01952nas a2200265   4500000000100000000000100001008004100002653002500043653001800068653002500086653002100111653002800132653002000160653001300180653001100193100001600204700001600220700001400236245012500250856011800375300001200493490000600505520115500511022002001666       2012                            d10aEndangered languages10adocumentation10aLinguistic diversity10aAltaic languages10aDocumentary linguistics10aManchu-tungusic10aMongolic10aTurkic1 aChoi Woonho1 aYou Hyun-Jo1 aKim Juwon00aThe Documentation of Endangered Altaic Languages and the Creation of a Digital Archive to safeguard linguistic diversity  uhttps://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-84877959944&partnerID=40&md5=9b0db0143c14d6478cec83e89d822093  a113-1220 v73 aLanguage is a vehicle of intangible heritage and transmits many social and cultural concepts from generation to generation. Half of the world s languages, including most of the Altaic languages, are now in danger of extinction. The loss of a language means the loss of cultural and intellectual diversity. This paper describes a linguistic project which aims to preserve the endangered Altaic languages. The ASK REAL (Altaic Society of Korea, Researches on Endangered Altaic Languages) team has gathered linguistic resources from thirty-eight Altaic languages and plans to build an extensive digital archive of all fifty-five of them. Through field research in minority language communities spread over a vast area of Eurasia, we acquired nearly three thousand lexical items of multimedia data, a few hundred grammatical constructions and another few hundred examples of daily conversation for each language. The data is converted into a standard digital format and managed in a database. A small part of the collection is currently available to the public via an easily accessible web interface with multilingual annotations for international users.  a19753586 (ISSN)