Hey, lesser known languages! Help others to learn you!
Many languages around the world aren't yet on Google Translate, and though they might have a Wikipedia (though most don't), how can we get to the point to be able to read the wiki ourselves?
I like a world that would allow me or anyone else who would like to learn whatever language we want to to be able to do so. But right now we are far from it.
Try learning Aymara (Aymar Aru) which is natively spoken by nearly two million speakers in three countries and is an official language in one of them. Or better yet, try learning Malagasy who has several times the speakers of Ayamara. Since I have been trying to learn Malagasy I will focus this post on Malagasy. But almost every time I mention Malagasy I just want you to know that you can replace that language with almost any other under represented language you can think of.
Though I would love to do a bit change this situation I am talking about here, I can't do so much without being a non-native speaker. As such I would hope that the below will offer some guidance to help others who might like to help foreigners learn their language. I want to give native speakers of these languages who'd like to see the influence of their language grow in the international community three places that they can help out by creating material for those who are serious about learning Malagasy, or even those who are just curious, could go. But before going any further I want to sink one word in:
Yep. Collaboration is how someone who is at home, who is not a teacher, who has a day job (or night job as it may be) will be able to add to the corpus of their language out there for non-natives to use. You can do as much or as little as you want, but every little bit helps. And I can give you some great places to start:
Forvo is a very ambitious project that aims to get every word from every language recorded. It is an excellent platform for someone who doesn't have a lot of time but would like to help out some. I have tried several languages out of curiosity but the language that I am trying to make a serious stab at quite honestly, Malagasy, as of today is looking very, very weak on Forvo. If you go to Malagasy's language page you see that there are only a measly 18 Malagasy speakers there who have recorded only 54 words (three per?) and even then at least one of the recorded words I have listened to was not even the same word that was written. This is a place that speakers of lesser known languages could make a great impact on helping foreigners lot learn their language by simply checking the words that are pronounced and voting them up or down or even re-recording them. You can help even more by adding words and recording the yet unrecorded words.
Remember, Forvo is only for individual words. This is not for longer constructs. For those you need...
What Forvo is for the pronunciation of individual words RhinoSpike is spoken sentences, phrases, passages, paragraphs, etc. RhinoSpike is really good for developing listening comprehension skills. How is works is that someone who is a student of a particular language will enter a sentence, phrase, passage, paragraph, etc., that they'd like to be able to download. How it works is that a native of this language will record the request and you will be notified. You can listen to the recording online or download it for use with your iPod, flashcards, etc. It is a great service but, again, for example, there are no Malagasy or Aymar Aru speakers using it. In fact I have requested them to add Malagasy this morning, which I am sure they will do as they have added Volapük on my request in the past.
Tatoeba could be loosely described as a "sentence dictionary". This project is an attempt to link all languages by meanings from sentences rather than individual words. Lesser known language speakers, Malagasy for instance, can help in a few ways here. Firstly, they can check sentences in other languages they might know, like French, English, Swahili, etc., then translate them into Malagasy there online. Also, Malagasy speakers could actually add the sentences in Malagasy directly. You can also make recordings of the sentences, correct incorrect sentences, etc. But Tatoeba brings the language together in a way that others don't. It shows you how the language should actually be used, which is something that learners of lesser known languages desperately need. And like RhinoSpike, I have recently made a request for Malagasy to be added here and I expect this will be done very soon.
All three of the above services are collaborative. They are free for their users and they encourage native speakers to help their languages to be known in other communities. I think that the reason that Malagasy, which I have mentioned so often in this post, isn't used much on these has more to do with the fact that these services are unknown to the general population other than anything else. I say this because as of today, the Malagasy Wikipedia is the 67th largest out of 159 wikipedias with 37,857 articles, which is probably around where it should be and the Malagasy Wiktionary is the third largest wiktionary in the world, with 1,522,499 pages, only smaller than English and French and ahead of Chinese! I know that if Malagasy can build the world's third largest wiktionary that with a little effort these same collaborators can give some really strong boosts to Forvo, RhinoSpike and Tatoeba. It would do lots for those of us out here looking for online materials to help us learn a language like "teny gasy"!
