Digital cultural heritage and revitalization of endangered Finno-Ugric languages
Anisia Katinskaia, Roman Yangarber · Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Publications · 2018
The preservation of linguistic diversity has long been recognized as a crucial, integral part of supporting our cultural heritage. Yet many “minority” languages — those that lack official state status — are in decline, many severely endangered. We present a prototype system aimed at “heritage” speakers of endangered Finno-Ugric languages. Heritage speakers are people who have heard the language used by the older generations while they were growing up, and who possess a considerable passive competency — well beyond the “beginner” level, — but are lacking on active fluency. Our system is based on natural language processing and artificial intelligence. It assists the learners by allowing them to learn from arbitrary texts of their choice, and by creating exercises that engage them in active production of language — rather than in passive memorization of material. Continuous automatic assessment helps guide the learner toward improved fluency. We believe that providing such AI-based tools will help bring these languages to the forefront of the modern digital age, raise prestige, and encourage the younger generations to become involved in reversal of language decline.