Mission impossible: Google's Endangered Language Project

The eighth schedule of the Indian Constitution has a list of 22 Indian languages. These languages are seen as important enough to be recognised by the Indian Constitution, and candidates for the civil services can even give their exams in these languages. But to recognise only 22 languages in country like India is a bit unfair, where there are thousands of languages spoken, with some even in danger of dying out completely.

Is it possible for anyone in India to name every single language that is spoken? Languages in India are important markers, of unity for a community that speaks them, of division between communities. Clashes over language are unknown. But while the hegemonic ones like Hindi, Tamil or Bengali get all the attention, the languages of the tribal groups remain unknown. Koro is one such language spoken by no more than 4000 people in the mountains of Northeast India.

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It might seem inevitable that with the digital age, languages spoken by groups in distant parts might die out. But this might not be true, thanks to Google’s latest project, called the Endangered Languages, which hopes to digitally archive some languages of the world that could soon become extinct. The website EndangeredLanguages.com is premised on the argument that nearly 50 percent of the world’s languages face the threat of extinction. Out of the 7000 or so odd languages that exist, some 3500 are dying.

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So what is the Endangered Language project all about? Google.org is working in collaboration with a number of groups to help set up a website where these endangered languages will be documented, preserved and taught.

The website will allow users to access the information on endangered languages as well as give them access to some samples being provided by partners.Multi-media will also play an important role in keep the language experience alive as users who have videos, audios of these endangered languages can submit them online as well.

Community-sharing is also encouraged as users can join some Google Groups for certain languages and share studies, ideas, etc.

Google oversaw the development and launch of this project, but , soon the oversight of the project will be handed over to First Peoples’ Cultural Council and The Institute for Language Information and Technology (The Linguist List) at Eastern Michigan University in coordination with the Advisory Committee.

Google’s project is an ambitious idea. But while digital archives can go a long way to keep the memory of a language alive, there is also the uncomfortable truth that some groups that speak these languages could die out and with them the language itself.