Humanity is facing a "crisis of language extinction," says K. David Harrison from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. To address that, he has been building "talking dictionaries" of threatened languages and working with the National Geographic Society under their Enduring Voices program.

"Some people see technology as a threat to the existence of small languages," he said in an interview before his presentation at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver. "But the really savvy language communities are using technology to sustain themselves, to expand their reach...to survive."

Harrison's presentation came at a symposium on Friday 17 February, "Endangered and Minority Languages Crossing the Digital Divide."

In the interview, Harrison discusses work to preserve the Siletz Dee-Ni language, an indigenous tongue in Oregon that counts only one remaining fluent speaker. He also discussed efforts to preserve languages in Chile and Papua New Guinea.

Joining Harrison at a briefing for reporters were:

--Margaret Noori, lecturer, Native American Studies Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan;

--Leena Evic, executive director at the Pirurvik Centre for Inuit Language, Culture, and Wellbeing in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada; and

--Alfred “Bud” Lane III, language and traditional arts specialist, Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Siletz, Oregon (by telephone).