Program Aims to Preserve Endangered Languages

Efforts to protect thousands of languages around the world from dying out got a boost this week when the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced it would make its Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) initiative a permanent program.

"Of the 6,500 or so languages that are spoken today, fewer than half are expected to survive the century," said Douglas Whalen, the program's director at NSF. "The world could lose 3,000 languages in the span of 100 years. Many of them are virtually unrecorded, and all have unique linguistic aspects that will be unrecoverable in the near future."

The NSF has spent more than $10 million over the past three years to study and record some of the world's most endangered languages. The DEL program began in 2005 as a collaborative effort between the NSF, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian Institution.

Since the program's start, linguists have been able to research and analyze more than 70 threatened languages. By making the DEL program permanent, the NSF now hopes to document many other languages before they die out.

"While this is a promising beginning, there are many languages still in need of further documentation," Whalen said. "With a permanent program backing up this work, the field of linguistics can expect to do a better job of recording this uniquely human heritage for future scientists and language users."

According to National Geographic's Enduring Voices project, one human language dies out nearly every two weeks. Some 500 languages today currently have fewer than 10 speakers, and languages are disappearing especially fast in five hotspots around the globe: Oklahoma, the U.S. Pacific Northwest, central South America, eastern Siberia and northern Australia.

The Enduring Voices project says it's important to preserve languages, especially those with no written materials, because of the cultural riches they hold: stories, songs, histories, knowledge about local plants and animals, and more.

Technology offers promising new ways to help preserve endangered languages, according to the NSF. Native speakers can be digitally recorded, and those recordings can be made available to linguists and native communities around the world via the Internet.

"By making this a permanent program, NSF is acknowledging both that these efforts have been successful and that much remains to be done," Whalen said.

National Science Foundation, "National Science Foundation Makes Documenting Endangered Languages Permanent Program." URL: (http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=110719)