Tag: language

Everyone Speaks Text Message

For many tiny, endangered languages, digital technology has become a lifeline.

The only way to ensure that languages don’t die is to see them being taken up by new generations. That’s lead many to conclude that with so many of the cool things being invented in one of  the top ten languages of the world, the other thousands of languages that currently exist are destined to disappear. After all, if your kids don’t take up your language, that’s a sure sign that it’s not going to last very long. But, if some cool technologies could be programmed in that language which the kids will be desperate to use, then perhaps the language can survive.

The word N'ko written in the N'ko alphabet

So the story of N’Ko, a standard writing system for Mande languages, a group of related languages spoken by about 35 million people in West Africa. It was invented in 1949 but, because of the difficulty of building typewriters for N’Ko (the alphabet was created from scratch by a man called Solomani Kante), it seemed destined to be used only by a small elite.

Then came the internet and it looks like N’Ko could be the means by which those languages will continue to exist.

Read more about N’Ko and the way the internet is saving languages: Everyone Speaks Text Message – NYTimes.com.

Anglo-Saxon – The History of English (1/10)

Here’s an interesting presentation by the OU. They’ve borrowed the style from the RSA Animate series with a voice-over provided by Ian Anderson to produce a 10-minute mini-lecture on the history of the English language.

This is becoming something of a sub-genre of online talks/lectures. There’s no doubt it’s engaging. Just like good accompanying music it adds something. However, it would be interesting to see if the information is:
a. understood in the same way with/without the animation
b. if the information is retained more effectively with/without the animation