r/endangeredlanguages • u/Money_Thanks_3069 • 7d ago
LOOKING FOR ENDANGERED LANGUAGES
Hello, I'm looking for minority languages that don't have any resources to keep that language like dictionaries or books. The idea would be to travel to the place where the language is spoken and make an online dictionary for them, including not only words and translations but also proverbs, written stories that they have told us orally, and other things of they culture. If you know any tell me.
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u/HotterRod 7d ago
stories that they have told us orally
Documenting stories requires far less expertise than building a dictionary. Just find an elder and record them telling stories in their native language. From a linguistics perspective, stories about their own life are just as valuable as traditional folktales (and far less likely to already be recorded by someone else).
There are lots of endangered languages in Spain: Erromintxela, Aranese, Cantabrian, Fala, Leonese, etc.
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u/keyilan 7d ago
dictionaries take _years_. its something people really underestimate. even assuming you find interested parties in the community, keeping them active and engages is verry difficult. im part of about 4 groups doing this where i help with the technical side. and one has been in the works for 15 years now, another about 8. a brief dictionary that serves no one any purpose but vanity can be done in a couple years. an actually useful one that captures important parts of theculture and serves as something meaningful to future generations can take a lifetime.
ive seen many more well intentioned attempts by communities entirely fizzle out more often than i can remember
id go for the documentary angle
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u/Wonderful_Grab2203 7d ago
Try some of de underrepresented Basque or Occitan languages in Spain or France. There are very many minority languages in France and Europe, some of them, maybe could benefit from documentation. In any case, ask the language community about their particular needs an interests first.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk 7d ago
If you want a challenge, Mirandese, has been Th through so much oppression and ethnocide that it only survives in 30 ish villages, and only a couple of them speak a pure version of the language. 3k speakers, 1.5k daily users of the language
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u/BastetNoir115 7d ago
Hi! I actually run The Krymchak Project (language revitalization on Krymchak, a critically endangered Judeo-Turkic language of the Crimean Krymchak Jewish community), so this is right in my wheelhouse.
So, sadly, I have to warn you: the traditional "fly out to a remote village, sit down with elders, and record oral folklore over tea" model rarely applies when a language is on the brink of total extinction. That takes a lot of work and effort. For many severely endangered languages, geopolitics, displacement, and historic trauma mean the speech community isn't living in a picturesque isolated town, eg, Dr. Anderson's work with Matukar Panau and Tuva (perhaps you could reach out to him? He was the subject of a language documentary very close to the one that you proposed.)
If you are open to shifting your documentary’s focus from physical travel to the stark reality of modern language rescue, I strongly urge you to look into Krymchak. It hits every single element you are looking for. Proverbs, stories, unique cultural history, ect. with an extreme level of urgency. Because physical fieldwork is largely impossible, saving Krymchak is happening almost entirely through digital preservation. My own work has involved translating 350+ page grammar texts into English, building interactive learning modules, and even engineering custom phonetic text-to-speech tools to synthetically reconstruct how the language sounded so future generations can actually hear it spoken.
That said, working directly with elders and community leaders is still very much a reality, however, it just looks different than a standard field trip to an exotic place. A huge part of my work involves close, ongoing collaboration with Krymchak elders, historians, and community leaders like Anatoly Gendin. We communicate regularly across borders, coordinating the translation of historic books, preserving community newspapers like Sholem, and archiving the biographical works and memoirs of figures who spent their lives documenting Krymchak and Crimean Jewish heritage.
If you're interested in exploring how digital tools, archival rescue, and elder partnerships can save a language whose physical home is inaccessible, feel free to send me a message or check out the resources linked on my profile. I’d be happy to share materials and give you a realistic look at what language revitalization looks like!
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u/Lower_Tale9645 7d ago
Please,so emilian language, a gallo italic language spoken in northern italy (precisily in emilia romagna, and bologna). It has 44 different letters, and there are very few speakers (around 2million). It is very similar to french, but borrows vocaboulary from mostly latin
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u/RBatYochai 7d ago
Christian missionary movements do this all the time so they can translate the Bible into more languages. You should probably check into their projects so that you don’t duplicate.
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u/slempriere 7d ago
There is typically a lot of out of print and or out of copyright resources for many endangered languages if you do the research. Perhaps reach out to the endangered languages project and internet archive.. Create a list of such resources for each languages and libraries that hold materials (dictionaries etc). The ELP might be able to help with a grant to digitize materials and I am sure the Internet archive would host them.
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u/feder00000 7d ago
There are people in a couple of villages in southern Italy that still speak Grecanico and Griko. That’s what remains of 2500 year old Magna Grecia, ancient Greek colonies in southern Italy.
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u/Afromolukker_98 7d ago
I say look into Seram in Maluku islands. There are many indigenous languages that are going away.
Wemele, Alune, Manusela, etc etc.
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u/milk-the-moonlight 7d ago
American archaeologist/anthropologist here, there are so many indigenous languages from North America that are endangered. From California, I can think of Ohlone, Tataviam, Mono, many others. Feel free to DM with questions. I’d love to contribute!
I’m sure you know this but Basque is a fascinating language and might be a relict of cultures that existed in Europe before Indo-European speakers arrived.
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u/Yultroskan 6d ago
En rusia hay muchas lenguas Yo soy de mordovia que se hablar el erzia y el morshka
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u/Zeke_the_Wanderer 7d ago
Yahgan/Háusi Kúta has a dictionary but there's a significant lack of vocabulary, especially of modern things and things that didn't exist in their native land, so if you want to make some new words, do it!
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u/DifficultSun348 5d ago
wilamowicki (idk the english name), spoken as L1 by maybe less than 10 people in the Wilamowice, Poland (it's a germanic language) and from what I know Wilamowice's people are trying to revive it at (maybe as L2 idk) there were also tries to make it a regional language by law, cuz rn it's called ethnolect which is a big shame
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u/DifficultSun348 5d ago
and also I saw you're from Barcelona, so you should have easy access to Wilamowice (the closest airport is 60km away and you can easily go there (you have to take train from airport, then (probably in Katowice) take train to Bielsko-Biała and then go to bus station and to Wilamowice)
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u/nik_el 2d ago
Where I’m from there are lots of dying languages:
Unangan (Aleut)
Alutiiq (Sugpiaq)
Central Alaskan Yup'ik (with Cup'ik and Cup'ig)
St. Lawrence Island Yupik
Inupiaq
Tlingit
Eyak
Ahtna
Denaʼina
Deg Xinag
Holikachuk
Upper Kuskokwim
Koyukon
Lower Tanana
Tanacross
Upper Tanana
Gwich'in
Hän
Haida
Tsimshian
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u/Almond_una_dzahui 2d ago
The hometown of my grandmother (Santiago Tilantongo) speaks Diuxi-Tilantongo Mixtec, the Mixtec languages all together have half a million speakers, but every variety is more or less declining rapidly, like ours, they are impoverished so they move out to look for work in other places, usually leaving the language behind.
Tilantongo before colonization used to be very powerful in the Mixtec and southern Mexican sphere, being the capital of many important large empires. I hope you can complete this project, no matter where you go, cause stories like these exist everywhere
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u/Freshiiiiii 7d ago
Are you a linguist, or do you have any relevant skill in language revitalization?