The Wall St Journal ran a piece in their January 2nd Edition on the narrow group of languages that can use SMS cell phone text messaging. Our very own Laura Welcher was quoted in the article:
“The idea of having your cultural identity represented in this technology is increasingly important,” says Laura Welcher, director of the Rosetta Project of San Francisco’s Long Now Foundation. Ms. Welcher, who says linguists fear half the world’s languages will disappear in the near future, thinks at least 200 languages have enough speakers to justify development of cellphone text systems. “Technology empowers the poorest people,” she adds.