UNESCO stopped updating its atlas of endangered languages
UNESCO's atlas of endangered languages stopped updating in 2017, and the broader atlas meant to replace it is still not live.
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#language.
Every story tagged #language.
How Cornish came back after nearly dying out
Cornish had shrunk to a handful of speakers by the 1700s. A 1904 handbook began its revival, and it now has official UK backing under a European charter.
Can Japan's Ainu language outlive its last native speakers?
Ainu had about 15,000 speakers in 1870 and 350 by 1917. Japanese policy nearly ended it. Laws, classes, radio and now AI are trying to bring it back.
Cryptic setters build most clues to work two ways at once
A typical cryptic crossword clue is a straight definition and a wordplay puzzle folded into the same sentence, each pointing at the same answer.
Josef Čapek coined the word robot, not his brother Karel
Karel Čapek's 1921 play R.U.R. made the word 'robot' famous, but his brother Josef, a painter, is the one who coined it.
A style guide settles a newsroom's arguments before they start
A newsroom's style guide fixes spelling, capitals and terms in advance, so writers stop arguing mid-deadline and readers see one voice.
Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the revival of spoken Hebrew
For nearly 2,000 years Hebrew had no native speakers. Eliezer Ben Yehuda, and children taught in Hebrew-only classes, made it a mother tongue again.
A UK network is testing the old recipe for saving a language
A UK network asks if a language still needs a settled community, home use, job value and state funding. A UNESCO seminar urged cooperation and steady funding.
Switzerland's fourth language split into five mountain dialects
Switzerland has four national languages. In Graubünden's isolated valleys, Romansh split into five dialects, and it has since lost half its speakers.
A 1927 IBM gadget solved Nuremberg's language problem
A system used at a 1927 labour conference ended up carrying Nuremberg's war-crimes trial live, in four languages at once.