Language Documentation: Past – Present – Future

Since 2000, the Volkswagen Foundation has allocated 28 million euros for linguistic projects in 71 regions on all continents. From June 5-7, 2013, more than 150 experts from around the world discussed the results of the initiative and an agenda for the future in Hanover.

Dr Felicity Meakins bei der Abschlusskonferenz zur Förderinitiative "Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen in Schloss Herrenhausen.
Dr Felicity Meakins bei der Abschlusskonferenz zur Förderinitiative "Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen in Schloss Herrenhausen. (Foto: Max Kesberger für VolkswagenStiftung)

According to extimates by UNESCO, about half of today's 6,500 languages will become extinct within the next one hundred years. "Large languages" such as Chinese, English, Spanish and Portuguese dominate the world. Even today, three-quarters of all other languages only present minute numbers of speakers that account for only one percent of humanity in total.

But if a language dies, this also means that a piece of the cultural diversity of our world dies with it. In 1999, the Volkswagen Foundation therefore initiated  the program "Documentation of Endangered Languages" (DobeS). Since then, some 100 languages from northeastern Siberia to the Marquesas Islands were documented with the support of the DobeS-program.

Picture Gallery: Language Documentation

DobeS-Karte (© Spektrum CP/anneandrea)
Sprachen, die im Rahmen der Förderinitiative "Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen" relevant wurden. (Grafik: Max-Planck-Institut für Psycholinguistik in Nijmegen)
Children speak their mother tongue ≠ Akhoe-Hai // om only within the family. The group is one of the last hunter-gatherer cultures. Researcher Thomas Widlok explains the electronic database to the speakers. (© ≠Akhoe-Hai//om Dobes Team)
A group of ≠ Akhoe-Hai // om native speakers are watching a video recording. Due to the low status of their native tongue, ≠ Akhoe-Hai / om are forced to switch to the regional lingua franca Oshiwambo, to Afrikaans or, more recently, to English. By documenting their language, the researchers hope not only to save linguistic cultural knowledge, but at the same time to show the specific dynamics of a loss of language that is being forced by marginalization and discrimination (© ≠Akhoe-Hai//om Dobes Team)
The scientist Katharina Haude documented the language of Movima in the Moxos region in Bolivia. She dealt with, for example, the terms of flora and fauna, but also the Catholic rites in which Movima is spoken preferably. (© Silke Beuse)
The tribe of the Awetí lies in the area of ​​the source rivers of the Xingú, one of the great inflows of the Amazon. Here are some twelve different Indian tribes settled with a comparable culture, but six completely different languages. The Awetí belongs to one of the largest language families in South America. However, the language has no closer relationship to other languages. (© DOBES-Aweti-Projekt / Rozilda Drude)
As part of a research network for the documentation of Brazilian Indian languages, the scientist Sebastian Drude dealt with the Awetí. Not only the traditions and myths were documented, but also - against the background of the loss of culture - the everyday life for the coming generations. (© DOBES-Aweti-Projekt / Sebastian Drude)
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The goal of the initiative was to make sure that testimony to these language cultures, which are mostly only passed on by word of mouth, is recorded for future generations. This is achieved in a digital archive of endangered languages, the DobeS Portal of the "Language Archive" in Nijmegen, Netherlands (dobes.mpi.nl).

Lecture at the final conference

Only a fraction of the more than 1,500 languages spoken in the South Seas today will survive the 21st century.

Linguist Ulrike Mosel from the University of Kiel, and Nicholas Evans, linguist at the Australian National University Canberra, illustrate the example of three South-Sea languages (the Australian Iwaidja, the Papuan-language Nen and the Oceanic Teop) as part of their projects on "Documentation of Threatened Languages".

Besuch bei Sprechern bedrohter Sprachen.

Bedrohte Sprachwelten: Sprachwelten in der Südsee

Ulrike Mosel, Universität Kiel, und Nicholas Evans, Australian National University Canberra

As part of the "Documentation of Endangered Languages​​" funding initiative, countless sound recordings of conversations, sentences and individual words were made. Some are here to listen:

Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen - Audiomitschnitt

Waima'a, Osttimor

Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen - Audiomitschnitt

Beaver, Kanada

Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen - Audiomitschnitt

Bora, Peru

Video on the Documentation of Endangered Languages

In the video portal sciencemovies.de, the anthropologist Soraya Hosni and her colleagues give an insight into their research on the Pacific island of Ambrym. Here, less than 1,000 people still speak the endangered language "Daakaka". More information under: "Who Can Still Speak Daakaka?"