bahasabahasa

Bahasabahasa is a hypothetical open-access, wiki-style repository intended to catalog languages and linguistic terminology across the globe. It is designed to provide consistent descriptions of language names, scripts, classifications, and cultural contexts, with an emphasis on accessibility for researchers, educators, and developers.

Origin and scope: The term bahasabahasa combines the Indonesian word bahasa, meaning language, used here to suggest “language of languages.” The project is described as being proposed by linguists and digital humanities practitioners in the early 2020s and is maintained by a community of volunteers and editors. It aims to cover natural languages, sign languages, language names, dialects, and standardized spellings, including historical terms and endonyms.

Content and structure: Each entry includes fields such as official name, language codes (for example ISO 639), language family, scripts, regional variants, and representative examples. The database links related languages, scripts, and linguistic terms and records etymology and usage notes. The project uses an open licensing model (for example CC BY or CC0) and a multi-stage submission workflow to balance openness with accuracy, with editors performing revisions and cross-checks.

Usage and reception: Bahasabahasa is envisioned for use in linguistic research, language education, and computational language applications to harmonize terminology and provide multilingual references. Critics point to uneven coverage, potential bias from volunteer contributors, and the need for ongoing quality control. The project remains experimental and is described as being actively developed across multiple languages.

See also: linguistics databases, language codes, ISO 639, endonyms and exonyms.