Poly, the Platform to Teach You Every Language in the World
Wikitongues founders Daniel Bogre Udell and Frederico Andrade have embraced an ambitious mission to document — and teach — every language in the world. And by “every language,” they really mean every language, including those estimated 3,000+ languages that are unwritten, the world’s 300+ sign languages, and even constructed languages like Esperanto and Lojban.
“Children are taught how many countries there are, and [are] taught the regions of their own country,” Bogre Udell notes. “No one’s taught that there are 7,000 languages. We still see in the media today that linguistic discrimination is still pretty commonplace.”
In fall 2012, Bogre Udell began video-recording short oral histories of his neighbors in Brooklyn, asking his subjects to speak in their native languages. He quickly acquired a diverse range of videos which he began posting to a YouTube channel. Somewhat to his surprise, he found the channel quickly attracted a global audience.
Wikitongues eventually incorporated as a nonprofit, and has coordinated a careful effort to document language via short videos, with a primary focus placed on endangered languages.
Documentation is a critical step in the revitalization process of a language, but the path from documentation to producing new speakers is seldom direct. So, the pair started brainstorming ideas on how to make the step from being a language documentation initiative to a language revitalization initiative.
Eventually, they envisioned a solution that was accessible, user-friendly, and would be of use to people who hoped to document their language and pass it on to new speakers. Work on a dictionary-creation project, Poly, began in late 2014.
Poly is oriented towards the creation of “books,” which can comprise vocabulary, phrases, and expressions between an arbitrary language pair. The interface is simple, responsive, and easy to use.
Initiatives like Wikitongues are vital in the race to revitalize endangered languages, as developing digital language resources for a language can help ensure the next generation has access to it.
However, Bogre Udell found limited enthusiasm for engaging with languages of fewer speakers. “We had a conversation with someone at Google.org and they were very explicit that languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers were not of interest.”
