Saturday, October 01, 2005

Endangered Languages

So, to explain something I am thinking of doing, next year or the year after next, I have attached an explainer from the school I would like to attend, in London, called SOAS. Don't know if they will have me, but if they do, and I come up with the cash, should work out ok.
Anyway, below is a sort of intro to the topic, which should explain it better than I would.
BACKGROUND
It is widely agreed that about half of the 6,500 languages spoken in the world today are endangered to some degree. Due to the impact of urbanisation, the spread of global communications, migration, government policies, and people’s negative evaluations of their languages and traditions, an increasing number of languages are no longer being learnt by children.
Today 96% of the worlds population speaks just 4% of the languages, meaning that the vast bulk of languages have small and diminishing speech communities. If nothing is done, most of these languages will become extinct within this century.
The Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (HRELP) has been established to study, document and archive aspects of the world’s linguistic heritage. Sponsored bythe Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund, HRELP comprises three elements:
• A documentation programme, which awards grants annually through an international panel for research and documentation worldwide (ELDP)
• An archive programme, which provides a digital record of languages for the future(ELAR)

1 comment:

harris said...

Dude, I ready for some self-immolation!

I was playing ET the other day, and there was a dude playing on the server with the handle "Deadly Lemur", which I found amusing.

I also though of you the other day when I was cleaning my bathroom, and thought "I wonder if Bedell squeezed this bottle of BAM!"

BAM!, by the way, will fuck your shit up if you don't wear gloves.