A Chance to Record Some of the 112 Local Languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

A Chance to Record Some of the 112 Local Languages

By REYHAN HARMANCI
Published: July 28, 2011
USA

Standing on a BART platform or strolling down Market Street, it is
easy to pick up snippets of languages other than English — rapid-fire
Spanish, of course, or maybe animated Mandarin.

But that is only the beginning. Croatian, Navaho, Swahili, Czech, even
Scottish Gaelic and more are spoken in the Bay Area.

With 112 languages in use locally, according to the census, the Bay
Area is one of the country’s most linguistically diverse metropolitan
areas. (Los Angeles, the most diverse, has 137.)

On Saturday, residents will get a rare opportunity to hear — and speak
in — as many tongues as possible, thanks to a collaboration between
the Internet Archive and the Long Now Foundation, nonprofits dedicated
to archival work, and Mighty Verse, a start-up that has created a
database of phrase videos.

Access full article below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/us/29bcculture.html?_r=1