
Endangered Languages Project - sndean
http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
======
Iv
Let me share something related I learned about recently.

Mansa Musa was a king of Mali. He was the richest man alive during the 14th
century, possibly the richest of history. He owned about half of the world's
production of gold.

He is mostly known through the pilgrimage he did to Mecca, where he
distributed gifts in such a generous fashion that he possibly crashed the
Egyptian economy. He is also known for ordering the building of the
Djinguereber Mosque.

Thing is, we only know him through the eyes of foreigners. Either because of
his pilgrimage or because of the european architects he brought. We only know
the things that involve foreigners.

I would like to know more about his predecessor, who, according to a single
Arab source citing Musa, transmitted the crown as he was decided to sail west
on the pacific to make a trip around the world. Unlike Colombus, he had
calculated the trip duration correctly and allegedly led an expedition of 3000
(!) boats. They were never heard from again. However, some pre-columbian
historians suspect they have found some possible places where trade occurred
in south America.

Why have I never heard about it? Why don't we have more sources about it? Then
I remembered another piece of news I have read a few years ago. My country
(France) was involved in a conflict in Mali recently. I followed it a bit. I
remember reading an article about a heroic museum director who, upon seeing
islamist fighters approaching and knowing what they do to historical artifacts
[1] decided to disregard all typical precaution, loaded all he could in a
pick-up truck and drove like crazy to the safe territories.

A lot of what he saved were manuscripts from Mansa Musa's period and the next
century. Most were undigitized and untranslated.

This is why we need to save knowledge of ancient languages. Can you imagine
the numerous epic stories we are missing? Maybe along those burnt books are
the discussions of the western expedition. Maybe similar expeditions are
sketched out. Maybe they give insights of civilizations or trading routes we
did not know exist.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/28/mali-
timbuktu-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/28/mali-timbuktu-
library-ancient-manuscripts)

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I think this points more to the need to preserve source material. Even if the
language is known, if the source material is gone, the information that was in
the source material may be gone forever. On the other hand, with enough source
material, languages that have no living speaker( and in fact, have had no
living speakers for centuries) have been successfully decoded (for example
ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics, ancient Sumerian, etc).

~~~
Iv
Yes, you need the source material, but the things you can infer from it alone
are less numerous.

With no living speakers, you can map writing to meanings but not to phonetics,
which are one of the main sources to trace language lines.

Is the city of "Ass'n" in one language the city of "Hassim" in another? Are
two sources talking about the same person or are the names different?

Is this text poetry? Is this word here for the rhyme or does it have a
specific meaning?

------
gotodengo
I have a particular interest in the languages of Mozambique. Many of these
languages are heavily used in their local areas, but endangered by lack of
acceptance in schools, lack of media in the language, and lack of resources
(Possibly one of the reasons Moz is blank in the linked map).

I've found most of the best resources for actual text in smaller languages
comes from religious translations, which can be a bit outdated but usually
offer a fair amount of text. And beyond that I've gotten lucky with a few
google drives and other repos mostly containing educational packets put
together by various volunteer and missionary groups.

Unfortunately I'm not sure the copyright on many of those. I think that's why
most of the language projects[1] I've seen wind up being mainly repos of
titles of papers published on various languages. Which can be hit or miss for
educational purposes.

[1] From the linked site I mainly poked at a couple African languages and
didn't see much beyond the paper titles. There may be others with much more
info.

~~~
asark
Seems like a good candidate for something to throw the way of the Internet
Archive.

~~~
gotodengo
That's a good idea. I'll have to make a few uploads there.

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garysahota93
This is really cool! Back when I was in college, I tried to raise awareness of
all the languages spoken in my hometown (Fresno, CA)... We even shot a video
about it!

FresnoLanguageProject.com

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DannyB2
If a language dies because nobody uses it, what is the point of trying to keep
it alive?

Maybe I'm dense, but it seems to me that the world might be simpler with fewer
spoken / written languages rather than more?

LEVEL I BASIC is pretty endangered, but who cares at this point?

~~~
sterlind
I'm not native, but I'm learning Lushootseed (language of the Puget Sound
Salish peoples) to help keep it alive, after it technically fell into
extinction.

Language preservation is huge for native culture and identity, and it helps
prevent assimilation (one of the reasons why the language and others like it
were forcibly stamped out by the boarding schools which abducted Indian
children from their parents.) There are even projects to teach Lushootseed to
inmates in tribal jails, as a way of reconnecting prisoners with their culture
and heritage. Iirc studies also show that depression and suicide are reduced
if the native language stays alive.

There's a lot of debate and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has fallen out of favor
with contemporary linguists, but I also feel like different languages encode
different thought patterns. Lushootseed is nothing like English, and there are
words specifically for tribal customs, religion and viewpoints that can't
translate.

Overall, I see languages as living creatures. Extinction of minority languages
or cultures is, to me, like species disappearing. Even if the biome doesn't
suffer (and it can in both cases - Indians knew how to take care of the land
before whites showed up), something sacred is lost v

~~~
senorsmile
I really wanted to do this for a very closely related language to lushootseed
about 10 years ago when I had an apartment in one of the tribal areas that
were 50% non tribal. I looked into resources and programs, but there didn't
seem to be a lot of resources or actual interest by the people group. I
eventually moved onto other things (probably Akkadian or Dutch at that time),
but this desire still lives somewhere inside me.

Would you care to share how you've done the learning you've done and any
assimilation you've been able to do?

~~~
senorsmile
actually, I just looked up the language, and it's technically one of the
dialects of lushootseed; so same language continuum as whatever you're
learning more than likely.

