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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Infotech

Internet breathes life into dying languages

REUTERS

Holyhead, Wales, June 13: Endangered languages like Welsh, Navajo and
Breton have regained speakers and popularity in their communities and are
now even ‘cool’ for kids--thanks to the Internet.

Welsh language expert David Crystal said the Internet could forestall the
dismal fate of about half of the world's 6,500 languages, which are doomed
to extinction by the end of the 21st century at a rate of about two
language deaths a month.

"The Internet offers endangered languages a chance to have a public voice
in a way that would not have been possible before," said Crystal, who has
written over 50 books on language including ‘The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of
Language’.

Languages at risk of extinction are appearing on blogs, instant messaging,
chat rooms, video site www.youtube.com and social networking site
www.myspace.com, and their presence in the virtual world curries favour
with youngsters who speak them.

"It doesn't matter how much activism you engage in on behalf of a language
if you don't attract the teenagers, the parents of the next generation of
children," Crystal, who was raised speaking English and Welsh, said.

"And what turns teenagers on more than the Internet these days? If you can
get a language out there, the youngsters are much more likely to think it's
cool."

Online free encyclopaedia www.wikipedia.org, written and built by
volunteers, has entries in dozens of endangered languages, from native
American Cherokee to the Austronesian language Tetum, spoken by less than a
million people in East Timor, to the Maori language of New Zealand.

Tens of Welsh chat rooms exist for its 600,000 speakers--just over 20 per
cent of Wales--where young people look for the best pubs in town, or hunt
for potential dates.

Crystal said there are 50-60 languages in the world which have one last
speaker, and around 2,000 have never been written.

"If these languages die, they are gone forever. This is a huge intellectual
loss to humanity. The Internet is very important in this respect," he said.

Money is usually required to go virtual however, and this is problematic
for African and indigenous South American languages, where resources are
low and governments favour dominant languages Spanish, French and English.

Native American languages, especially Navajo, are fortunate to have many
virtual communities on the Internet as most are funded by the lucrative
casinos the Navajos run, Crystal said.

"To put it into perspective only two to four percent of the world's
botanical and zoological species are in serious danger, whereas it's 50 per
cent of languages. The language crisis hasn't attracted the same degree of
public awareness".