Wikilengua launches ‘Oral Atlas,’ a spoken Spanish encyclopedia

Speaking of great online language resources, Wikilengua (a website devoted to Spanish language usage) has just launched a new oral linguistics atlas. Wikilengua defines itself as:

An open and participatory site for sharing practical information about the rules, usage and style of the Spanish language, and a medium for reflecting the diversity of a language spoken by hundreds of millions of people.

The oral atlas allows users worldwide to contribute sound recordings “to reflect a particular way of talking.” The Latin American Herald Tribune reports that “the purpose of the atlas is to let all Spanish-speakers contribute to compiling a record of the different ways the language is spoken, globally positioned on a map that uses Google Maps technology, to which new sound recordings can continually be added.”

In other words, an entirely new, interactive and global way to learn and participate in a language. This makes me think of potential applications in other fields, such as ethnomusicology (Bela Bartok must be rolling over in his grave…). What will the internet think of next?

Click here to access the oral atlas.