swer sought, but also a quote from one of the
literary works containing the word (in our case, an essay by
Voltaire). All it takes is a click on the mouse to access the
whole text or even to order the book, including in foreign
translations, thanks to a partnership agreement with the famous
online bookstore Amazon.com. However, if no text containing the
required word is found, the program acts as a search engine,
sending the user to other web sources containing this word. In
the case of certain words, you can even hear the pronunciation.
If there is no translation currently available, the system
calls on the public to contribute. Everyone can make
suggestions, after which Logos translators check the suggested
translations they receive."

Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University (in
Lewisburg, Pennsylvania), founded the website "A Web of Online
Dictionaries" (WOD) in 1995, and included it then in a larger
project, yourDictionary.com, that he cofounded in early 2000.
He wrote in January 2000: "The new website is an index of
1,200+ dictionaries in more than 200 languages. Besides the
WOD, the new website includes a word-of-the-day-feature, word
games, a language chat room, the old 'Web of Online Grammars'
(now expanded to include additional language resources), the
'Web of Linguistic Fun', multilingual dictionaries; specialized
English dictionaries; thesauri and other vocabulary aids;
language identifiers and guessers, and other features;
dictionary indices. yourDictionary.com will hopefully be the
premiere language portal and the largest language resource site
on the web. It is now actively acquiring dictionaries and
grammars of all languages with a particular focus on endangered
languages. It is overseen by a blue ribbon panel of linguistic
experts from all over the world."

yourDictionary.com wants to be the premiere portal for all
languages without any exception, and as such offers a specific
section called Endangered Language Repository. Robert Beard
explained in the same email interview: "Languages that are
endangered are primarily languages without writing systems at
all (only 1/3 of the world's 6,000+ languages have writing
systems). I still do not see the web contributing to the loss
of language identity and still suspect it may, in the long run,
contribute to strengthening it. More and more Native Americans,
for example, are contacting linguists, asking them to write
grammars of their languag