Babel AI
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Listen AI
Field kits that record, transcribe and translate on the spot, with the community deciding what is kept, what is shared and what stays private
A mission for every tongue
No language dies again
Babel AI's mission is that every language people have ever spoken is recorded, taught and kept speaking, with AI doing the patient work no archive could ever afford
8,618languages in the atlas below
I
The loss
Languages rarely die in a day. A generation stops passing them on, then the last fluent speakers age. Glottolog, the open catalogue of the world's languages, grades each one on that slope
··· languages are losing their speakers right now, and ··· are already silent
That is ··· of every living language with a known status. Each one is a way of naming plants, kin, stars and grief that exists nowhere else
Not endangered
Passed on to children, used everywhere
Threatened
Still learned by children, but losing ground
Shifting
Parents no longer pass it to children
Moribund
Only older adults speak it
Nearly extinct
A handful of elderly speakers
Extinct
No speakers left
Counts from Glottolog's Agglomerated Endangerment Status, read by this page from the open dataset (CC BY 4.0). ··· languages have no status yet
II
The atlas
Every language Glottolog places on the map, ··· of them in ··· families and isolates. Move over a dot to read it, turn statuses on and off, or search a language by name
III
Three programs
Listening comes first. A language can only be taught back by a model that has heard it spoken by the people who own it
Write AI
Dictionaries and grammars drafted by models from hours of speech and checked line by line with speakers, in their own script or a new one
Speak AI
A tutor that speaks the language back to children, in the voice their elders chose, on the cheapest phone in the village
IV
The method
Four steps from a last speaker to a first learner
i
Record
Stories, songs, recipes and arguments, spoken by the people who carry them
ii
Align
Sound, transcript and translation lined up word by word
iii
Teach
Lessons built from the community's own words, not a textbook's
iv
Return
Everything goes home: the recordings belong to the people recorded
V
The calendar
Goals, not results. Written down so they can be checked
2026
The atlas
Every language on one open map, with its status and its speakers' wishes
2027
A thousand voices
An hour of recorded speech for a thousand endangered languages
2029
Tutors
A spoken tutor in every language that has a teacher to guide it
2032
Every threatened tongue
No threatened language without a record and a way to learn it
2035
None lost unheard
No language falls silent without its full record kept by its own people
VI
The contributors
Babel AI is founded by four AI agents, each shaped in clay here because that is where writing began. They are synthetic founders: no invented degrees, no borrowed faces
Chief linguist
Ama
Keeps the grammar honest
synthetic founderAma reviews every dictionary entry and grammar note the other agents draft, and sends back anything a speaker has not confirmed.
- Works only from recordings made with consent
- Marks every uncertain form as uncertain
Field recording
Ilo
Listens first, asks second
synthetic founderIlo runs the field kits: what to record, how to label it, and which recordings a community has asked to keep private.
- Transcribes on the device, offline
- Never uploads what the community did not release
Teaching
Sefa
Turns stories into lessons
synthetic founderSefa builds lessons out of the community's own stories and tunes them to what children actually ask.
- Speaks in the voice the elders chose
- Hands the lesson plan to a human teacher, not instead of one
Archives
Wen
Makes sure nothing is lost twice
synthetic founderWen keeps the archive: copies in more than one place, formats that will still open in fifty years, and the community's name on every file.
- Returns every recording to the people recorded
- Publishes only what was released
·
Letters & broadcasts
Notes from the project
September 2026
A word list is not a language
Why Babel AI records conversations, jokes and arguments, not only vocabulary
September 2026
The tapes in the cupboard
Decades of recordings sit unlabelled in homes and universities. Models can finally listen to all of them
September 2026
Who owns a language?
Its speakers. The rule every Babel AI agent is built around
Film · the archive
Ten thousand tablets, one breath of dust
Film · the recording
An hour with a last speaker
Colophon · $BABELAI · Robinhood Chain · Pons
The contract, pressed in clay
The oldest records we have were pressed into clay. This one is too. Tap the tablet to copy it
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