Voices of Italy: a project for the preservation of Italian language diversity

This submission will bring to discussion a project idea that addresses documentation and preservation of regional languages of Italy. Italy holds a unique position in Europe, with around 40 languages spoken and 31 of them in danger. Yet, little is being done for fostering their preservation, and little (if any) is the perception by the general public of the proportions of the phenomenon of language endangerment. The result of the project should be an audiovisual digital archive for storing samples of regional languages. User s will interact with the archive through a range of so called new technologies: not only a web portal for accessing, browsing and searching information, but also mobile devices Apps, a YouTube channel, social networking platforms, etc. for contributing language material. Since these new media are widespread among the Italian population, the youngest one in particular (36 million people in Italy have a connection to the Internet, and 9,3 millions from a mobile device, with an increase of 74% in a year) it seems feasible to crowdsource the linguistic material to populate the archive, thereby offering an engaging experience that would boost involvement of speakers' communities into the documentation and preservation endeavour. It would be interesting to discuss the feasibility of this project under the current technological and cultural constraints.