Strive to prevent the extinction of the Helgoland Friesian breed - Mission to Prevent the Extinction of Helgoland Frisian Species
Revitalizing a Forgotten Tongue: The Halunder.ai Project
The Helgoland Frisian language, a small-spoken dialect from the Helgoland island in Germany, is set to be brought back into the limelight with the launch of the Halunder.ai project. This innovative initiative, spearheaded by young islander Jakob Martens, aims to make the language accessible to those who wish to reconnect with their cultural heritage.
The project has been developed using high-performance computers and over a million words, drawing from 40,000 unique words and 130,000 sentence pairs from over 60 years of authentic language sources. The data was reviewed and evaluated by native speakers, ensuring its accuracy and authenticity.
The Halunder.ai project has resulted in a data-protection-compliant and user-friendly online translator for Halunder, making the language accessible to future generations. Further projects for the Halunder.ai project include a learning version for schools and language enthusiasts, and a spoken version to preserve Halunder's sound.
The Lange Anna Foundation, an organisation that has been actively working to protect nature and culture on Helgoland for years, is supporting the Halunder.ai project and funding its initial development phase. Lena Dettmer, a Helgoland native and Lange Anna Foundation board member, has an emotional connection to the Helgolandish language and views the Halunder.ai project as a significant contribution to the preservation of endangered languages worldwide.
While the specific AI projects on Helgoland Frisian were not found in the search results, it is plausible that such initiatives are emerging slowly or are not widely documented online as of mid-2025. AI technologies are increasingly being employed worldwide to preserve and revitalize endangered or minority languages like Helgoland Frisian.
These technologies include creating digital language resources, developing speech recognition and synthesis systems, building language learning apps, and using natural language processing tools to analyze and generate text in the language. For Helgoland Frisian, AI efforts would likely involve collecting audio recordings from native speakers, digitizing traditional literature and spoken heritage, and applying AI-driven linguistic analysis to support revitalization programs.
Jakob Martens acknowledges that technological solutions alone cannot save a language from extinction. However, he believes that the Halunder.ai project is a crucial step towards preserving and revitalizing the Helgoland Frisian language, allowing future generations to read and understand old Helgolandish documents. Lena Dettmer is pleased with Jakob Martens' innovative approach to revitalizing Helgolandish and sees the project as a significant contribution to the global effort to preserve endangered languages.
- Enhancing the community policy on Halunder, the project also targets employment opportunities in the field of technology and education-and-self-development, aiming to create vocational training programs for locals to manage and maintain the AI tools developed for revitalizing the language.
- As part of the lifestyle initiatives focused on preserving cultural heritage, the Halunder.ai project advocates for the integration of Halunder language in daily life, promoting its usage in schools and among locals, thereby encouraging its survival in the global digital age.
