Google Joins Fight to Save Nearly 3,000 Endangered Languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Google Joins Fight to Save Nearly 3,000 Endangered Languages
By Keith Wagstaff <http://techland.time.com/author/kpwagstaff/> |
@kwagstaff<http://www.twitter.com/kwagstaff>| June
22, 2012
US

The last native speakers of Miami-Illinois died in the 1960s. Two centuries
earlier, Jesuits came to the United States and found two tribes — the Miami
and the Illinois, which both shared a common language.

“The Jesuits believed you had to understand the language and the culture of
the people you were trying to convert,” says George Ironstrack, assistant
director for the Myaamia Project <http://www.myaamiaproject.org/>. “Then
you could preach to them in their language and translate religious
materials for them.”

While the Jesuits may not have had the purest of intentions, they did
create an extensive record of the language, including dictionaries in
French that matched words with sentences that put them in context. In the
1990s, researchers started the task of bringing the extinct language back
to life, teaching it to the Miami community in Oklahoma.

Read more:
http://techland.time.com/2012/06/22/google-joins-fight-to-save-nearly-3000-endangered-languages/#ixzz1yd8bOp1R
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