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Google Launches Endangered Languages Project
redletterdave writes "About half of all of the languages in the world — more than 3,000 of them — are currently on the verge of extinction. Google hopes to stem the tide with its latest effort that launched Thursday, called The Endangered Languages Project. Google teamed up with the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, a newly formed coalition of global language groups and associations, to give endangered-language speakers and their supporters a place to upload and share their research and collaborations. The site currently features posts submitted by the Endangered Languages community, including linguistic fieldwork, projects, audio interviews, and transcriptions."
why in the hell would we want to SAVE languages?
Man multiple languages is just a pain in the ass
down with everything but English
.. kudos.
dont forget that William Shatner's first movie was in Esperanto en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
I can entirely understand why linguists value having as many different language samples to work with as possible, and I am similarly aware that active campaigns against various languages have usually closely accompanied active campaigns against their speakers(anything from harassment and discrimination up to and including wholesale slaughter). However, there is also a lot of language homogenization that occurs quite peacefully, with kids wanting to watch TV or speakers of some fairly obscure tongue looking for access to opportunities, culture, and company in more common languages.
Given the value of language in communication between people, and the rather dubious history of the various things that make messy tribalism even easier than it already is, is this 'Linguistic Diversity' stuff actually a good thing(beyond the relatively narrow; although certainly important, value as a research sample for linguists and as a useful rallying point for resistance to other flavors of attack on relatively powerless groups)?
aka What Women Say And What They Really Mean
Not even Google has enough hardware to translate this language, let alone preserve it
Save ALGOL68 before it's too late!
Can I upload the language that I created to talk to my invisible best friend when I was 6 years old?
sudo make me a sandwich
The goal of language is communication, but multiple languages greatly hinder this.
Can someone give me a good reason for language diversity?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
One of the languages I know (Udmurt) is in the list :(
It'd be nice to preserve it, but even I don't see that much value in it.
they've been supporting endangered languages for years.
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=xx-bork
... annnnd immediately upon launch, the project was added to the Endangered Projects Project.
Great idea, but how long will it be supported? Sadly, I think it will share a fate with Google Health.
There are some languages which are better off dead. VisualBasic for example.
I look forward to eating Soylent Green in our dying world monoculture!
You're forgetting the beauty of say Klingon poetry on a midsummer's night, and how sublime that can appear to an audience who understands neither Klingonese or poetry. It would be a tragedy to see that kind of thing disappear.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
...attributes imo.
Yeah and in 3 years Google will decide that they don't care about this anymore and close their service as they did before with non profitable projects ...
This is frequently stated, but not really all that true.
Actual complexity of tax codes increases the effort tax lawyers must expend to deliver the same value to clients, which is disadvantageous to them.
Perceived (by non-tax lawyers) complexity of the tax code increases the perceived value of the services of tax lawyers (and, therefore, the prices purchasers of those services are willing to pay), and is therefore advantageous to them.
Insofar as tax lawyers have a vested economic interested in the complexity of the tax code, its not in maximizing the actual complexity of the tax code, but in maximizing the difference between the perceived and actual complexity of the tax code.
... that they killed Google Labs for this?
They really think this is going to make money over the sorts of things that came out of Google Labs? (aka, most of their things now)
How are they going to even "monetize" this, as they have been saying they are focusing on recently?
Yeah, not trying to insult linguistics, I actually quite like reading up on rarely used languages or dead languages, but really?
Go raibh míle maith agaibh!
I'm sure their research has shown that people respond better to advertising in their native tongues, or some equally self-serving privacy intrusion that's best wrapped in a facade of socio-linguistic altruism.
How do you say "Big Brother is Watching" in Assyrian?
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis about how language is related to the culture that uses it? That would make it more than a practical communication matter.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
If humanity were to standardize on one language:
It would make sense to consider what's already popular.
English can be hard to learn because of the irregular verbs; Mandarin can be hard because of the tones.
Not sure about other major languages such as Spanish, Hindi or Arabic.
And language is more than a practical means of communication; the cultural issues create a shitstorm.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Let's not forget sayings like "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read it in English, thank a soldier". Even if the imperialist project wasn't successful, language imposition is taken as a symbol of it.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Are the branches of Quenderin, Khuzdul, and Black Speech to be considered as endangered?
Let's try to preserve everything just the way it is. All the life, all the ideas, all the languages, all the heritage buildings, hold back time itself if need be.
It just doesn't work that way. Languages, ideas, life forms all have their day and when that day is past, so will that entity. Just a shame that they're trying preserve all these languages when all the speakers of them will be dead by the end of the century in the name of sustainability.
English like C are both programming languages. All languages have the same basic principles. While natural languages have a great deal more exceptions, the purpose is the same.
All a part of natural selection, mates. However, what's more interesting is when a factor of preservation enter the cycle of natural selection. Maybe the languages that are actively recognized as "endangered languages" will then survive oblivion, whereas certain seemingly non-endangered languages might just pass out of existence gradually, simply because no one feared it going extinct and didn't decide to preserve it. Of course, it won't happen to languages like English, Mandarin or Hindi. But it may just happen to local dialects and minor variations on major languages such as Coorgi . It is a primary language for a large enough community (~500,000) of people in Southern India. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is similar to the major Dravidian languages of Tulu, Kannada, Tamil and Malyalam. Is it conceivable that gradually such traditional languages become less common due to communication issues and start phasing out as the newer generations speak more of the major/popular languages (still local though, such as Tamil), as no one really sees them being endangered?
Hell, I'm not sure I myself know fully what I just implied there.
If a language "dies" from lack of interest (nobody wants to learn it, use it and pass it down to their children), that is a natural thing that should be left to take its course.
I mean, what is the alternative? Surely, you can't force people to learn a language they are not interested in. How do you motivate people to revive a language that, say, only a few thousand people know?
This project, how does it actually protect "dying" languages? If some aspect of a language is kept in a museum, is that language really alive? I would say that it's rather like specimen in a jar, if we are to keep with this analogy of language as a living thing.
A language is only alive to the extent that it has native speakers, or at least very highly proficient quasi-native speakers.
Now if the disappearance of a language is due to, say, genocide, then that's a whole different problem, isn't it! People dying versus a language simply falling out of use.
Java ?
Wrong.
Wonder if Na'vi will end up there now that all the cool kids have moved on to learn the Dothraki language.
The system of grammar tenses is also very interesting and powerful (Russian doesn't have an analog of present perfect, for example)
As another Russian speaker I disagree with you. Tenses are cumbersome and redundant.
Wonderfully reasoned argument there. I like how you referenced the works of Ancient Greek philosophers to support your points.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Ensuring that the Bible is translated into every language before the languages disappear.
Netcraft now comfirms: Miami-Illinois is dying.
No matter what you may find of endangered languages, it's always worth preserving it. Because what if we had not, and in the future we'd encounter a civilization (doesn't have to be from other worlds) and have no way to decipher their language relatively fast?
Why would we care? 99.9% of all species that ever existed on the earth are extinct. It is the nature of evolution.
only three major types of Spanish verbs IIRC: -ar, -er, -ir, just with pronouns and present/future tense modifications of the same word.
Also, gendered nouns with the same root word, like hijo/hija instead of son/daughter
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.