October 12, 2001

Linguists Collect Unpublished Information on Dying Languages for a Database

By BROCK READ

Five or six languages die every year, experts say. Within two centuries, 40 percent of the world's extant languages may be gone. These are sobering numbers for a linguist like Anthony Aristar, an associate professor at Wayne State University. "It really is a desperate situation now," he says. "If you lose your language, you've lost your culture."

Mr. Aristar heads E-MELD, the Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data, a project that aims to combat the growing problem of

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