Because the majority of languages spoken and signed today only exists in social interaction, in daily use and in the minds of its speakers, a single generation that does not acquire it can mean its loss, a loss without a trace. With each language humanity loses, an expression of the creativity of the human mind is lost as well as the knowledges of its speaker and signer communities, their cosmologies, medicinal and botanical knowledge, social structures and practices.
Linguists called on the discipline not to watch its own object of study disappear, but to act and document these languages before it is too late. With the rise of documentary linguistics, the creation of the UNESCO altar of languages in danger it also became clear how limited our understanding of linguistic diversity is. Only a small number of languages have been systematically analysed, described and recorded, so we still know little about the breadth and limits of variation.
In this talk Mandana Seyfeddinipur will introduce the work of the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) and the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR), and show how this work contributes to realising Wilhelm von Humboldt’s vision of understanding human language through the full diversity of the world’s languages.