Slashdot Mirror
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."
Well... in fact having a diversity can be pretty good. A lot of our thought process is based on associations and if you know a couple of languages (for me Swedish, English, Dutch and German - in order of proficiency) you also know that nuances are very hard to translate - there is simply no 1:1 perfect relationship between certain concepts within different languages. Those ambigous meanings and cultural associations are a fundamental part of the thought process. I am all for having English as a "lingua franca" and it should definitely be considered a second official language in most countries (especially within the EU institutions). On the other hand, there is a great strength in having different frameworks to form your thoughts in and, given this perspective, coming from a different language is clearly an advantage.