From the Wikitongues.org website: “If you’re worried about the future of your language, this toolkit is a great place to start. In partnership with the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, we have identified a set of best practices for launching your own language revitalization.”
Toolkit Introduction
This Language Sustainability Toolkit was created as a collaborative project between Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and Wikitongues. Living Tongues Institute is one of the world’s leading research organizations focused on documenting endangered languages. The Institute conducts linguistic fieldwork, releases scientific papers, runs digital training workshops to empower language activists, and collaborates with speakers to create online language learning and preservation tools such as Talking Dictionaries.
Wikitongues is a global volunteer movement that expands access to language revitalization. The organization helps speakers document and promote their languages online, safeguarding them for the next generation. Contributors to Wikitongues record and caption oral histories in video, raise awareness about language sustainability in their communities, and help support special projects.
Both organizations share the goal of sustaining and revitalizing languages for future generations of speakers. With those common aspirations in mind, both organizations pooled their human resources together to create this toolkit for language sustainability. It is a roadmap that helps identify where languages are on the endangerment continuum and what strategies and approaches are available to help revitalize their languages. It also provides examples of success stories that may inspire endangered language activists around the world.
