What is left when a language slowly disappears from daily life?
But what remains? It disappears when grandparents switch to Dutch because that is easier for their grandchildren. When certain words are no longer used because nobody understands them any more. When a joke no longer works, a saying loses its meaning or a song is only sung along to without knowing exactly what is being sung.
And perhaps most painful of all: when a next generation realises that it can no longer understand a part of itself.
For many Moluccan Dutch people that is not a theoretical question. It has been happening for years, often without our noticing.
In the latest Greetings from we take you to Rotterdam. Specifically to TEDx Rotterdam, where Jamie Schaduw, founder and director of Totaal Moluks, spoke about Nene AI, technology and language.
Who or what is Totaal Moluks?
Totaal Moluks grew out of a clear ambition: to make the Moluccan community visible in a contemporary way. What began as an online platform grew into a broad organisation committed to sharing stories, strengthening the community and making Moluccan culture accessible to a new generation.
Through news, background stories, podcasts, events and digital projects, Totaal Moluks shows that Moluccan identity is constantly in motion. The emphasis lies not only on the past, but very much on the future. How do you make sure a community stays visible in an ever more digital world? How do you pass on language, knowledge and culture to coming generations?
That vision also gave rise to Nene AI. Where artificial intelligence usually focuses on the largest world languages, Totaal Moluks deliberately chooses Moluccan Malay. By recording the language digitally and making it accessible, they invest not only in technological innovation but also in the preservation of intangible heritage. In doing so they show that cultural heritage and new technology do not exclude one another, but can in fact strengthen one another.
Language is more than a means of communication
We often talk about language as if it were merely a means of conveying information. But language does much more.
Ways of thinking are contained within language. Respect. Humour. Family relations. Emotions for which there is sometimes no Dutch word. Language determines how a community understands itself.
When a language disappears, so do the stories that can only be told in that language. That is precisely why what is happening at the moment is so remarkable.
While artificial intelligence worldwide is deployed above all for the largest world languages, something notable is happening within the Moluccan community in the Netherlands.
Totaal Moluks developed Nene AI: an AI system built specifically for translating and understanding Moluccan Malay. Not a general translation machine that recognises a few words, but a model built from dictionaries, research, more than 25,000 sentences from the community and the knowledge of native speakers in both the Netherlands and Maluku.
That is exceptional. Not only technically but above all culturally.
Most AI models are fed by millions of documents in dominant languages such as English, Spanish or Chinese. Small languages run the risk of simply not being included. What does not exist digitally will soon barely exist for AI.
Nene AI reverses that process. Instead of accepting that a small language slowly disappears from the digital landscape, a future is being deliberately built in which Moluccan Malay is part of new technology too. According to Totaal Moluks, the AI is continuously expanded and improved with new language data from the community.
That is not nostalgia. That is policy for the future.
Heritage is not only what lies in a depot
As a museum we often speak about heritage. About photographs. Objects. Archives.
But perhaps language is one of the most fragile forms of heritage we possess.
An object can be conserved. A photograph can be digitised. But a language only lives when people keep using it.
That is why initiatives such as Totaal Moluks are so valuable. Not because they "save the language", but because they create the conditions in which a new generation can rediscover it.
We too do not see heritage as something that lies behind glass. Heritage lives in stories, memories, customs and words. That is why we invest not only in preserving collections, but also in recording stories, enriching context and making knowledge accessible to future generations.
The next step
Perhaps that is the finest thing about this time. For the first time, technology and culture no longer have to be opposites.
It can also become an instrument for keeping intangible heritage alive.
For making visible languages that for years had barely a place in the digital world.
For building a bridge between grandparents and grandchildren. Between Ambon and Rotterdam.
That is what makes the developments around Nene AI so remarkable.
Not because a computer will soon be able to translate Moluccan Malay. But because a community has decided that its language is worth taking into the future.
And perhaps that is ultimately what language is always about.
Not about words. But about the choice to keep understanding one another.
This TED talk with Jamie shows that language is never separate from identity. The episode thus forms a fine starting point for a conversation that is much larger than words alone. It is about what we pass on, what we risk losing and how a community finds new ways of its own to keep its heritage alive. That is precisely where the strength of this development lies: not waiting for someone else to preserve it, but building the future together.
Watch the video here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5wT6wzyoQ
