‘Talking dictionaries’ to help save languages

London: Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the internet may help
save the world’s endangered languages, including Ho from India, from
extinction, according to linguists.
 
Some 3,500 of the world’s 7,000 languages are expected to be
extinct from use by the end of the century. Now, a team has unveiled eight
“talking dictionaries” as part of a project to save thousands of ancient
tongues on verge of extinction. 

The lexicon features Ho which is a Munda language of Austroasiatic
language family spoken primarily in India by about 3,803,126 people. Written
with the Devanagari and the Varang Kshiti scripts, it’s spoken by Ho people.
The script was founded and developed by pandit Lako Bodra.
 
Digital dictionaries also feature 32,000 written words and, 24,000
audio recordings from native speakers from remote corners of the world, ‘The
Daily Telegraph’ said.
 
David Harrison, from Swarthmore College in Philadelphia, project
leader, said, “You can have a language spoken by only 50 or 500 people in only
one location, and now through digital technology that language can achieve a
global voice. “Endangered language communities are adopting digital technology
to aid their survival and to make their voices heard around the world. This is
a positive effect of globalisation.”
 
The talking dictionaries feature languages like Siletz Dee-in from
Oregon and Matukar Panau, an Oceanic language from Papua New Guinea which has
only 600 surviving speakers. PTI 
 
Source | Times of India | 20 February 2012