Abstract:

Minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. The problem of such kind of languages in modern society is that they are often mistaken for primitive, oversimplified or even uncultured comparing to the major ones. Provided that such kind of languages are not promptly protected by local governments and language policies, this attitude may lead to threat of extinction for minor languages and, as a consequence, cultures related to these languages. Modern society develops and changes at a high rate, setting new problems to solve. It affects the minor languages promotion affair as well, challenging specialists of the area to invent or discover new ways and tools to support such languages. One of the ways to promote minor languages is to use technologically enhanced learning, particularly, game-based learning and gamification of the learning process. Gaming can boost the learners’ interest towards the learning of minor languages, help them better understand the aspects of languages (grammar, vocabulary etc.) and cultures, show them that minor languages are not ‘primitive, oversimplified or even uncultured’ and, as a result, encourage them to use minor languages outside of the classroom. The paper is dedicated to the investigation and development of game for the purpose of supporting and promoting minority languages. In the first part of it, we provide the theoretical basis and information on minor languages protection and promotion. Further, we describe the actual measures taken in order to support such languages. This will lead to the fist phase of software development, which is the collection of the requirement specifications of the proposed system. The design of the system will be followed with full description of the overall architecture of the proposed game. Finally, we suggest the way in which game-based learning can be used in order to promote minor languages. As a result, we will propose the idea of a software meant for enhancing the promotion of minority languages that, in its turn, will encourage and provide basis for international interdisciplinary collaboration efforts.

Keywords:

Minority language, game-based learning, innovation.