About the episode
Romeyka is a thousands of years old version of Greek. The language is only spoken by a few, mainly old, people in northeastern Turkey and has no written variant, which means that the language is now in danger of disappearing forever.
Scientists really want to prevent that. The language is seen as a treasure trove full of knowledge about the past.
They want to use speech for this crowdsourcinga new sports application in which anyone can capture voice fragments from rare languages.
Not only should this make it possible to preserve these languages, it will hopefully also ultimately provide a natural learning environment. A course based on the everyday use of the language, in audio form, rather than based on a standardized book.
To draw attention to this new application, the creator, a Harvard researcher, also shares the latest discoveries about Romeyka in an exhibition. His most important discovery is that the language is not a daughter of modern Greek, but a sister. A second line, which has a different origin.
The researcher, himself a speaker of Aramaic, has now collected approximately 29 gigabites of audio and video data. All in good consultation with local population groups. And hopefully, thanks to this new application, a lot of audio will soon be added.
You can read more about his work and most recent discoveries about Greek language history here: Last chance to record archaic Greek language ‘heading for extinction’
2024-04-07 09:01:56
#Researchers #rushing #capture #endangered #variant #Greek
