The World Language Centre is a project and initiative of the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute of Foreign Languages at the University of Iceland in Reykjavík.
Webpage: http://www2.hi.is/id/1022572
The Concept
The idea of World Language Centre grew out of Voices of the World the Danish initiative that Vigdís Finnbogadóttir has been actively promoting. The initiative has furthermore received the support of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Voices of the World is a project, which focuses on gathering visual specimens of all living languages of the world, many of whom are endangered. The rich cultural heritage of the world is to a large extent preserved in languages and with every disappearing language world culture suffers an irreplaceable loss. Therefore, the world community needs to act and act now to both save and preserve the many languages in danger, in addition to enable research on all living languages in a global context. We need to look beyond the boundaries of our national or tribal languages and be able to access other languages and knowledge about them. The World Language Centre is an idea to enable this cross fertilisation of cultures through comparison and study.
The Objectives
The World Language Centre has two interlinked objectives.
The first is to provide an open database for the languages of the world, to host an archive where scholars and the general public can access samples and information about the languages of the world. ...
The second objective is to create a home for the languages of the world, a place where scholars can meet for consultation, research and discussions. ...
- From the webpage
