Living Dictionaries

Background
Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, a leading non-profit research organization based in the US with researchers located around the globe, stands at the intersection of linguistics and community activism. Our team has the capacity to launch technological solutions that help aspiring language activists and scholars alike. Since 2005, researchers from the Living Tongues Institute have conducted visits to more than one hundred endangered language communities in fifteen countries. Between 2019 and 2021, our team reached over 200 activists in 25+ countries through virtual events and online workshops.

Our researchers conduct documentary linguistic fieldwork, publish scientific papers, present at academic conferences, run digital training workshops to empower language activists, and collaborate with speakers to release web tools that benefit documentation and revitalization efforts. Our collaborators and teams have created more than 200 online Living Dictionaries to support threatened and low-resource languages. We have also provided free digital training sessions as well as technical and scientific support to many collaborators around the globe.

Watch our Living Dictionaries tutorials on YouTube (playlist: Tools for Endangered Languages)

With over 3,000 languages in danger of being lost before 2100, we know there is a strong need for comprehensive, free online tech tools that can assist language communities. A moral imperative of the 21st century is the decolonization and democratization of linguistic resources.

Online dictionaries should reflect the user communities, and citizen-linguists should have a primary role in developing them. Living Dictionaries provide a simple way to create high-quality multilingual documentation records. As activists in the field of endangered language documentation globally, we know that colonization has caused thousands of language communities to become disenfranchised. Most countries are not investing in resources needed to support minority languages. Through the Living Dictionaries platform, we aim to obviate institutionalized barriers that prevent equal status and equitable treatment of all forms of linguistic communication.

Project Overview
Living Dictionaries are collaborative multimedia web tools that can help languages survive for generations to come. Ideal for maintaining indigenous as well as diaspora languages, Living Dictionaries are never out-of-print, infinitely expandable resources. They go well beyond a static print dictionary, combining language data with digital audio recordings of speakers and other multimedia. Living Dictionaries address the urgent need to provide comprehensive, freely accessible tech tools for community activists and linguists engaged in grassroots conservation efforts and revitalization programs around the world.

The Living Dictionaries web platform now houses public and private dictionaries for over 200 minority and endangered languages from around the globe, and is growing rapidly. Over a hundred of these dictionaries were built remotely during the Covid-19 era thanks to Living Tongues Institute’s online Zoom webinars and free community collaboration opportunities. The intended audience of this web app is inclusive, diverse and multilingual. Living Dictionary managers and contributors may create new entries, edit entries, add images, upload audio files, as well as record audio directly into the dictionaries using a microphone on their smartphone or laptop. Video recording on the app will soon be available as well.

Sign up for an upcoming Zoom webinar in 2022

The web platform is a work-in-progress and has a long-term goal of helping to safeguard 3,000+ endangered languages by building dictionaries for them over the next 30+ years. All linguistic and cultural data stored on the platform belongs to the language communities themselves, and dictionary managers can use a convenient “Export” feature to download their text data and multimedia at any time. The Living Tongues team offers guidance, technical support and free training for all citizen-linguists working on the platform. We prioritize supporting dictionaries that are stewarded by community members who wish to see their languages thrive online.

With your help, we can make our software available for any language community that wishes to create their own Living Dictionary. In doing so, we can help protect language diversity world-wide.

Donate today and make an impact!

Funds go towards supporting:

  • the development of new features such as video integration and offline mode
  • tech support to communities
  • translating the platform’s interface into dozens of languages
  • training a new generation of citizen-linguists to build dictionaries

Thanks for your support!