Pair breathe life into dead language (fwd link)

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Pair breathe life into dead language
Takelma are thought to be the earliest residents of Southern Oregon

By Paris Achen
Mail Tribune
January 11, 2008

In 1933, anthropologist John Peabody Harrington chauffeured the last known
fluent Takelma speaker, Frances Johnson, from the Siletz Reservation near
Newport to the Rogue River Valley to capture some of the phrases and stories of
the dying indigenous language.

During the trip, Harrington took about 1,200 pages of field notes on the
language, now extinct, said storyteller Thomas Doty.

Johnson died the following year.

Seventy-five years later, Doty and author John Michael Greer hope to revive the
Takelma language by writing its first handbook.

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http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080111/NEWS/801110323