Tribalingual is an online language learning platform that teaches only rare and endangered languages. We do this in order to save languages and culture from extinction. We connect people who want to learn endangered languages with those who want to teach them. Our 10-week courses incorporate a blended learning method: through a mixture of online audio and visual course content and personal Skype sessions with the language instructor, you are able to immerse yourself in the language and, just as importantly, the culture.
News about Tribalingual
Insight
Venturing forth: Language rescue
An entrepreneur enrolled in the Cambridge Social Ventures programme, part of the Centre for Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge, seeks to save endangered languages from extinction by encouraging new people to learn them. It's a bit of a mystery where the Ainu people living in northern Japan came from – perhaps from Siberia, but nobody really knows. But what's certain is that the Ainu language is critically endangered, with UNESCO estimating that there are only 15 speakers left. A passion to save Ainu and other endangered languages is what led education entrepreneur Inky Gibbens to launch a Cambridge-based venture, Tribalingual, which seeks to teach these languages to people who want to learn them. Tribalingual is one of the ventures currently supported by the Cambridge Social Ventures programme. "When I learned that Buryat, the northern-Siberian language of my grandparents, was in danger of dying out, I knew there and then that I had to do something," says Inky, who was born and raised in Mongolia, and grew up speaking Buryat as one of her native languages. According to UNESCO, half of more than 6,000 languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this century if nothing is done. About 230…