Disappearing Act (languages)

[Andre Cramblit]

Wednesday  July 28, 2004
KGUN 9

NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES PULL DISAPPEARING ACT
By Dave Hecht (7/16/04)
http://www.kgun9.com/story.asp?TitleID=3835&ProgramOption=News

In their small office at the University of Arizona, Dr. Susan Penfield
and graduate student Phillip Cash Cash are working against the clock to
save a cultural treasure before it's too late.

"Language is really the backbone of our culture," said Cash Cash.
"And even if you don't speak the language, we're at a loss when you lose
that kind of diversity," added Penfield.

Today, fewer and fewer Native Americans are able to speak their tribal
language.  Of those languages, many dialects are on the verge of
extinction.  For example, only 30 people are able to speak Mohave.  And
to make matters worse, the majority of those people are 70-years old.

Here in the United States, there are 150 native languages still being
spoken today.  And as the number of native speakers continues to
dwindle, "by the year 2050, only 30 of those languages will survive,"
said Cash Cash.

It's a problem not limited to the United States.  Nearly 90-percent of
the world's six thousand spoken languages will also disappear by 2050.

To save the spoken word, Penfield and Cash Cash are counting on
technology.  Thanks to a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, they are teaching tribal members how to use 21st century
technology to preserve their native languages.  So far they have helped
tribes all across the country including Tohote Otum, Hopi, Apache and
the Navajo.

With computers, voice recorders, video tape recorders and any other
electronics the tribes can lay their hands on, "they produce a language
lesson in their native language and target that lesson to everyone from
grade school students on up to adult learners,"

Their goal is simple, to increase the number of native speakers so that
these cultural treasures don't become the Latin of tomorrow.