Digital technologies reversing extinction of languages

VANCOUVER: Digital technologies are the new life-savers for languages on the verge of extinction, linguists said Friday as they announced eight new dictionaries at a major science conference in Vancouver.

"We're turning the digital divide into a digital opportunity," said David Harrison, a National Geographic Fellow at Swarthmore College near Philadelphia.

More than half of some 7,000 languages alive today were considered on the verge of extinction within a century, "threatened by cultural changes, ethnic shame, government repression and other factors," the scientists said in a paper.

But use of technologies, even by peoples without written languages, "is a heartening trend," said Harrison. "Language extinction is not an inevitability."

"Using social media, Youtube, text messaging, to expand their voice, expand their presence (is) the flip side of globalization," said Harrison.

"You can have a language spoken by only 50 or 500 people, only in one location, and now through digital technology that language can achieve a global voice."

Languages matter, said Harrison, because linguists and other researchers "gain immense insight into human cognition, botany, pharmacology. All disciplines of scientific inquiry are immeasurably enhanced." (AFP)