Saving Endangered Languages

Have you ever heard Choctaw? It’s not surprising if you haven’t. The Native American language is spoken by only about 9,000 people. Other languages, like the southern Chilean language Yaghan, have only one speaker left.

Major languages like English, Chinese, and Spanish are spoken worldwide. Indigenous languages, however, are spoken by small communities in a specific place or region. More than 2,500 indigenous languages are at risk of going extinct. Some of these languages have only a handful of speakers left.

Have you ever heard someone speak Choctaw? It’s not surprising if you haven’t. Only about 9,000 people speak the Native American language. Other languages, like the southern Chilean language Yaghan, have only one speaker left.

Major languages like English, Chinese, and Spanish are spoken worldwide. But other languages are spoken only by small communities in a specific place or region. These are called indigenous languages. More than 2,500 indigenous languages are at risk of disappearing. Some of them have only a few speakers left.

Daniel Udell’s project WikiTongues could change that. After learning about indigenous languages, he became fascinated with how to help revive them. “As I got more interested in language diversity, I became curious about being able to hear someone speak and learn about their culture, but I couldn’t find much,” Udell says. WikiTongues invites speakers of different languages to record themselves talking and submit the video to its website. In 2013, Udell uploaded the first video to the site, which featured a Mayan language from Guatemala.

Today, WikiTongues has about 900 submissions in 500 different languages from around the world. It’s also a partner with UNESCO’s International Year of Indigenous Languages, a 2019 initiative that celebrates language diversity.

A project called WikiTongues could change that. Daniel Udell started it after learning about indigenous languages. Udell wondered how he could help keep these languages alive. “As I got more interested in language diversity, I became curious about being able to hear someone speak and learn about their culture,” says Udell. “But I couldn’t find much.”

The WikiTongues website invites speakers of different languages to record themselves talking and submit the video. Udell uploaded the first video to the site in 2013. It featured a person speaking a Mayan language from Guatemala. 

Today, WikiTongues has about 900 videos. They show people speaking 500 different languages from around the world. This year, WikiTongues is working with the international organization UNESCO to celebrate language diversity. UNESCO declared 2019 the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

According to UNESCO, every two weeks an indigenous language dies, or loses its last known speaker. “Most instances of saving a language involve documenting it,” Udell says. This is because many at-risk languages are spoken by minority populations who are not taught their native language in schools. By creating this language library, he hopes to provide spoken examples people can learn from.

Ultimately, language is a way to keep traditions and cultures alive, whether it’s Navajo, Hebrew, or Cornish (see Language Comeback). “When we’re talking about languages, we’re talking about cultures,” Udell says.

Every two weeks an indigenous language dies, according to UNESCO. That means the last known speaker of the language passes away. But capturing a language on video can help save it, Udell says. Many languages at risk of disappearing are spoken by minority populations. Their native language isn’t taught in schools. But WikiTongues is like a language library, says Udell. People can learn from the spoken examples preserved on the website.

Whether people speak Navajo, Hebrew, or Cornish, language is a way to keep traditions alive, says Udell. “When we’re talking about languages, we’re talking about cultures,” he says.