THE phrase “use it or lose it” applies to few things more forcefully than to obscure languages. A tongue that is not spoken will shrivel into extinction. If it is lucky, it may be preserved in a specialist lexicographer’s dictionary in the way that a dried specimen of a vanished butterfly lingers in a museum cabinet. If it is unlucky, it will disappear for ever into the memory hole that is unwritten history.

This is not a fate which appeals to K. David Harrison, of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. But Dr Harrison is an optimist. He believes information technology—something seen by many people as a threat to linguistic diversity—might actually turn out to be its saviour.

On the face of things, there are few more powerful forces for the extermination of languages than IT. The internet, in particular, looks like a threat. It spreads imperious, widely spoken tongues like English at the expense of more modest, local ones, as an introduced species of animal or plant drives out less robust natives. Dr Harrison, however, is helping speakers of threatened languages use IT to fight back.

He gave details of four projects, in India, Oregon, Papua New Guinea and Siberia. In some, remaining speakers of the local language numbered in the hundreds when the project began. In one, but a single individual truly knew the tongue.

The first task in each case was to create a talking dictionary that could be put onto the web, to which speakers and would-be speakers of the language then had access. This job itself illuminated the quirky way that technology spreads. More.

See: The Economist