In support of language preservation efforts around the world, Woolaroo was born: the app that uses machine learning to bring endangered languages to life, for people around the world to explore and for communities to use to teach future generations of language speakers.
Woolaroo Languges Interface
Using trees indigenous to the region where the languages are spoken to represent each dialect, the project is a digital woodland composed of language ‘species’ and their stories with the hope of supporting each one so it can continue to blossom year after year.
Woolaroo provides a translation for the word "tree" in Māori
Keep scrolling to discover the diverse species and languages, and launch the experiment here.
Kumeyaay/Diegueño
The Kumeyaay, also known by their historical Spanish name Diegueño, is a tribe of Indigenous peoples of the Americas who live at the northern border of Baja California in Mexico and the southern border of California in the United States.
Kumeyaay/Diegueño
Their Kumeyaay language belongs to the Yuman–Cochimí language family. There are fewer than 100 fluent speakers of Kumeyaay left.
Maya
In Mexico the Maya language has around 795, 499 speakers, mainly located in the South states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo and Campeche.
Maya
Modern Mayan languages descend from the Proto-Mayan language, thought to have been spoken at least 5,000 years ago.
Tepehua
Tepehua is a language cluster of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the Tepehua people.
Tepehua
The census of 2015 informed that the indigenous language Tepehua has around 10,427 speakers, mainly located in the Mexican states of Hidalgo, Puebla and Veracruz.
Vurës
There are approximately 130 languages spoken in Vanuatu, an island nation with a small population, making it the most linguistically diverse country in the world.
Vurës
Vurës is an Austronesian language spoken in the southern part of the island of Vōnō Lav (Vanua Lava) in northern Vanuatu, southwest Pacific.
Serravallese
Serravallese is non-standard dialect spoken in the town of Serravalle and its surroundings in the Republic of San Marino. It belongs to the Romagnol linguistic group, which is listed as definitively endangered according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger.
Potawatomi
Bodéwadmimwen is the indigenous language of the Potawatomi people, of which there are over 60,000 spread all over the United States & Canada.
Potawatomi
There are less than 5 first language speakers of Potawatomi remaining, and about 10-25 second language speakers.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit is a classical language of Asia and in the Indian subcontinent, and the classical texts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are in Sanskrit. Taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times, it is today taught widely in secondary schools and universities.
Yugambeh
Yugambeh is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Yugambeh people living in south-east Queensland and north-east New South Wales, now within the Logan City, Gold Coast, Scenic Rim, and Tweed City regions.
Yiddish
It is estimated that there are about a quarter million Yiddish speakers in the United States, about the same number in Israel, and another 100,000 or so in the rest of the world. That's a lot less than the peak number of Yiddish speakers— 11,000,000— on the eve of the Holocaust.
Tamazight
The Amazigh language is the indigenous language of Tamazgha region, which covers the entire North African and Saharan area. It is spoken with local variants by around 30 million Amazigh speakers, spread over ten countries.
Rapa Nui
Rapa Nui is the language spoken by the Rapa Nui people, who have Polynesian origins and live on Easter Island or Rapa Nui, Chile.
Rapa Nui
Rapa Nui has a population of 7,750, 40% of whom are native to the island. From this group, 60% can speak Rapa Nui. Although each island has its own variant, Polynesian languages share a common origin - they all come from Southeast Asia.
Nawat
Nawat, or Nahuat-Pipil, is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken in the western part of El Salvador. It is related to the Nahua languages spoken through Central America, and would have been one of the languages of wider communication used for trade, education and leadership before the arrival of the Spanish in 1500.
Māori
The Te Aka Māori Dictionary is a resource for learners of te reo Māori.
Māori
Created by the late John Moorfield, the online dictionary includes sample sentences, photographs of various species and people, sounds of birds and audio where you can hear native speakers pronouncing the words.
Calabrian Greek
Southern Italy is home to two endangered Greek varieties, Griko still spoken in a few villages in Salento (Puglia) and Calabrian Greek which survived in a few isolated mountain villages on the slopes of the Aspromonte Massif on the Ionian coast of the province of Reggio Calabria.
Sicilian
The Sicilian language is a Romance language native to Sicily. Although it is hard to determine an exact number of speakers, most estimates place the number of speakers to around 5,000,000. Similar languages are spoken in Southern Puglia and Calabria, however the exact name for this small language family is not standardised.
Louisiana Creole
Louisiana Creole (also known as Kouri Vini) is a French-based creole language spoken by far fewer than 10,000 people, mostly in the State of Louisiana, USA. The language emerged as the result of communication between French colonists and enslaved Africans. Louisiana Creole is grammatically distinct from the variety of French spoken in Louisiana, though the two languages share most of their vocabulary.
Yang Zhuang
Yang Zhuang is spoken mainly Guangxi, China, also in Vietnam's Cao Banh, Bac Can and Ha Giang provinces. The language has a long history of oral literature and antiphonal singing tradition —— ngyam sley (literally poem chanting). Its original writing system is sloey ndep (or sawndip in Standard Zhuang), developed based on Chinese characters in the Ming Dynasty (1368 －1644).
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