriors
• Cetain: How many wars do dolphins get into?

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world does have a common language. English. Just ask any English speaking person. If you're talking to someone that doesn't appear to understand english you just have to speak slower and louder.

All Space Aliens also speak english.

No No No!

[Greyfox]

Everyone should speak Klingon! Why should any one group of people have it any easier than any other group? To be completely fair to everyone, the language we unify on should be Klingon.