Folium: BBC News – Digital tools ‘to save languages’

Folium: BBC News - Digital tools 'to save languages'

Folium: BBC News - Digital tools 'to save languages'

Folium: Digital Tools To Save Languages

Languages are living things. They live, they adapt, and they change at a constant pace. Languages also die, and the danger in letting languages die is the perspective that dies with it. I’ve mentioned how language is a perspective on life and how our words shape how we shape our reality.

I can accept the idea that things change in life, people change, and their systems of communication must change with them. However, an effort should be made to preserve these perspectives. We have the technology to do this, and this BBC article is a great example of how academia is making this happen.

The advent of web technologies, and portable devices like the iPhone/Android make it possible to preserve and archive these languages around the world. What used to take months with anthropologists with tape recorders now can take minutes with mobile devices and a satellite phone. The more we connect, the more we grow!

The study of languages is the study of people! Know languages and know people!