The Endangered Languages Project

Language experts estimate that only 50% of the languages spoken today will still be spoken in 2100.  Languages are disappearing at an alarming rate. The Endangered Languages Project is an online resource to research, record, access and share information about endangered languages. It also encourages and supports working to document and fortify these threatened languages.

When a language is threatened, the loss of valuable scientific, social and cultural information is also threatened, very comparable to the loss of a species.  Every time a language dies, we lose quite a bit: the understanding of how humans relate to the world; scientific and medical knowledge; the expression of a community’s life and a vast cultural heritage. 

With the Endangered Languages Project, contributors can upload relevant information about dying languages to the website and reach many different people on many different levels.

While Google oversaw the development and launch of this project (and with its technology, recruited the services of organizations and individuals working to prevent language endangerment in various ways), but the goal, long term, is for it to be led by true linguists and leaders in the field of language conservation and preservation. The project will soon transition to others groups at Eastern Michigan University.  

Some of the endangered languages include Aragonese (a type of Catalan spoken in Eastern Aragon), Koro (spoken in the northeast mountains of India), Navajo and Southwestern Ojibwa (spoken in parts of the US and Canada).

Shanghainese

The Shanghai language or Shanghainese (上海閒話) is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai and the surrounding region.

Considered part of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and similar to other Wu Chinese dialects, Shanghainese is not easily understandable by Mandarin and Cantonese speakers. 

In the 1890s, due to Shanghai’s blossoming economy, Shanghainese had become an increasingly growing dialect of Wu Chinese. It continued to grow into the 1930s. In 1950, Mandarin became the official language of China.

With approximately 14 million speakers, Shanghainese contains only two tones (high and low) where Mandarin (which is what makes the Mandarin language extremely difficult) contains four different tones. Unlike Shanghainese, both Mandarin and Cantonese are both tonal contour languages where the distinguishing feature of the tones is their shifts in pitch such as rising, falling, dipping, or level. For example, if you say ma with the first tone, it means “mother” but if you say ma with the fourth tone, it means “horse”.

From 1992, Shanghainese use was discouraged in schools and so many children native to Shanghai can no longer speak Shanghainese. Shanghai's emergence as a cosmopolitan city further promoted Mandarin as the official language of business and services.

It is now thought that very few people under 60 years old can speak the original Shanghai dialect and many attempts are being made to preserve the language. Professor Qian Nairong is promoting the Shanghainese language and he has recently reminded people that, "the popularization of Mandarin doesn’t equal the ban of dialects. It doesn’t make Mandarin a more civilized language either. Promoting dialects is not a narrow-minded localism, as it has been labeled by some netizens.”

Here are some Shanghainese phrases (from Omniglot);

English	上海闲话 (Shanghainese)
Welcome	欢迎 (hueugnin)
Hello	侬好 (nong23 hao34) 大家好！(dâka-hô!) - hello everybody 饭吃过伐？ (ve23 qik3 gu5 va1?) - "have you eaten?" (common greeting)
How are you? Reply	侬好伐? (nong23 hao34 va?) 侬过得还好伐？ (non kûteq re-hôva?)
	我蛮好，谢谢 (ngû mhehô, jâja) 蛮好。侬呢？ (me51 hao34. nong2 nak4?)
Long time no see	长远勿看见侬 (ssang2 yyu4 vak2 koe5 ji3 nong1)
What's your name? My name is ...	请问尊姓大名？ (chînmen tzenxin-dâmin) 请问侬信啥？ (chînmen nong2 xin sa?)
	我信 ... (ngû xin ...) 我叫 ... (ngû ciô ..

The United States Foreign Service Institute and its language categorization

According to its official Facebook page, the U.S. Department of State: Foreign Service Institute “develops the men and women our nation requires to fulfill our leadership role in the world affairs and to defend U.S. interests.”

The FSI was founded on March 13, 1947, in compliance with the Foreign Service Act of 1946 passed by Congress. The Director of the Foreign Service Institute is equivalent in rank to an Assistant Secretary of State, and is appointed by the current Secretary of State.

United States Federal Government's primary training institution for officers and support personnel of the U.S. foreign affairs community, the FSI prepares American diplomats and other professionals to advance U.S. foreign affairs interests overseas and in Washington.

At the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, the FSI provides more than 600 courses in approximately 70 foreign languages to more than 100,000 enrollees a year from the State Department and more than 40 other government agencies and the military service branches.

Organized like a university, it consists of five schools: The School of Language Studies, the School of Applied Information Technology, The School of Leadership and Management, The School of Professional and Area Studies and The Transition Center. 

The FSI has sorted non-English languages into three categories based on the average time it takes an English speaker to achieve general proficiency/fluency in the language.

Category I languages : These languages are the most similar to English and the least difficult to learn, requiring anywhere from 23-24 weeks to learn (Spanish) to 30-36 weeks to learn (German).

Examples are:

French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Danish, Catalan, Dutch, Norwegian, German

Category II languages: These languages contain significant linguistic or culture differences from English requiring 44 or more weeks to learn.

Examples are:

Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Polish, Russian, Finnish (which is one of the more difficult Category II languages)

Category III languages: These languages are considered the most difficult languages to learn, requiring about 88 weeks of study with about half of that time studying in-country.

These languages are:
Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Taiwanese and Wu.