Multilingual Cloud: saving Bangladesh’s endangered languagesCEFR B1
24 Aug 2025
Adapted from Nurunnaby Chowdhury, Global Voices • CC BY 3.0
Photo by litoon dev, Unsplash
The Information and Communication Technology Division of Bangladesh has launched a project to digitize endangered Indigenous languages. The work is part of the EBLICT project and is implemented by the Bangladesh Computer Council. Consultant Mamun Or Rashid of Jahangirnagar University said the platform collects both written and unwritten forms from many communities.
In July 2025 the initiative published Multilingual Cloud on bangla.gov.bd, a repository for 42 languages. The platform includes 7,177 topics, 97,782 sentences transcribed in IPA and 12,646 minutes of audio recorded from 214 native speakers. One example is Khasi, which has been written with the Roman alphabet since the early 1800s; the portal holds over 300 minutes of Khasi audio across 151 topics.
UNESCO warns that a language dies every 14 days and about 2,500 of the world’s 7,000 languages are endangered. A local survey listed 14 Bangladeshi languages at risk. The project aims to make fonts, keyboards, grammar tools and dictionaries and to put language data online for researchers and communities.
Difficult words
- digitize — convert written or spoken material into digital form
- endangered — at risk of no longer being used
- repository — online place where data and files are stored
- transcribe — write speech sounds using a standard symbol systemtranscribed
- audio — recorded sound or listening material
- initiative — new plan or project by a group or organisation
- platform — website or system for sharing information online
Tip: hover, focus or tap highlighted words in the article to see quick definitions while you read or listen.
Discussion questions
- Do you think digitizing endangered languages is important? Why or why not?
- Which resources on the platform (audio, sentences, dictionaries) would be most useful for local communities? Explain.
- How could your community use online language materials to help young people learn a small local language?
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