'Talking dictionaries' document vanishing languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

'Talking dictionaries' document vanishing languages

posted on: february 17, 2012 - 4:31pm
USA

WASHINGTON -- Digital technology is coming to the rescue of some of the
world's most endangered languages. Linguists from National Geographic's
Enduring Voices project who are racing to document and revitalize
struggling languages are unveiling an effective new tool: talking
dictionaries.

Of the nearly 7,000 tongues spoken today on Earth, more than half may be
gone by century's end, victims of cultural changes, ethnic shame,
government repression and other factors. National Geographic Fellows K.
David Harrison and Gregory Anderson, the linguists who are creating these
dictionaries, say that some of them represent the first time that the
language has been recorded or written down anywhere.

Harrison, associate professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, and
Anderson, president of the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered
Languages, have traveled to some of Earth's most remote corners, visiting
language hotspots and seeking out the last speakers of vanishing languages.
The last speakers and their threatened cultural heritage are photographed
by National Geographic Fellow Chris Rainier.

Occasionally the team surfaces tongues not known to science. In 2010 they
announced with National Geographic the first documentation of a highly
endangered language known as Koro, spoken by only a few hundred people in
northeastern India.

Harrison unveiled eight new talking dictionaries Feb. 17 at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
in Vancouver, British Columbia. The dictionaries contain more than 32,000
word entries in eight endangered languages, more than 24,000 audio
recordings of native speakers pronouncing words and sentences, and
photographs of cultural objects.

Access full article below:
http://www.sciencecodex.com/talking_dictionaries_document_vanishing_languages-86300
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