= [Quote]
Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle has taught computing -- through the Gaelic language
-- at the Institute Sabhal Mór Ostaig, on the Island of Skye, in
Scotland. He has also maintained the bilingual (English, Gaelic)
college website, which is the main site worldwide with information on
Scottish Gaelic. He wrote in May 2001: "Students do everything by
computer, use Gaelic spell-checking, a Gaelic online terminology
database. There are more hits on our website. There is more use of
sound. Gaelic radio (both Scottish and Irish) is now available
continuously worldwide via the internet. A major project has been the
translation of the Opera web browser into Gaelic -- the first software
of this size available in Gaelic."
= The Ethnologue
Published by SIL International (SIL was initially known as the Summer
Institute of Linguistics), "The Ethnologue: Languages of the World" is
an encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,909
known living languages. The 16th edition was published in 2009, in
print and on the web. The Ethnologue has been an active research
project for more than fifty years. Thousands of linguists have
contributed to the Ethnologue worldwide. A new edition is published
approximately every four years.
The Ethnologue was founded in 1951 by Richard Pittman, who was
motivated by the desire to share information on language development
needs around the world with his colleagues at SIL International as well
as with other language researchers. Richard Pittman was the editor of
the 1st to 7th editions (1951-1969).
Barbara Grimes was the editor of the 8th to 14th editions (1971-2000).
She wrote in January 2000: "It is a catalog of the languages of the
world, with information about where they are spoken, an estimate of the
number of speakers, what language family they are in, alternate names,
names of dialects, other socio-linguistic and demographic information,
dates of published Bibles, a name index, a language family index, and
language maps." In 1971, information was expanded from primarily
minority languages to encompass all known languages of the world.
Between 1967 and 1973, she completed an in-depth revision of the
information on Africa, the Americas, the Pacific, and a few countries
of Asia. During her years as editor, the number of identified languages
grew from 4,493 to 6,809. The information recorded on each language
expanded so that the published work more than tripled in size.
In 2000, Raymond Gordon Jr. became the third editor of the Ethnologue
and produced the 15th edition (2005). Shortly after the publication of
the 15th edition, Paul Lewis became the editor, responsible for general
oversight and research policy. He installed Conrad Hurd as managing
editor, responsible for operations and database management, and Raymond
Gordon as senior research editor, leading a team of regional and
language-family focused research editors.
In the Introduction of its latest edition (16th edition, 2009), the
Ethnologue defines a language as such: "How one chooses to define a
language depends on the purposes one has in identifying that language
as distinct from another. Some base their definition on purely
linguistic grounds. Others recognize that social, cultural, or
political factors must also be taken into account. In addition,
speakers themselves often have their own perspectives on what makes a
particular language uniquely theirs. Those are frequently related to
issues of heritage and identity much more than to the linguistic
features of the language(s) in question."
As explained in the Introduction, one feature of the database since its
inception has been a system of three-letter language identifiers, that
appeared in the publication itself from the 10th edition (1984)
onwards. "In 1998, the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO) adopted ISO 639-2, a standard for three-letter language
identifiers. The standard is based on a convergence of ISO 639-1 (an
earlier standard for two-letter language identifiers adopted in 1988)
and of ANSI Z39.53 (also known as the MARC language codes, a set of
three-letter identifiers developed within the library community and
adopted as an American National Standard in 1987). The ISO 639-2
standard was insufficient for many purposes since it has identifiers
for fewer than 400 individual languages. Thus in 2002, ISO TC37/SC2
formally invited SIL International to prepare a new standard that would
reconcile the complete set of codes used in the Ethnologue with the
codes already in use in the earlier ISO standard. In addition, codes
developed by Linguist List to handle ancient and constructed languages
were to be incorporated. The result, which was officially approved by
the subscribing national standards bodies in 2006 and published in
2007, is a standard named ISO 639-3 that provides standardized three-
letter codes for identifying nearly 7,500 languages (ISO 2007). SIL
International was named as the registration authority for the ISO 639-3
standard inventory of language identifiers and administers the annual
cycle for changes and updates. This edition of Ethnologue is the second
to use the ISO 639-3 language identifiers. In the fifteenth edition
they had the status of Draft International Standard. In this edition
they are based on the standard as originally adopted plus the 2006
series of adopted change requests (released August 2007) and the 2007
series of adopted change requests (released January 2008). Information
about the ISO 639-3 standard and procedures for requesting additions,
deletions, and other modifications to the ISO 639-3 inventory of
identified languages can be found at the ISO 639-3 website:
http://www.sil.org/iso639-3."
= Experiences
Caoimhín Ó Donnaíle has taught computing - through the Gaelic language
- at the Institute Sabhal Mór Ostaig, on the Island of Skye, in
Scotland. He has also maintained the bilingual (English, Gaelic)
college website, which is the main site worldwide with information on
Scottish Gaelic, as well as the bilingual webpage European Minority
Languages, a list of minority languages by alphabetic order and by
language family. He wrote in May 2001: "There has been a great
expansion in the use of information technology in our college. Far more
computers, more computing staff, flat screens. Students do everything
by computer, use Gaelic spell-checking, and a Gaelic online terminology
database. There are more hits on our website. There is more use of
sound. Gaelic radio (both Scottish and Irish) is now available
continuously worldwide via the internet. A major project has been the
translation of the Opera web browser into Gaelic -- the first software
of this size available in Gaelic."
How about the internet and endangered languages? "I would emphasize the
point that as regards the future of endangered languages, the internet
speeds everything up. If people don't care about preserving languages,
the internet and accompanying globalization will greatly speed their
demise. If people do care about preserving them, the internet will be a
tremendous help."
Guy Antoine is the founder of Windows on Haiti, a reference website
about Haitian culture. He wrote in November 1999: "In Windows on Haiti,
the primary language of the site is English, but one will equally find
a center of lively discussion conducted in 'Kreyòl'. In addition, one
will find documents related to Haiti in French, in the old colonial
Creole, and I am open to publishing others in Spanish and other
languages. I do not offer any sort of translation, but multilingualism
is alive and well at the site, and I predict that this will
increasingly become the norm throughout the web."
Guy added in June 2001: "Kreyòl is the only national language of Haiti,
and one of its two official languages, the other being French. It is
hardly a minority language in the Caribbean context, since it is spoken
by eight to ten million people. (...) I have taken the promotion of
Kreyòl as a personal cause, since that language is the strongest of
bonds uniting all Haitians, in spite of a small but disproportionately
influential Haitian elite's disdainful attitude to adopting standards
for the writing of Kreyòl and supporting the publication of books and
official communications in that language. For instance, there was
recently a two-week book event in Haiti's Capital and it was promoted
as 'Livres en Folie' ('A mad feast for books'). Some 500 books from
Haitian authors were on display, among which one could find perhaps 20
written in Kreyòl. This is within the context of France's major push to
celebrate Francophony among its former colonies. This plays rather well
in Haiti, but directly at the expense of Creolophony. What I have
created in response to those attitudes are two discussion forums on my
website, Windows on Haiti, held exclusively in Kreyòl. One is for
general discussions on just about everything but obviously more focused
on Haiti's current socio-political problems. The other is reserved only
to debates of writing standards for Kreyòl. Those debates have been
quite spirited and have met with the participation of a number of
linguistic experts. The uniqueness of these forums is their non-
academic nature."
Robert Beard, co-founder of the yourDictionary.com portal, wrote in
January 2000: "While English still dominates the web, the growth of
monolingual non-English websites is gaining strength with the various
solutions to the font problems. Languages that are endangered are
primarily languages without writing systems at all (only 1/3 of the
world's 6,000+ languages have writing systems). I still do not see the
web contributing to the loss of language identity and still suspect it
may, in the long run, contribute to strengthening it. More and more
Native Americans, for example, are contacting linguists, asking them to
write grammars of their language and help them put up dictionaries. For
these people, the web is an affordable boon for cultural expression."