New Media for Endangered Languages

Abstract

This chapter presents three technologies essential to enabling any language in the digital domain: language identifiers (ISO 639-3), Unicode (including fonts and keyboards), and the building of corpora to enable natural language processing. Just a few major languages of the world are well-enabled for use with electronically mediated communication. Another few hundred languages are arguably on their way to being well-enabled, if for market reasons alone. For all the remaining languages of the world, inclusion in the digital domain remains a distant possibility, and one that likely requires sustained interest, attention, and resources on the part of the language community itself. The good news is that the same technologies that enable the more widespread languages can also enable the less widespread, and even endangered ones, and bootstrapping is possible for all of them. The examples and resources described in this chapter can serve as inspiration and guidance in getting started.