80 down, 6,832 to go…
January 3rd, 2009
As someone who neither owns a mobile nor speaks a foreign language I can’t say that this question occurred to me, but it’s worth considering: can a language stay relevant if it isn’t used to send text messages on a cellphone?
Language advocates worry that the answer is no, and they are pushing to make more written languages available on cellphones.
[...]
[Companies...] that develop predictive text say they have created cellphone software for fewer than 80 of the world’s 6,912 languages cataloged by SIL International, a Dallas organization that works to preserve languages.
I’d imagine that there’s not a huge economic incentive for the companies developing predictive text packages to look beyond supporting a couple of hundred languages in ‘major markets’. Presumably this leaves an opening for open-source predictive text packages to make up some of the gaps in the market?
[Via Long Now Blog]
