Information technology changes our everyday lives. We typically use computers for writing, editing, calculating, and information searching, and increasingly for reading, listening to music, viewing photos and watching movies. We carry small computers in our pockets and use them to make phone calls, write emails, get information and entertain ourselves, wherever we are. How does this massive digitisation of information, knowledge and everyday communication affect our language? Will our language change or even disappear?

All our computers are linked together into an increasingly dense and powerful global network. The girl in Ipanema, the customs officer in Padborg and the engineer in Kathmandu can all chat with their friends on Facebook, but they are unlikely ever to meet one another in online communities and forums. If they are worried about how to treat earache, they will all check Wikipedia to find out all about it, but even then they won’t read the same article. When Europe’s netizens discuss the effects of the Fukushima nuclear accident on European energy policy in forums and chat rooms, they do so in cleanly-separated language communities. What the internet connects is still divided by the languages of its users. Will it always be like this?

Many of the world’s 6,000 languages will not survive in a globalised digital information society. It is estimated that at least 2,000 languages are doomed to extinction in the decades ahead. Others will continue to play a role in families and neighbourhoods, but not in the wider business and academic world. What are the Danish language’s chances of survival?

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