Early in the first Language Diversity Conference , Rossouw van Rooyen thought about a quote he had first heard eight years earlier.

At Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town, Daniel Bögre Udell of Wikitongues quoted Richard Henry Pratt . Pratt founded the Carlisle Indian Industrial School , a notorious US boarding school for Native American children, and summed up its mission as “kill the Indian in him, and save the man”. Seeing Daniel again in Accra set the tone for Rossouw’s weekend.

“There are languages being eradicated, there are languages being suppressed all over the world which we need to save,” he says. He adds that the work is “going to be a never-ending quest.”

The conference ran in Accra, Ghana, from 2 to 4 October 2026. It was hosted by the Wikimedia Language Diversity Hub , Wikitongues and Wikimedia UK , with the Dagbani Wikimedians User Group .…