According to linguists, in a hundred years more than half of the 7,000 languages that exist on our planet will disappear. Google has proposed its Endangered Languages project to preserve rare languages.
Google has presented an international interactive Internet project, the goal of which is to save endangered languages. The project is being implemented on the website endangeredlanguages.com, which is presented in various languages, including Russian. Now this Internet resource contains materials on 3054 endangered languages, and the list continues to grow.
The project's website has an interactive map on which you can see the place of residence of native speakers of one or another rare language. Languages are represented by colored circles. Red stands for languages that are in serious danger, orange stands for endangered languages, green stands for rare languages with a consistently small number of speakers, and gray stands for languages whose state is currently unknown. The site contains a description of each, information about the prevalence, as well as audio and video recordings of speech of language carriers.
The languages retained by Google primarily include the languages of minority peoples around the world. In the era of the upcoming globalization, it is more and more difficult for small ethnic communities to preserve their language and culture. Small peoples are forced to assimilate, dissolving in a larger ethnic group and losing their cultural and linguistic uniqueness.
In North America, the Endangered Languages project includes the languages of the Native American tribes in Canada, Mexico and the United States. In Australia, the languages of the Australian aborigines are among the endangered, and in New Zealand - the language of the Maori people. Among the languages rescued by Google, there are many whose native speakers live in Russia: Votic, Khanty, Mansi, Permian Komi, West Mari, East Mari, Udmurt, Nenets, Altai, several Sami dialects and many others.
