Blog

Recent news and updates regarding the Endangered Languages Project

  • Tuesday, June 17, 2014

    Introducing Wikitongues
    Every language in the world, for everyone.

    Contributed by Wikitongues

    Wikitongues is a community effort to give everybody access to every language in the world. In coordination with an international team of volunteers, we’re dedicated to recording videos of every tongue, spoken or signed, as well as crowdsourcing dictionaries, phrasebooks, and other relevant materials. We upload new language videos to our YouTube channel every week, and use our social media presence to share educational and cultural content daily.

    Simply recording all of the world’s languages is no easy task, but on top of it, we frequently test new and different methods of bringing our content back to the communities from where it came. We seek to offer all the people in the world access to every language and believe that the best way to do this is through a combination of online and on the ground activities.

    Globalization has brought with it fantastic improvements to our daily lives, often at the cost of cultural diversity. Few phenomena are as central to the shared experience of a cultural community as language, and of the 7,000 currently spoken around the world, at least half are fading from view, disappearing and taking with them their histories, woven together by generations of experience and knowledge. Wikitongues is our way of saying no to this future, and to celebrate the myriad of cultures that stitch together our vibrant human tapestry.

    We firmly believe that all languages deserve equal footing and visibility, regardless of how many speakers they have. If you agree, keep in touch! Follow us on YouTube for new videos every week, and find us on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. If you’d like to submit your own video or get involved with our community of volunteers, don’t hesitate to reach out to us through hello@wikitongues.org.

  • Wednesday, June 4, 2014

    Introducing Our New Featured Languages: Taa, Nyagrong Minyag and Pakaantyi
    Taa (also known as !Xóõ, Tâa, !Xuun, N|amani, Ng|amani, Tsasi, Qgoon, /Namani, Tshasi, !Ko, Casi, or /Nu//een) belongs to the Tuu family (formerly classified with so-called Khoisan languages, a proposal no longer accepted). Taa is known for the large number of sounds (phonemes) in the language--sometimes said to be the most phonemes in any known language, including tones, many clicks, and a large number of vowels. Taa is the word for ‘human being’; speakers call themselves ǃXoon. There are about 2600 speakers, most in Botswana, with a few hundred in Namibia. A significant number in Botswana are abandoning Taa and shifting to Kgalagadi, while some in Namibia are shifting to Afrikaans and Nama.

    Nyagrong Minyag (a Tibeto-Burman language) is spoken by fewer than 1,000 people--ethnic Tibetans who live in a valley of the Yalong River in western Sichuan Province, China. Due to hydroelectric dam construction along this river, all speakers are being relocated because their valley will be inundated. This relocation will have a negative impact on future transmission of this language. Collaborative efforts are currently underway to document and preserve this language and the knowledge it contains.

    Pakaantyi is a critically endangered Pama-Nyungan language of New South Wales, Australia, with fewer than four known first-language speakers, but many learners. Paakantyi means ‘people of the river’, from Paaka ‘river’. It is also known as the Darling language, because of its location on the Darling River. There is an active program for sharing and teaching the language, the Paakantyi Language Circle, which has created excellent learning materials--see the resource Learning Paakantyi for ten lessons.

  • Monday, April 14, 2014

    NEW! Viewing Languages by Region and Country on EndangeredLanguages.com

    Have you ever wondered exactly how many endangered languages there are in Australia? Or how many European countries or territories are home to at least one endangered language?


    The Endangered Languages Project is pleased to announce new features that allow users to view endangered languages by region and country. The new Browse by Region and Country page gives the option to explore languages in list form by selecting a region or country of interest. The textual view on this page is meant to supplement the map on the homepage, which provides a visual representation of global language endangerment.



    Similarly, new refinements have been introduced for the search function that allow users to narrow search results by region or country. Imagine you are looking for the Cameroonian language called Baka. If you search EndangeredLanguages.com for 'Baka', you get 36 language results! Now, you can narrow it down to 26 results in the region of Africa or just 4 results in Cameroon.



    As always, we hope to improve this feature based on your input. If you find a language whose location is incorrectly listed, please make a suggestion, and visit our Facebook or Twitter pages to share your thoughts on these new features.

  • Monday, March 24, 2014

    NEW! Expanded Bibliography on EndangeredLanguages.com
    The Endangered Languages Project is happy to announce an improved bibliography function for language pages, allowing users to access even more resources for each language. Previously, the bibliography tab at the top of each language’s page displayed only the sources (books, articles, etc.) that were used by the Catalogue team to calculate the language’s vitality. With the newly expanded bibliography, you’ll see a list of all relevant resources that the Catalogue team has identified for each language. To view the expanded bibliography on any language page, click on the bibliography tab and scroll down to “other sources”. 

    This expanded bibliography function will help users find additional language learning material, information about language programs, resources about the linguistics of endangered languages, academic articles about specific languages, and more. The Catalogue of Endangered Languages teams at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and Eastern Michigan University are working daily to expand the bibliography further by adding relevant bibliographic sources to each page. 

    We also hope to receive input from you, the ELP community, with suggestions on additional sources to include in the bibliography. If you know of any relevant material not included in the expanded bibliography, please let us know--just click “Add Information” at the bottom of the bibliography page. We hope this additional information will be useful to you, and let us know if there are any other features that would help make ELP a better resource for you and your language!

  • Tuesday, March 11, 2014

    New Museum exhibition showcases B.C.’s living First Nations languages


    With 34 Indigenous languages and 61 dialects, British Columbia (B.C.) is the most linguistically diverse region in Canada.

    In an inspiring new partnership, the First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC) has been working with the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, B.C. to create the innovative Our Living Languages exhibition, which will provide an opportunity to celebrate these First Nations languages and the people who are working to preserve and revitalize them.

    The exhibition will make use of audio and visual media, artwork and narrative text in English as well as First Nations languages. Most importantly, it will demonstrate the diversity and resilience of First Nations languages in B.C. by showcasing languages by region as well as individual efforts to rejuvenate languages through hard work and perseverance.

    The opening date is June 21, 2014, which coincides with Canada’s National Aboriginal Day.

    More information: http://royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/our-living-languages/
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