Communicating the World in Three Inches: The Rosetta Project
Works to Build Archive of 1,000 Languag
The Rosetta Project is a worldwide endeavor to produce an
updated version of the famous Rosetta Stone from 100 BC. Some of
Napoleon's troops discovered the Rosetta Stone in Rashid, Egypt,
in 1799. They found inscribed upon the granite slab three
parallel translations of a certain decree in Egyptian
Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. Using the Greek text, experts
of the 1800s were able to decipher the previously elusive
Hieroglyphic script.
Language specialists and native speakers from around the globe
are joining forces to build an archive of 1,000 languages to be
micro-etched onto 27,000 data pages on the Rosetta Disk, a 3''
nickel disk with a life expectancy of 2,000 years. The Rosetta
Project is collecting the following information for every
language:
* Detailed Descriptions: Origins, histories and other relevant
statistics. * Genesis Translations: Chapters 1-3. * Glossed
Vernacular Texts: Cultural stories contrasting with the Genesis
text accompanied by grammatical analysis. * Orthographies:
Written letters/symbols as well as pronunciation keys. * Swadesh
Word Lists: Essential lists of common words. * Inventories of
Phenomes: Fundamental sound units. * Audio Files: Spoken samples
with transcriptions.
The Long Now Foundation began the Rosetta Project with funding
from the Lazy Eight Foundation to address the disconcerting
prediction that 50-90% of the world's languages will disappear
within the next century with little documentation. The project's
mission is to provide a definitive resource for comparative
linguistic research and education, to preserve a meaningful
survey of human languages for future decipherment and recovery
of lost languages as well as to create an aesthetic object
representative of the world's linguistic diversity.
''We hope the process of creating a new global Rosetta will help
draw attention to the tragedy of language extinction as well as
speed up the work to preserve what we have left of this critical
manifestation of the human intellect,'' declared the leaders the
effort.
Currently, the archive contains 760 total languages, 938 unique
texts, 5,371 individual text pages and 58 volunteer
contributors. If you are a language specialist, The Rosetta
Project needs your contribution! The completed Rosetta archive
will be available to the public via an intricately-designed
nickel disk, a gargantuan reference book and the online archive
at http://www.rosettaproject.org.
Let Vulcan Creative Labs communicate you and your company to the
world. We do not offer micro-etching just yet, but we can do
wonders with a web site! E-mail us at staff@vulcancreative.com,
or call us at (479) 973-0600. Initial consultations are free of
charge.