I wonder if there are any other efforts currently to record indigenous languages that are at risk - there must be some organizations willing to help arrest the rate at which these languages are failing/disappearing into the void - anyone know of any official/unofficial organized/unorganized projects like this? Its very interesting to think that we have the technology to save these languages, yet its not being applied - or is it?
Many efforts including most tribes doing it themselves. I do believe Steven Spielberg also had a project going. It is generally presented as language preservation.
I’ve read about specific instances, but in general it’s hard to get funding to arrange for linguists with the desire & expertise to go to the (often remote) places where such languages are spoken, for long enough to record them thoroughly enough to be useful. Gaining the trust & desire of the people, making recordings, figuring out phonology & grammar (which native speakers may not be consciously aware of), compiling dictionaries, sometimes inventing writing systems…it can be a big undertaking for each language. And a lot of people aren’t even convinced that language death is a problem.
There are whole subfields of language documentation, language revitalization, language reclamation, etc. There are conferences (ICLDC, Breath of Life, Language is Life just to mention three), journals (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc/), funding organizations, archives, PhD programs around the world…
