Kaukasischer Rat der Alten in Tschetschenien: Hier entscheiden sich Lebensschicksale. So viele verschiedene Sprachen wie im Kaukasus, dem »Berg der Sprachen«, gibt es sonst fast nirgendwo auf der Welt in einem so kleinen Gebiet: In Georgien, Armenien und Aserbajdschan sowie den Kaukasus-Republiken Russlands werden heute noch rund 60 Sprachen gesprochen.

The current predicament and future fate of the Tibetan language is a major concern amongst Tibetans in China. In print and online media, daily conversation, popular music, university lectures and religious teaching, Tibetans today frequently express fears that their language is in decline and in need of protection. Anxieties over the prevalence of lexical borrowing and code switching (Kelsang Yeshe 2012), and the exclusion of Tibetan from new domains at the expense of Modern Standard Chinese (Tournadre 2003), have spilled over into protests and widespread grassroots language activism (Robin 2014), much of which can be considered language revitalization (LR). In this article, we examine LR in Tibet  through a case study of Hualong County (see below) with a discussion of language endangerment and shift in the local context, followed by a scan of individual and institutional agents of LR in Hualong, the activities they undertake, and how they fit into the broader Tibetan context. [fromt he introduction]

Abstract
Introduction
For a long time indigenous languages, in general, and Mexican, in particular, have been a niche research area. Different disciplines, from Linguistics, anthropology, and sociology, to —in a lesser fashion— Computational Linguistics and Natural Language Processing, are traditional stakeholders on the topic. Still, the cost-benefit ratio is not favorable in the realm of computer sciences because of the scarcity of sources, divergence in variants of the same languages, lack of standard orthographies, and low topic awareness, as well as the perception of narrowness in the realm of applications, and lack of impact for these. Thus, NLP/CL researchers have remained on the fringes.

Development.
We believe that shining a different light on these apparent obstacles and dissuasion elements can help to improve the perception of their relevance and interest as research objects. On the one hand, speakers of these languages amount to approximately seven million in Mexico, and self-identified descendants of the Mexican indigenous cultures to almost four times as many, not a negligible number. On the other hand, the study of low-resource NLP is interesting in itself as a research problem, but it also can help develop tools for the social sciences and receive valuable insights from them, fostering an environment of multidisciplinary studies that, in turn, lead to the preservation, inclusion, cultural identity exaltation, and enhanced visibility of Mexican indigenous cultures. As we perceive sparks of renewed interest in low-resource languages amongst the researchers of the NLP/CL community assessing the current state we believe that an assessment of the present challenges for the area of study is pertinent. With this, we move on to develop a systemic analysis of the field and proceed to outline a technical roadmap proposal towards the inclusion of Mexican indigenous languages in NLP/CL mainstream research. Briefly, this roadmap has two main areas that eventually converge: technical and linguistic which coalesce through the multidisciplinary paradigm. Within these areas, several tasks are proposed both in parallel and in succession, amongst the most notorious are the formation of teams of linguists, social anthropologists, and computer scientists to create tools for the collection of languages that are socially acceptable within the culture and standards of the communities. Technically, the development of algorithms for small corpora and linguistically the development of dictionaries of equivalent orthographies for distinctive variants of these languages.
Conclusion
Even though the current panorama for the indigenous languages in NLP/CL research is bleak, the re-emergence of the focus on the exaltation and preservation of origenary cultures and the push for multidisciplinary studies creates a fertile environment for new approaches towards the inclusion of these languages in mainstream NLP/CL research. The implications of the development of applied research in this area can build bridges for the inclusion of the indigenous communities in nation-wide social and political conversations from which they are now excluded via the digital divide. Also, it can have a tremendous impact on the preservation of the past and present versions of origenary languages as well as enabling the visibility of these cultures.

To date, relatively little effort has been expended on revitalizing sign languages. To understand the current vitality of sign languages, it is important to distinguish two sociolinguistic types of sign languages. The better-known type can be termed Deaf communities, typically urban and national in character. Alongside these are shared-signing communities, typically in rural areas with a high incidence of hereditary deafness, in which many hearing people actively use the sign language in addition to deaf people. These two types differ in patterns of intergenerational transmission and language loss. Although we can be cautiously optimistic about the future of Deaf community languages, shared-signing communities are facing massive erosion already. To date, most attempts to strengthen sign languages have focused on supporting continued use of Deaf community languages; efforts to support and even revitalize dying shared signing communities have only just begun.

“Languages have stopped being used and have been formed and transformed all along in human history, but this rela vely slow and usual process has greatly accelerated within the last decades, leading to the modern «Great Dying». [...] These pro- cesses, without a doubt, cons tute one of the biggest societal challenges of the modern world, yet their global impact is s ll underes mated. A new agenda and complex tools to prevent that reduc on of linguis c assets of humankind are desper- ately needed, par cularly in case of the weakest and most imperiled language communi es. The understanding of the crucial factors behind these processes and possibili es of their reversal is a special tresponsibility of researchers, language ac vists and community members, shared by many authors of this book. While some of these processes are unfortunately irreversible, numerous endangered languages can be saved and safely maintained well into the future. By discussing and comparing various aspects of language vitality, endangerment, maintenance and revitalization – in both diachronic and synchronic perspective – the editors hope to provide a representative overview of language constellations and strategies (to be) applied. The case studies focus on both intra- and extralinguis c aspects of revitaliza-  on, but what connects them all is the coherence between languages and their communities”.