About Lost Worlds Institute

Meet our team and learn more about the story behind our mission

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Our Team

We're a youth-led team passionate about making a noticeable impact on the communities and cultures of small, endangered languages.

Siddharth Chopra

President & Founder

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Vice President

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Mission Director

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Outreach

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Publications Editor

Our Story

From Our Founder & President, Siddharth Chopra

In the sixth grade, I discovered my love for Latin. I first expected a boring class from this “dead” language but instead dove into a several year exploration of enriching literature, art, and culture. The language and its people passed on a beauty that I did not know.

Latin, after the fall of the Roman Empire, became a language of the elites, especially wealthy white males. It was a narrow piece of life because it was limited to the upper classes—the most educated individuals, especially those among the Church. But it shouldn’t be that. The Romans were not merely from the Italian peninsula but instead shared a rich, diverse culture with people from even beyond Europe, such as North Africans and Middle Eastern peoples. It is most important to understand the multi-cultural value of the dead languages we know and love.

In exploring the dead languages I enjoyed, I realized a much more pertinent issue to our society today: cultures across the world, which are as precious as that of the Latin speaking Romans, the Ancient Greeks, and the Sanskrit speaking Indians, are fading because their languages are growing extinct.

Dead languages and extinct languages are connected but not the same. Dead languages are ones that are not widely spoken (or not spoken at all) while extinct languages are ones that have been entirely erased from the record of history—we know very little if nothing about them. Their cultures are broken apart yet so valuable in a shared community.

It started with a mere English assignment—a required speech on any topic. I decided why not look into extinct languages since I am so fascinated and enriched by dead ones? So I did. My love for the classics & dead languages slowly began to expand into a deep interest in extinct languages as I realized that this is a cause worth fighting for. The extinction of languages is the extinction of beautiful cultures that we can all benefit from. And therefore I titled my speech "A Lost Language is a Lost World" giving way to the name of this organization and to our goal: publicly presenting and protecting unheard voices of unseen peoples.

We must remember to ask ourselves: where would society be if not for rich cultures abroad? For long gone civilizations like the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians? For more recent ones like the Native Americans or Incas or Mayans? A wide range of voices make up our social tapestry, and thus we must protect the unheard voices that can do the same.

We must fight the extinction of languages because the extinction of languages is the extinction of unheard voices and peoples.

Interested in knowing more?

Reach out at contact@lostworldsinstitute.org

LWI is a youth-led non-profit that is set on preserving endangered languages and revitalizing extinct ones through scholarly documentation, research, writing, and more.

Contact

contact@lostworldsinstitute.org