Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages (EIN: 41-2183857) is a registered 501(c)(3) organization that was founded in 2005 by linguist Gregory D. S. Anderson, and has research teams around the globe. As leaders in the field of endangered language documentation, LTs stand at the intersection of linguistics and community activism.

Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages‘s mission is to ensure language survival for generations to come. the Living Tongues Institute supports speakers who are safeguarding their languages from extinction through activism, education, and technology. Their research teams document endangered languages and cultural practices, publish scientific studies, run digital training workshops to empower language activists, and collaborate with communities to create language resources that will serve as a basis for language revitalization. 

Living Dictionaries are collaborative multimedia web tools that can help languages survive for generations to come. Ideal for maintaining indigenous as well as diaspora languages, Living Dictionaries are never out-of-print, infinitely expandable resources. They go well beyond a static print dictionary, combining language data with digital audio recordings of speakers and other multimedia. Living Dictionaries address the urgent need to provide comprehensive, freely accessible tech tools for community activists and linguists engaged in grassroots conservation efforts and revitalization programs around the world.

In 2024, Living Tongues Institute and audio company Shure have teamed up for the No Voice Left Behind campaign, which features ongoing efforts to document Munda languages using Shure’s new MoveMic.

Living Tongues received a National Geographic Citizen Science Grant to produce a series of short films in the Sora language of Odisha State (India) with subtitled versions in both English and Hindi. The content of the films will cover vanishing traditional knowledge domains of the Sora tribal people.