Title: Wikitongues: Preserving Language Diversity and Empowering Communities through Language Documentation
Speaker: Tochi Precious, Rohini Lakshané
Abstract: Did you know that half the world's languages could disappear in a generation, erasing half of all human knowledge? Did you also know that around the world, people are fighting back?

Language is a fundamental part of cultural heritage. When a language disappears, a wealth of knowledge, traditions, and cultural practices can be lost. By safeguarding and revitalizing languages, we can preserve cultural diversity and maintain a connection to our collective past. As people in the Open Knowledge ecosystem, Language is a carrier of knowledge, and many languages contain valuable information about local ecosystems, medicinal practices, and traditional knowledge. By documenting languages, we can preserve this knowledge for future generations. Overall, safeguarding, revitalizing, and documenting languages is critical for preserving cultural heritage, promoting diversity and tolerance, strengthening community identity, preserving knowledge, and supporting cognitive development. The aim of this session is to showcase how Wikitongues safeguards language documentation, expands access to mother-tongue resources, and directly supports language revitalization projects thereby bringing more language diversity to the movement. One of the speakers will also shine a light on her experience of working with an indigenous community that speaks multiple dialects of the same indigenous language and is spread across a vast geographical area.
Presented at: Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, 2023-08-18 03:35 to 4:05 UTC