UU researcher profile: Harald Hammarström documents languages on the verge of extinction


A professor of linguistics with a Master’s in computer science and a PhD in computational linguistics, Harald goes an extra mile to document the languages that head towards extinction.

Photo: Meli Petersson Ellafi, Bildbyrån.

“Throughout time, smaller languages have always been swallowed up by larger ones. But now, with globalisation, this is happening at an incredibly accelerated pace.”

Language has always been key to understanding human history, culture and how we have moved from place to place. Today, there are around 7,000 languages, roughly half of which have not yet been scientifically documented.

The more languages that are documented, the closer we can get to answering the big questions about human communication, history and culture.