Enduring voices

Sue came across another great National Geographic project for this week’s web corner called Enduring Voices. The project seeks to document those languages that are disappearing through disuse or death of a culture. They estimate that we lose a language about every 14 days! From the project website:

Under the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project, the team will journey to meet with last speakers, listen to their stories, and document their languages with film, pictures, and audio to help communities preserve their knowledge of species, landscapes, and traditions before they vanish.

While NatGeo is supporting this effort it is Drs Gregory Anderson and David Harrison who are the linguists who are behind the project and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. In addition to the NatGeo project they are also the heart of the 2008 film “The Linguists” which follows them in some of their early work and which is availalble from the film’s website. If you have seen the film, please leave a comment since people seem to rave about it.