Inky Gibbens is on a mission to save the world's dying languages - by taking them online. "My maternal grandparents come from Siberia and they spoke an endangered language called Buryat," says Gibbens, 31. "The only way I could learn the language was by going to Siberia." Inspired by her experience, in August 2016 she founded Tribalingual to let anyone use simple online tools to keep struggling languages alive.
The need is acute: the United Nations lists 2,465 languages as endangered and, since 1950, at least 230 have become extinct. Based in Cambridge, Tribalingual offers ten-week courses to give people a grounding in five languages: Ainu (Japan); Mongolian; Quechua (South America); Gangte (northeast India); and Greko (southern Italy).
Gibbens, who is supported by the University of Cambridge's Centre for Social Innovation, hopes Tribalingual customers will have a handle on their chosen language after the course. "Ten weeks is a good amount of time for somebody to learn a basic conversation," she says.
Ainu, Japan: Once widespread, it's now only spoken on one island.
Quechua, South America: The main language of the Incas, it's still widely used.
Greko, Italy: A Greek variety now only spoken by about 300 people.
For £299 (£199 for students), Tribalingual supplies course materials such as text, audio and video, with native speakers providing a weekly Skype call. An app's also in the works.
Read more: Languages are dying, but is the internet to blame?
Tribalingual isn't the only attempt to track and revive endangered languages. Unesco has collected data and provides an atlas of those at risk from extinction. This information can be used to help struggling languages: in November 2015, when the number of Cornish speakers in the UK fell to 400, Cornwall Council spent £180,000 to promote its use.
For Gibbens, a forgotten language means losing more than just a way of communicating. "We're trying to preserve cultures through the medium of language," she says. "It's a kind of gateway to understanding different world views. We want a world that is diverse and colourful."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
