ELL: Re: technologies for Endangered Languages

[Victor Golla]

2/24/99

Jeff Allen writes:

> I have several articles, written independently by people who do not
> work together at all, here on my desk and on my hard drive that
> argue that the hope for preserving endangered and neglected languages
> is to computerize and internetize them.

One might as well embalm them too, while one is at it.  Nick Ostler's
point is that endangered languages are not "things" to be treasured,
admired, and dusted off from time to time, but complex patterns of
human interaction.  You do not save languages without ensuring the
social continuity of the communities in which they are used.  It
is doubtful that any amount of "internetizing" will do this.  Precisely
the opposite would seem to be much more likely -- i.e., the net creates
ad hoc e-communities of the sort we are participating in right now,
but diminishes and undermines the traditional solidarities from
which local languages take their nourishment.  The perfect language
for internetizing is Klingon, which has nothing to lose and everything
to gain, socially speaking, in this medium.

--Victor Golla


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