Since the first decade of this century, the collective evolution of the world’s spoken, written & from now on “orbital” languages may be viewed as the most powerful creation of all humankind. The current explosion of the “orbital linguasphere”, involving the worldwide interfacing of languages online, is transforming humankind into a de facto “transnational” organism.
The recognition of this evolving linguasphere as the equal heritage of every person reveals a fundamental ethical principle of today’s world:
• All useful knowledge, created by humankind through the medium of human languages, is by its nature collective & cumulative. It therefore constitutes the free & inalienable birthright of every person.
This principle has already been supported by recent public initiatives such as those of Wikipedia & of Google Translate. It corresponds also to the watchword adopted by l’Observatoire linguistique since 1990:
“In the galaxy of languages, the voice of each person is a star.”
The primary aim of l’Observatoire linguistique is to develop its website linguasphere.info as a free public information service on the world’s languages, including the expansion of its Linguasphere Register and of its linguasphere observatory in Carmarthenshire (Wales).
The Register is being enlarged to include a directory of the rural & urban communities of monolingual & plurilingual speakers of the world’s languages, with the aim of providing a tool in the collective piloting of our planet & our species, now a plurilingual planetary society.
Created at Quebec in 1983, & registered in Upper Normandy as a non-profit association from 1987, l’Observatoire linguistique is establishing its Linguasphere Foundation in Paris from August 2011. The mission of the Foundation is to provide a road-map to assist the strategic exploration & development of the world’s languages, including the deeper study of each of the 100 zones of reference of the Register, commencing in 2011 with: 00 Mandic, 10 Tamazic, 30 Taiwanic, 50 Celtic, 51 Romanic, 53 Slavic & 60 Inuitic.
Parallel to the expansion of the Register, the Linguasphere Fondation will pursue the following objectives, to be presented in Paris in October 2011:
the global survey of the urban linguasphere, the immense diaspora of the world’s languages spoken & networked among the cities & megacities of the planet (illustrated by the recent CILT survey of over 200 speech communities in London, using the geolinguistic framework of the Linguasphere Register);
the bilingual partnership of French and English, as a contribution to the construction of a plurilingual system of information & ethics (illustrated by the Observatoire’s bilingual exhibition “Languages of Liberty”, sponsored by Canada & presented at the Pompidou Centre, Paris in 1989);
the networking of important information through “nets” of related languages (illustrated by the strategic charts prepared in 2005 by l’Observatoire linguistique for WHO, covering the distribution of transnational nets of languages in Africa & Asia);
the transnational & plurilingual organisation of a “Concours Linguasphère” for the creation of non-national symbols to represent the world’s arterial languages (all languages with above 10 million voices) without using national flags;
the transnational & plurilingual organisation of “Pluriplanet” discussions on the informational & educational needs of globalised humankind.
This complex programme requires substantial support - material, practical & moral. In particular, the Foundation seeks to establish a voluntary network of linguasphere observers, ready to share the task of collecting & verifying data on the composition & dynamics of the languages of the world.
It is thanks to such a voluntary community that Wikipedia has become the single most extensive source of up-to-date information on the individual languages of the world, with the essential quality of being plurilingual, open-source & free. It is therefore very desirable that the network of linguasphere observers should overlap and interact with the wiki community around the world.
A complementary initiative has been undertaken by Google Translate, the first free software for assisting the worldwide flow of information among over fifty languages.
The Linguasphere Foundation will seek to contribute to and benefit from the evolution of these major plurilingual projects.