Launch of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project
- Lisbet Rausing
Abstract
In this speech I want to thank many people. Let me start with my parents, Hans and Märit Rausing, whose exceptional generosity to and trust in their children has made this project possible. I also want to thank my co-trustee and husband, Peter Baldwin, together with Barry Supple, our advisor on academic donations, for their enthusiasm and wisdom in advising this project. And I want to thank everyone here at SOAS, for generously in giving the Endangered Languages Project a home. And lastly, I want to thank Lord Rothschild, for his friendship and for introducing us to Barry Supple, and more widely, to England.
One motto of the Endangered Languages Project is “What’s on His Mind? You May Never Know.” Indeed you may not. Take just one example: the twenty-odd indigenous languages still spoken in Amazonian Bolivia. There are five language families, and seven language isolates. Now the good news: two of them are only “potentially” endangered. The bad news is that eighteen of them are classified as “endangered,” “seriously endangered,” “moribund” (less than ten speakers, and that categorizes a quarter of these languages), and — remember these are very remote areas — “possibly extinct.”
Keywords: Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project, Endangered Languages Project, endangered languages, language documentation, SOAS
How to Cite:
Rausing, L., (2003) “Launch of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project”, Language Documentation and Description 1, 15-17. doi: https://doi.org/10.25894/ldd303
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