Endangered languages / a living record
A language lives
between people.
A language becomes endangered when fewer people use it and fewer children learn it from the generations before them. Its future belongs first to the community that speaks it.
Open the language recordsLoss is not one moment.
Education, migration, discrimination and pressure to use a dominant language can interrupt transmission. Community teaching, recordings, books, media and everyday conversation can help create new routes forward.
Not a museum object.
A language is
- a joke that only works in its own rhythm
- a name for a plant, place or relationship
- instructions, songs and family histories
- a way for one generation to recognise another
The community is not a footnote.
Our language records should make a language easier to encounter without pretending LLH owns its story.
- 01
People before status labels
Speaker communities, their names and their present-day work belong at the centre of each record.
- 02
Sources readers can follow
Claims should lead back to community organisations, language projects and reliable research wherever possible.
- 03
No rescue narrative
Revitalisation is led by speakers and communities. Outside attention can support that work, but it does not take ownership of it.
- 04
A record that can change
Names, speaker estimates and revitalisation activity can change. Corrections and better sources should improve what we publish.
Five places to begin.
Each record opens in the LLH editorial library.
Make languages visible.
Keep listening to speakers.
Read the original LLH vision for bringing hundreds of endangered languages into a useful online collection.
The 500 languages online vision ↗