Endangered Languages Project: Google Wants To Save 3,000 Languages Under Threat (Thanks Partly To Google)

Google, along with other major forces of our dot-com times, has played a huge part in making English the lingua franca of the Internet, but today brings news of an effort it's making to counterbalance that, at least a little. It is kicking off the Endangered Languages Project, a site for interested groups and individuals to share?research and collaborate on projects to help preserve languages that are under threat in the modern age, with the aim to document some 3,000 languages -- half of all the world's languages -- "on the verge of extinction," Google's Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman?write in a blog post today. Google says the new site will contain a number of tools and resources to help keep some of those alive: there will be high-quality recordings of people speaking the languages, copies of historical manuscripts, e-learning options, and even niche-language social networking opportunities, in addition to research and other documentation.

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