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Google: Introducing The Endangered Languages Project

58 points by PaulMcCartney 14y ago

jskopek 14y ago
Every endangered language we can categorize is an insight into our more primitive selves. Languages reflects so much of a society's culture, and so many of these languages come from isolated areas that have had little contact with the developed world.
mercuryrising 14y ago
Here's a better link to the actual project. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ This is really awesome. One of my good friends is a linguist, and when I first started learning about languages, I couldn't figure out what all the hype was about. Yeah languages are dying... So what? A single language where I could communicate with anyone in the world would be the best, wouldn't it? A language is like a toolbox for idea transmission, we want to share what we see on the inside, and language is one of our best ways to do it. It's the most universal, it's one of the first things we learn, and it has the ability to incite the most powerful imagery (books vs. a movie). Say a language is the average mean of a group of people's ability to speak to one another. These people were likely geographically isolated and their language developed on it's own, they saw things in the world and described them with their language. Their culture, their ideas, their perceptions of the world are all encoded into their language. When all the native speakers of a language die, we lose more than just the language, we lose the insights that the language carried, a language that was likely crafted over many thousands of years. Take for instance color blindness. Attempt to explain to someone with color blindness what colors look like. It will never work, they will never experience what you experience, but they can share your experience through your description of colors, they can imagine what the world could be like if you give a good enough description. We lose analogies for human thoughts when languages die, and if we ever want to begin to understand what a consciousness is, preserving these analogies is an absolute necessity. We could wonder for millions of years whether or not a language could ever come to be that didn't have counting words, but luckily we found the Piranha[1] that do just that [2]. It's like all the species we're losing in the rain forests, what if the cure for cancer was present in one of the now-extinct mushrooms? What if we never could find the cure for cancer because we just didn't have that mushroom? It likely won't happen for cancer, but for consciousness we need every piece of information that we can get. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... [2] http://phys.org/news/2012-02-math-words.html http://phys.org/news/2012-02-math-words.html
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- paganel 14y ago
  > We lose analogies for human thoughts when languages die Exactly. For all it's worth, once I started reading John le Carré or Raymond Chandler novels in original English (I'm a native Romanian speaker) I could never go back to reading them in translation, not that the translations were bad, they weren't, but the texts just didn't have the same feeling. And when you start reading (and partially comprehending) poetry written in a foreign language is a whole different ball-game.
  - mayanksinghal 14y ago
    > For all it's worth, once I started reading John le Carré or Raymond Chandler novels in original English (I'm a native Romanian speaker) I could never go back to reading them in translation, not that the translations were bad, they weren't, but the texts just didn't have the same feeling. I don't think this argumentation is correct. There are two things that you are assuming - (1) The authors would not have been capable of expressing their view with similar levels of 'feel' if they were not born to an English Speaking language hence imparting the 'feel' to English and not just to the authors (2) You are not feeling the 'feel' more intensely because you are not a native English speaker hence the language and wordplay are less obvious to you as those who speak English primarily. Secondly as beautiful as the description of multiple languages it may be in GP, I fail to see why won't people adapt the one single language to have extensions - words that describe feelings, emotions and expressions not available originally. Any modern language is, in fact, not the same as it was say a 100 years ago. It has been modified to add newly invented objects like for Computers and Televisions, or newly discovered ones like Idli and Dosa. I think that our desire of saving languages is not pragmatic but aesthetic.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      > 1) The authors would not have been capable of expressing their view with similar levels of 'feel' if they were not born to an English Speaking language hence imparting the 'feel' to English and not just to the authors No, paganel is saying that translating from one language to another results in less 'feel', not that 'feel' depends on English. > You are not feeling the 'feel' more intensely because you are not a native English speaker hence the language and wordplay are less obvious to you as those who speak English primarily. The parent comment says that the original English is better, not worse. Thus, there is more 'feel' in the original than in translation.
cmelbye 14y ago
Semi-unrelated, am I the only one astounded at how effective Google was in making the Blogger reading experience as terrible as it could be? http://cl.ly/HaPS http://cl.ly/HaPS Weird layouts, loading screens, horrible gesture-based interface for touch devices, etc. I miss the static blogs.
- fdej 14y ago
  Blogger doesn't load at all with JS disabled (noscript). Insane.
- plorkyeran 14y ago
  My favorite new-blogger experience was trying to scroll to the right on a page which was too wide. No horizontal scroll bar, middle-click pan didn't work, and right-arrow switched to the next post. They've done an amazing job of screwing things up that I didn't think could even be screwed up.
munchor 14y ago
For a minute there, I thought it was about endangered programming languages. Well, this is far better, looks like a very interesting project that I would like to follow close.
wulczer 14y ago
That sweet map in the background was made by Vizzuality, keep on rocking! (no affiliation on my side apart from knowing them and being a fan).
- javisantana 14y ago
  thanks man, actually the complete site was made by vizzuality
Irishsteve 14y ago
Let's not forget Microsoft and supporting all their products in languages such as Irish and Welsh. P.s Welsh isn't on the map of endangered languages (oops).
- cycojesus 14y ago
  And yet there is no Vietnamese version of Windows (or any other Microsoft major product as far as I can tell.)
  - zokier 14y ago
    http://www.microsoft.com/vi-vn/download/details.aspx?id=17036 http://www.microsoft.com/vi-vn/download/details.aspx?id=1703... Maybe not complete retail version, but still something.
- DanBC 14y ago
  About 300,000 people consider themselves to be fluent speakers of Welsh, and it's taught (without option) in Welsh schools, and laws exist to ensure translation of official documents and signs into Welsh and English.
- rmc 14y ago
  Welsh is doing pretty well as a language, compared to other celtic languages in that area.
chrischen 14y ago
It seems like they're missing some Chinese dialects which are mutually unintelligible from mandarin. Maybe they aren't endangered, but China only teaches mandarin in schools.
xavijam 14y ago
Great initiative
klez 14y ago
They missed Venetan[1]. It's considered vulnerable by UNESCO[2], but it's not even recognized as a language by the Italian governement (just by the Venetan region). As almost all pre-unitarian Italic languages, it's not being thought, degraded as 'dialect' and is being discouraged as an idiom for ignorants. There's a very ample discussion to make about these issues here in Italy. If anyone wants to know more, I'll try to answer. Here or in a more appropriate venue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetan_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetan_language [2]http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/language-id-1021.html http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/la...
- falling 14y ago
  That is not entirely true. However, I think the issue with defending the language is that its more fervent supporters are using it as a confrontational political leverage instead of just plain culture.
splicer 14y ago
There's a language around my hometown that only about 250 people speak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwala The community is doing a great job at keeping their language alive. A few of my friends took Kwak'wala classes in middle/high school. Here's what the language sounds like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNECt4ViNjY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNECt4ViNjY

58 points by PaulMcCartney 14y ago

Every endangered language we can categorize is an insight into our more primitive selves. Languages reflects so much of a society's culture, and so many of these languages come from isolated areas that have had little contact with the developed world.

mercuryrising 14y ago

Here's a better link to the actual project. http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/ This is really awesome. One of my good friends is a linguist, and when I first started learning about languages, I couldn't figure out what all the hype was about. Yeah languages are dying... So what? A single language where I could communicate with anyone in the world would be the best, wouldn't it? A language is like a toolbox for idea transmission, we want to share what we see on the inside, and language is one of our best ways to do it. It's the most universal, it's one of the first things we learn, and it has the ability to incite the most powerful imagery (books vs. a movie). Say a language is the average mean of a group of people's ability to speak to one another. These people were likely geographically isolated and their language developed on it's own, they saw things in the world and described them with their language. Their culture, their ideas, their perceptions of the world are all encoded into their language. When all the native speakers of a language die, we lose more than just the language, we lose the insights that the language carried, a language that was likely crafted over many thousands of years. Take for instance color blindness. Attempt to explain to someone with color blindness what colors look like. It will never work, they will never experience what you experience, but they can share your experience through your description of colors, they can imagine what the world could be like if you give a good enough description. We lose analogies for human thoughts when languages die, and if we ever want to begin to understand what a consciousness is, preserving these analogies is an absolute necessity. We could wonder for millions of years whether or not a language could ever come to be that didn't have counting words, but luckily we found the Piranha[1] that do just that [2]. It's like all the species we're losing in the rain forests, what if the cure for cancer was present in one of the now-extinct mushrooms? What if we never could find the cure for cancer because we just didn't have that mushroom? It likely won't happen for cancer, but for consciousness we need every piece of information that we can get. [1] http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_colapinto http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... [2] http://phys.org/news/2012-02-math-words.html http://phys.org/news/2012-02-math-words.html

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
paganel 14y ago
> We lose analogies for human thoughts when languages die Exactly. For all it's worth, once I started reading John le Carré or Raymond Chandler novels in original English (I'm a native Romanian speaker) I could never go back to reading them in translation, not that the translations were bad, they weren't, but the texts just didn't have the same feeling. And when you start reading (and partially comprehending) poetry written in a foreign language is a whole different ball-game.
- mayanksinghal 14y ago
  > For all it's worth, once I started reading John le Carré or Raymond Chandler novels in original English (I'm a native Romanian speaker) I could never go back to reading them in translation, not that the translations were bad, they weren't, but the texts just didn't have the same feeling. I don't think this argumentation is correct. There are two things that you are assuming - (1) The authors would not have been capable of expressing their view with similar levels of 'feel' if they were not born to an English Speaking language hence imparting the 'feel' to English and not just to the authors (2) You are not feeling the 'feel' more intensely because you are not a native English speaker hence the language and wordplay are less obvious to you as those who speak English primarily. Secondly as beautiful as the description of multiple languages it may be in GP, I fail to see why won't people adapt the one single language to have extensions - words that describe feelings, emotions and expressions not available originally. Any modern language is, in fact, not the same as it was say a 100 years ago. It has been modified to add newly invented objects like for Computers and Televisions, or newly discovered ones like Idli and Dosa. I think that our desire of saving languages is not pragmatic but aesthetic.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > 1) The authors would not have been capable of expressing their view with similar levels of 'feel' if they were not born to an English Speaking language hence imparting the 'feel' to English and not just to the authors No, paganel is saying that translating from one language to another results in less 'feel', not that 'feel' depends on English. > You are not feeling the 'feel' more intensely because you are not a native English speaker hence the language and wordplay are less obvious to you as those who speak English primarily. The parent comment says that the original English is better, not worse. Thus, there is more 'feel' in the original than in translation.

cmelbye 14y ago

Semi-unrelated, am I the only one astounded at how effective Google was in making the Blogger reading experience as terrible as it could be? http://cl.ly/HaPS http://cl.ly/HaPS Weird layouts, loading screens, horrible gesture-based interface for touch devices, etc. I miss the static blogs.

fdej 14y ago
Blogger doesn't load at all with JS disabled (noscript). Insane.
plorkyeran 14y ago
My favorite new-blogger experience was trying to scroll to the right on a page which was too wide. No horizontal scroll bar, middle-click pan didn't work, and right-arrow switched to the next post. They've done an amazing job of screwing things up that I didn't think could even be screwed up.

munchor 14y ago

For a minute there, I thought it was about endangered programming languages. Well, this is far better, looks like a very interesting project that I would like to follow close.

wulczer 14y ago

That sweet map in the background was made by Vizzuality, keep on rocking! (no affiliation on my side apart from knowing them and being a fan).

javisantana 14y ago
thanks man, actually the complete site was made by vizzuality

Irishsteve 14y ago

Let's not forget Microsoft and supporting all their products in languages such as Irish and Welsh. P.s Welsh isn't on the map of endangered languages (oops).

cycojesus 14y ago
And yet there is no Vietnamese version of Windows (or any other Microsoft major product as far as I can tell.)
- zokier 14y ago
  http://www.microsoft.com/vi-vn/download/details.aspx?id=17036 http://www.microsoft.com/vi-vn/download/details.aspx?id=1703... Maybe not complete retail version, but still something.
DanBC 14y ago
About 300,000 people consider themselves to be fluent speakers of Welsh, and it's taught (without option) in Welsh schools, and laws exist to ensure translation of official documents and signs into Welsh and English.
rmc 14y ago
Welsh is doing pretty well as a language, compared to other celtic languages in that area.

chrischen 14y ago

It seems like they're missing some Chinese dialects which are mutually unintelligible from mandarin. Maybe they aren't endangered, but China only teaches mandarin in schools.

xavijam 14y ago

Great initiative

klez 14y ago

They missed Venetan[1]. It's considered vulnerable by UNESCO[2], but it's not even recognized as a language by the Italian governement (just by the Venetan region). As almost all pre-unitarian Italic languages, it's not being thought, degraded as 'dialect' and is being discouraged as an idiom for ignorants. There's a very ample discussion to make about these issues here in Italy. If anyone wants to know more, I'll try to answer. Here or in a more appropriate venue. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetan_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetan_language [2]http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/language-id-1021.html http://www.unesco.org/culture/languages-atlas/en/atlasmap/la...

falling 14y ago
That is not entirely true. However, I think the issue with defending the language is that its more fervent supporters are using it as a confrontational political leverage instead of just plain culture.

splicer 14y ago

There's a language around my hometown that only about 250 people speak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwakwala The community is doing a great job at keeping their language alive. A few of my friends took Kwak'wala classes in middle/high school. Here's what the language sounds like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNECt4ViNjY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNECt4ViNjY