On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:48 AM, Thomas Goldammer thogol@googlemail.comwrote:
It won't be possible to save languages going extinct. Even if two or three people start writing a Wikipedia in such a language, it will die out as a spoken language, eventually, not later than it would without a Wikipedia. I think it's nice to have a corpus... Th.
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...and who knows when they will be revived as spoken languages, or at minimum scholastic interest. Aside from phrases, legalese, medicine, every philisophical and historic fields, and a small town in Switzerland, we don't speak Latin anymore (slightly tongue in cheek). Hebrew was almost lost. Language maintenance and revival, even by a few, is more than trivial in the goal of the movement. Some languages, such as the Native American Cherokee language, value Wiktionary far more than Wikipedia as an archival and educational tool in preserving their language. There has never been a concise dictionary for their language before, much less for free. Their leadership in tribal education are greatly motivated by this idea.
Never count a language out.