Languages The Internet Doesn’t Speak

Keating notes that the web will play a key role in determining which of the world’s languages survive:

It’s not news that we’re currently in a period of mass linguistic extinction. One of the world’s languages falls out of use about every two weeks, and about half of those remaining are in danger of extinction this century. But Andras Kornai of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences believes these numbers actually understate what’s happening by failing to account for the fact that very few of the world’s languages are developing any presence online. …

All in all, Kornai’s survey on languages online estimates that at most 5 percent of the world’s 7,000 active languages will be capable of ascending. It’s fair to wonder just how much of a tragedy this really is: While we’re losing some local identity, more people around the world are now able to communicate with one another than ever before. It is safe to say, however, that we’re at something of a key turning point in the history of culture.

Caitlin Dewey remarks on efforts to keep these languages alive:

Plenty of organizations, including Wikipedia and the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, have devoted resources to that cause: The ALD has a massive crowd-sourced encyclopedia of endangered languages, complete with sample texts in tongues such as Nganasan (500 speakers, Russia) and Maxakali (802 speakers, Brazil). Wikipedia has an “incubator” to encourage projects in new languages (or very old ones). Kornai thinks the Wikipedia project has potential — in fact, he argues that endangered languages need a core of digital fanatics, like Wikipedia moderators or educational app developers, to survive.

But that isn’t enough to keep a fading language viable in the long term, particularly if there’s another, more dominant language that’s easier for people to use online. Even if you have a killer Cherokee wiki, for instance — which, it turns out, some people do – you’re not necessarily going to be able to Google or Facebook or tweet in that language.