Digital Language Death
Open accessAbstract
Of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken today, some 2,500 are generally considered endangered. Here we argue that this consensus figure vastly underestimates the danger of digital language death, in that less than 5% of all languages can still ascend to the digital realm. We present evidence of a massive die-off caused by the digital divide.
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Western linguists or scholars, such as Kornai (2013), can assume that some Indigenous languages are under-resourced due to a lack of textual speech data or standardized language forms.
“Western linguists or scholars, such as Kornai (2013), can assume that some Indigenous languages are under-resourced due to a lack of textual speech data or standardized language forms.”
From Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization (2021) · cites this paper as Kornai, 2013
The Materials section (page unavailable) says standardized spelling is needed to collect larger text corpora, and the Methods section describes how difficult it is for an under-resourced language to develop tools that enforce a unified literary standard. The Discussion also gives Kanuri as an example with very little online text. The paper does not specifically attribute under-resourcing to a lack of speech data, and its discussion concerns digital resources and use rather than Indigenous languages as a group. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredMany technology-enabled and self-determined ILR initiatives during the Web 2.0 and 3.0 eras have been centering community needs rather than externally defined or set goals, such as grammatical fluency or a digitally thriving status.
“Many technology-enabled and self-determined ILR initiatives during the Web 2.0 and 3.0 eras have been centering community needs rather than externally defined or set goals, such as grammatical fluency (Leonard, 2017) or a digitally “thriving status” (Kornai, 2013, p. 1).”
From Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization (2021) · cites this paper as Kornai, 2013
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Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization
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- Authors
- Kornai, A.
- Affiliations
- HUN-REN Institute for Computer Science and Control (HU)
- Corresponding author
- Kornai, András
- ORCID
- Kornai, András
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-10-22
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- e77056
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3805564
- OpenAlex
- W1964045210
- Cited by
- 210
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 1
- FWCI
- 28.37
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- SZTAKI Publication Repository (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Radboud Universiteit
- Hungarian Scientific Research Fund
- Magyar Tudományos Akadémia
- Universität des Saarlandes
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Linguistic and Sociocultural Studies
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Multilingual Education and Policy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Studies
- Keywords
- endangered languages, digital divide, language loss
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Linguistics
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