The role of information technology in supporting minority and endangered languages

摘要

In what may well be a seminal article on the subject, Buszard-Welcher ( 2001 ) posed the question: ‘Can the web save my language?’ While intended rhetorically, this question clearly refl ects a growing enthusiasm for incorporating information technology (IT) into languagemaintenance efforts. As the World Wide Web and associated internet technologies increasingly become a part of all information technology solutions, we can restate this question as: ‘Can information technology save my language?’ This too, of course, must be interpreted rhetorically, for clearly technology alone cannot save a language any more than it can, say, write a book or build a car. But just as desktop publishing software can assist with book production, and robotic technology can help to build an automobile, information technology has important roles to play in supporting minority and endangered languages. The fundamental scalability of information technology can be thought of as a great equalizer which puts the powerful resources developed for major world languages into the hands of minority language communities. For example, technologies developed to digitally represent non-Latin writing system s such as those used in Chinese and Hindi – languages with hundreds of millions of speakers – can be employed effectively for minority language s, whose communities might not otherwise have the resources to develop such technologies independently. Further, information technology has the potential to create virtual language communities which bridge the gaps created by language shift in minority-language communities. In particular, information technology can bring together speakers and learners who are scattered over great distances. 19