Global Digital Futures: The Politics of Language Online

This week, we are speaking to Marie Thaut on The Politics of Language Online. There are more than 7,000 languages on Earth, yet half of the world’s 7.6 billion people speak just 24 of them, and 95 percent speak just 400 of them. That leaves five percent of the global population spread across 6,600 different languages, hundreds of them now spoken by less than ten people. Marie is doing an MA in Language Documentation and Description and has completed a BA in Language Sciences at the Université Lumière Lyon II and Bachelor degrees in South Asian Studies & Urdu, and Teaching French as a Foreign Language, both at INALCO, the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations in France. Marie is also the Project Manager of the Sylheti Project at SOAS University of London, which started as a group of students interested in documenting the Sylheti language as spoken by the various generations of members of a local community in the London Borough of Camden.