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:This is a bit harsh...

[Zeinfeld]

Excuse the cliche' but 'ignorance really must be bliss'for some. There are many reasons why the extinction of 90 percent of the world's languages is potentially devastating however I realise that for YOU, the speakers of a majority language, such devastation seems remote, uninteresting and irrelevant to your already complicated and complex lives.

Nahh, we have just met language nut bigotts.

Take Irish for example, a language that had all but died out and was resurected for the sole purpose of preserving gaelic identity which comes down to defining THEM and US and making things as unpleasant as possible for THEM in the hope they will leave. Then in Turkey we have the government brutally supressing the speaking of Kurdish.

This is of course what drives the hyper-biggots who police the suppression of all languages other than french in Quebec. These are deeply unimpressive individuals who know their limitations, the only chance they have of gaining some power is through division.

Culture and cultural differences are great when people are happy to share in good faith and charity. The problem is that you get the thugs and biggots who have to use them as a means of division.

Unfortunately language is a particularly powerful method of defining them and us - if you don't know the language you are automatically one of THEM. That is why language differences tend to create even more division than religious ones.