The greatest impediment to those in favour of preservation, however, is not resistance but apathy and ignorance: language preservation is not a 'popular' issue, and the large majority of the global population is unaware of the rate of language death (Tsunoda 2005, "Language Endangerment and Language Revitalisation").

The Asia-Pacific region contains approximately one third of the world's estimated six thousand languages the majority of which it is predicted will become extinct within this century. Documentation is of vital importance not only for general linguistic preservation and research but for the communities and cultures involved in which the loss of the language brings the culture one step closer to extinction.

As with many other knowledge areas in the humanities, the future of linguistics and linguistic research is immutably linked to information technologies and the digitisation and digital storage of linguistic knowledge.

DELP aims to brings together research and documentation on the endangered languages of the Asia-Pacific and also raise awareness of language death within this region.