Google Launches Initiative to Archive Endangered Languages

With rapid growth of  the world-wide-web, the way humans interact and communicate with one another is evolving. However, with this change comes specific obligations to preserve some of the ways of communication that are sadly becoming extinct. Google, the world's most popular search engine company, recognizes this need and in response has launched a website for Endangered Languages.

So what inspired this amazing idea? It all started a couple of years ago, when a group of YouTube users approached Google for help with an endangered-language preservation project they were running on the video site. Google's staff then decided to expand the project and went searching for partners...the rest is history.

"A diverse group of collaborators have already begun to contribute content ranging from 18th century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles" Google said in a post announcing the new site.

This site is already archiving information from more than 3,000 languages.  This includes the Harsusi language, spoken by about 700 people in Oman and the Assiniboine language, spoken natively by fewer than 150 people in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. This tool will be very valuable in preserving a lot of the aboriginal languages in Canada that are already on the verge of extinction. 

Unfortunately, Google has only been able to archive half of the total number of endangered languages around the world and more work needs to be done. This is why Google has partnered with the First Peoples' Heritage, Language and Culture Council (FPHLCC) (a British-Columbia based Crown corporation) and the Institute for Language Information and Technology at eastern Michigan University. In fact, once the website takes off, Google plans on handing over control of the entire project and these two groups will be responsible for maintaining and expanding the website. 

Google has faith that the First Peoples' Heritage, Language and Culture Council (FPHLCC) in British Columbia can handle the project because of what they have already achieved. Indeed, around the same time Google was developing their website to preserve languages, the FPHLCC was starting to use new technology to aid in the preservation of endangered languages. In fact, they had even begun developing various keyboards that allowed users to type in some 34 languages and 61 dialects present in B.C. alone - many of them spoken by only a handful of people.