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Many languages have disappeared so far, and another half of the total 7,000 languages spoken on Earth are expected to go extinct by 2100. Despite the bad news, there are attempts to rescue some, if not all, of these prospective “dead languages”. The National Geographic’s Enduring Voices project, which, as specified on the official website, aims to:
• “Understand the geographic dimensions of language distribution
• Determine how linguistic diversity is linked to biodiversity
• Bring wide attention to the issue of language loss”.
A truly interesting component consists in the dictionaries and audio entries available in many of the languages studies across the globe. Entering the Enduring Voices project’s website, you will have access to an interactive map with so-called “hotspots” – areas with many languages near extinction. You can choose any area you want, and you get information on the endangered languages in that hotspot. Each hotspot has a profile and some have even audio materials with samples of the endangered languages spoken in that area.
The Enduing Voices launched some Talking Dictionaries that are available to anyone interested in discovering various languages around the globe. This is indeed quite an accomplishment for the National Geographic and for all those involved in the Enduring Voices project.
Another special initiative, part of the same project, is The Genographic Project, “a multiyear research initiative led by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Dr. Spencer Wells. Dr. Wells and a team of renowned international scientists are using cutting-edge genetic and computational technologies to analyze historical patterns in DNA from participants around the world to better understand our human genetic roots.”
This project aims to gather and analyze data, involve the public in real-time in this project, and to further support research in this area. The researchers created a Geno 2.0 kit, a test that “examines a unique collection of nearly 150,000 DNA identifiers, called “markers,” that have been specifically selected to provide unprecedented ancestry-relevant information.”
Each person submits a DNA sample to their lab. The sample is analyzed and the maternal deep ancestry is revealed, while the men benefit as well from an analysis of the markers on the Y chromosome. Moreover, various regional affiliations of your ancestry are revealed after a thorough examination of 130,000 other ancestry-informative markers from the genome of each participant. Participants in this study will find out more about their roots, while the bigger view will be available on www.genographic.nationalgeographic.com and will provide a look into the big migration from Africa that started tens of thousands of years ago.
We invite you to find out more about this project from the official video.
