We sometimes underestimate the importance of language, especially when swimming in the ubiquitous sea of English. Language is bound tightly with identity, and when you imagine a language going the way of the Dodo, it is scary to think what else is lost with it. Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org, has launched the Endangered Language project, a website devoted to preserving languages that are close to dying out.

Google says on the site that “experts estimate that only 50% of the languages that are alive today will be spoken by the year 2100.” The nature of language means that it is always changing, and as such there will always be languages that go extinct, it has been happening since the very start. But it seems in the time we live, languages are dying out faster and faster. The site, launched early on Thursday,

Puts [Google’s] technology at the service of the organizations and individuals working to confront the language endangerment by documenting, preserving and teaching them.

The site has an interactive map with clickable dots indicating the region and languages that are endangered. From here samples and videos can be watched, uploaded, shared, and stored for posterity. Google does not see itself as running the project itself but rather:

To be led by true experts in the field of language preservation. As such, oversight of the project will soon transition to First Peoples’ Cultural Council and The Institute for Language Information and Technology (The Linguist List) at Eastern Michigan University.

It is a fascinating site, and after a quick broswe around I was listening to Koro, a Sino-Tibetan language with around a 1 000 speakers left, and Aragonese: an Indo-European language with less than 10 000 speakers. The site is still in its infancy and obviously needs far more content within each of the languages to be successful. But one can easily imagine it becoming an important tool, not only for posterity but for teaching these languages in the future.

Project managers Clara Rivera Rodriguez and Jason Rissman say that “[b]y bridging independent efforts from around the world we hope to make an important advancement in confronting language endangerment.” Well, I hope so too.

[Source: Mashable]