For Rare Languages, Social Media Provide New Hope (fwd link)

[Howard Gutowitz]

You may be interested to look at what we did with our N’ko app, 
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sebengbe/id442979089?mt=8

You can post to Facebook or Twitter, and write email or texts in N’ko script.
Since many recipients of the posts won’t have a N’ko unicode font installed,
we create an image of the N’ko text and send it along with the unicode.
In the case of SMS, where
even that is not necessarily possible  (one is confined to the GSM 7-bit
encoding standard), we send an automatically generated latin transliteration.



On Jul 30, 2014, at 8:23 PM, Andrew Cunningham <lang.support at gmail.com> wrote:

> Although at the same time social media provides unique challenges for languages that use lesser used writing scripts.
> 
> Andrew
> 
> 
> On 31 July 2014 07:43, Phil Cash Cash <weyiiletpu at gmail.com> wrote:
> For Rare Languages, Social Media Provide New Hope
> 
> By LYDIA EMMANOUILIDOU
> Originally published on Sat July 26, 2014 6:59 pm
> 
> At a time when social media users, for no particularly good reason, are trading in fully formed words for abbreviations ("defs" instead of "definitely"), it may seem that some languages are under threat of deterioration — literally.
> 
> But social media may actually be beneficial for languages.
> 
> Of the estimated 7,000 languages that are spoken around the world, UNESCO projects half will disappear by the end of the century. But social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter are in a position to revitalize and preserve indigenous, minority and endangered languages, linguists and language-preservation activists say.
> 
> One of the reasons some indigenous languages are endangered is that increased connectivity through the Internet and social media have strengthened dominant languages such as English, Russian and Chinese, says Anna Luisa Daigneault of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.
> 
> Endangered languages stand a greater chance of survival when they are used online.
> 
> "Having a Web presence for those languages is super important for their survival. Social media are just another connection point for people who want to stay connected to their language," says Daigneault, Latin America projects coordinator and development officer at the institute.
> 
> ​Access full article below: 
> http://wkms.org/post/rare-languages-social-media-provide-new-hope​
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Cunningham
> Project Manager, Research and Development
> (Social and Digital Inclusion)
> Public Libraries and Community Engagement 
> State Library of Victoria
> 328 Swanston Street 
> Melbourne VIC 3000
> Australia
> 
> Ph: +61-3-8664-7430
> Mobile: 0459 806 589
> Email: acunningham at slv.vic.gov.au
>           lang.support at gmail.com
> 
> http://www.openroad.net.au/
> http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/
> http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/

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