Android Phone Application designed for Linguistic Fieldwork to help preserve, maintain, and save endangered languages.
There are approximately 6,000 human languages on Earth today. Over half of them have the potential to die out in the next 100 years. With that, we will lose a lot of valuable knowledge (stories, cultures, linguistic phenomena, ... the list is very long). This does not need to be lost and the ability to document and store examples of a language help preserve it and teach it to younger generations. This application is designed such that people can do this easily ... without any formal linguistics training.
Normally Linguistic Documentation is hard:
- Difficult Task
- Expensive
- Stakeholders
- Data Ownership
- Natural and Appropriate Settings
- Remote Locations
This app tries to get around most of these issues.
Android was chosen as the initial mobile platform as it is predicted to make up 80% of smart phone use in developing markets such as Asia and Africa (http://investorplace.com/2012/02/will-google-make-the-most-of-android-in-emerging-markets-goog-ssnlf-nok/)