Layers

Bringing Language Data to Google Earth

Since its launch in 2005, Google Earth has become a tremendous platform for sharing information of global scale. With help from its non-profit support branch, Google Outreach, organizations from around the world have used Google Earth's stunning interface to create powerful visualizations of the projects they work on. The Rosetta Project is proud to announce the release of its own set of global linguistic visualizations for Google Earth.

Designed to expose users to the breadth of global linguistic diversity, the layers we have developed showcase different aspects of language use around the world.

Download a Google Earth Linguistic Layer

  • Endangered Languages of Africa and the Americas: Illustrating a primary concern of The Rosetta Project, this layer highlights some of the most severely endangered languages of the world. (Open in Google Earth)
  • West Coast Language Use in Urban Centers: This layer presents graphical representations of the linguistic diversity in the urban centers of the west coast of the US. (Open in Google Earth)
  • Alan Lomax Global Language Audio Collection: A noted ethnomusicologist, Alan Lomax also amassed a large collection of linguistic audio recordings from around the world. Use this layer to listen to a selection of his recordings from our archive. (Open in Google Earth)
  • John Peabody Harrington Audio Collection: This layer showcases a selection of more than 1,300 recordings produced by John Peabody Harrington and his associates between 1912 and 1941. The recordings document the languages, myths, legends, stories and songs of thirty-five Native American tribes. (Open in Google Earth)

To download a copy of Google Earth, click here.

The Rosetta Disk

Fifty to ninety percent of the world's languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, many with little or no significant documentation.