Taking the Livonians into the Digital Space

Abstract

The Livonians are a Finno-Ugric nation indigenous to Latvia. They are presently the most endangered culture in the European Union and their language is one of the most endangered languages in the world. The Livonian speech community lost its last compactly inhabited territory during the Soviet occupation of Latvia and since then has experienced a steady but continuous loss of Livonian language speakers. Today, only approximately 20 people are able to hold a conversation in Livonian. While presently living scattered across Latvia, with their language no longer used as a medium of daily interaction, the Livonian community has taken this challenging reality and turned it to its advantage in its approach to creating language resources from a limited set of human and archival resources. This article is devoted specifically to the subject of digital humanities in the service of endangered languages and cultures. Understanding the specifics of endangered and especially critically endangered languages and cultures, which actually form the majority of the world’s cultural and linguistic diversity, is critically important both in building tailor-made digital resources for such communities and applying ready-made instruments for their benefit. This article offers a broader picture of the challenges and opportunities that developers of digital resources for critically endangered languages and cultures have to take into account, based on the Livonian experience. The article summarises and presents some of the findings and ideas deriving from the creation of digital resources and tools for the Livonian language and culture, approaches for overcoming a lack of resources and limited data issues, as well benefits and experiences that low resource – especially extremely low resource – cultures and languages can derive from the Livonian experience.