Our Mission
LWI's mission is to fight to ensure that these languages do not die off - preserving endangered languages for all of posterity, and reviving extinct ones by combining scholarly insight with youth-led initiatives.
"The Lost Worlds Institute is set on connecting students with scholars to promote revitalization, awareness, and education about the beauty of extinct languages."- Siddharth Chopra, Founder and President
Why These Languages Are in Crisis
The six languages Lost Worlds Institute (LWI) is working with as of now, and the languages planned for the future, are native languages distinct for their lack of connection to the dominant tongues of the modern day. They have all faced similar fates in their decline.
Intergenerational disruption - issues in transmitting a language to the younger generations - have destroyed languages such as Manx and Warlpiri. Population decline and fragmentation have left Wampanoag, Yuchi, and Wukchumni with few, fluent living speakers.
And colonialism, a forceful process of expansion and control, has washed away the distinct identities of all of these cultures; colonial powers forced bilingualism through coercive efforts, making languages such as English, Spanish, and French more dominant than any native one.
LWI aims to bring a young generation of thinkers and speakers to the forefront of ameliorating these issues; we want to preserve these endangered languages for all of posterity, and revive extinct ones by combining scholarly insight with youth-led initiatives. A lost language is a lost world, a people erased from the tablet of history.
// Forces destroying languages
{
"intergenerational_disruption": {
"definition": "Failure to transmit language to youth",
"examples": ["Manx", "Warlpiri"]
},
"population_decline": {
"examples": [
"Wampanoag", "Cherokee",
"Serrano"
]
},
"colonialism": {
"mechanism": "forced bilingualism",
"dominant_langs": [
"English", "Spanish",
"French"
]
},
"lwi_response": "FIGHT BACK"
}Building a Youth-Led Team of Scholars
We are building a team of youth researchers, documenters, and writers. Paired with the expertise of scholars, the Lost Worlds Institute plans to create a long-term effort of preserving languages whose condition is endangered or extinct - of voices unheard and suppressed.
Scholarly Documentation
Grammar sketches, phonetic analyses, and cultural narratives - reviewed by PhD mentors from UChicago, UPenn, UMass, and more. We have written 5 grammar papers totaling 120+ pages and 26,000+ words.
Research & Publishing
Students research and publish with us alongside scholars - gaining academic experience in linguistics, field methods, and language documentation that reaches far beyond the standard classroom.
Community Engagement
We connect students with professors through Speaker Forums, and actively seek partnership with native communities and organizations. If you know someone who speaks one of our languages - please reach out.
Technology Applications
We have taken interest in technological applications to language preservation - digital archiving, computational tools, audio documentation, and community platforms - which will become a major focus in the coming months.
What We Stand For
Uncovering Unheard Voices
Every language carries within it a community's entire way of seeing the world - their poetry, their ecological knowledge, their philosophy, their identity. These voices have been suppressed and silenced by forces of colonialism and modernity. We work to uncover them, document them, and amplify them so they are never forgotten.
Inter-generational Empowerment
The most powerful force against language loss is intergenerational transmission - passing a language from elder to youth. LWI bridges generations: our student researchers learn from PhD scholars, who in turn engage with native communities. We believe young people are not just the future of language preservation - we are its present.
Cultural Justice
The disappearance of a language is never accidental. It is the result of historical violence - forced assimilation, colonial suppression, and the ongoing marginalization of indigenous communities. Language preservation is an act of cultural justice. We stand with the communities whose languages we document.
Help Us Preserve What Matters
Whether you're a student who wants to research, a scholar who wants to mentor, or a native speaker who wants to collaborate - LWI welcomes you.
