The Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage this week received the largest gift in its history — $1.24 million — to support research into sustaining and revitalizing endangered languages in Europe.

The five-year project will evaluate different approaches to keeping languages healthy, taking into account social, cultural, political and economic influences, said Michael Atwood Mason, director of the center, which is best known for putting on the annual Folklife Festival on the National Mall.

“There’s an enormous amount of excitement about developing well-researched and well-documented evidence about what’s working and what’s not,” Mason said.

The money is coming from Ferring Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturer of drugs for reproductive health, urology and gastroenterology, headquartered in Switzerland. The very name of the company is derived from an endangered language: Fering, spelled with one r, is a dialect of North Frisian, spoken on the German island of Föhr in the North Sea. More.

See: The Washington Post

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