“Facebook, YouTube and even texting will be the salvation of many of the world's endangered languages, scientists believe.  Of the 7,000 or so languages spoken on Earth today, about half are expected to be extinct by the century's end.  Globalisation is usually blamed, but some elements of the "modern world", especially digital technology, are pushing back against the tide.  North American tribes use social media to re-engage their young, for example. Tuvan, an indigenous tongue spoken by nomadic peoples in Siberia and Mongolia, even has an iPhone app to teach the pronunciation of words to new students” -- BBC News

This is amazing (if a little sad - but for the purposes of this post, we’re going to ignore that!)  “It's what I like to call the flipside of globalisation” says David Harrison (Associate Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College) - how true!  The fact that a little known language, spoken by under 0.5% of the Earth’s population, can be kept alive due to the power of technology is pretty incredible.

The example given in the article is that of the Tuvan language, spoken by nomadic Siberians and Mongolians - there is now an iPhone app to help teach the pronunciation and keep the tongue alive.  It’s an interesting analogy by David Harrison, that this is the ‘flipside of globalisation’ - more often than not, there is so much negative press surrounding social media and the overuse of technology; so it’s really encouraging to see such a positive article by the BBC.  Right...well I’m off to learn some Tuvan...wish me luck :)