Native Americans Fight to Save Endangered Languages (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Native Americans Fight to Save Endangered Languages

Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 17 February 2012 Time: 06:35 PM ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Many of the world's minority languages, some
spoken by only a handful of speakers, are on the brink of extinction, and
community activists and scientists are teaming to try to keep them alive.

One example is the Native American language Siletz Dee-ni, which was once
spoken widely by native people in Oregon, but which now may be spoken
fluently by only one man: Alfred "Bud" Lane.

"We're a small tribe on the central Oregon coast," Lane said via telephone
here at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science. "Like most small groups of people, our pool of speakers has
been reduced over a period of time, until the 1980s when very few speakers
were left. Linguists labeled it 'moribund.'" [Q&A: Dead Languages Reveal a
Lost World]

But Lane and his community decided to fight back.

Access full article below:
http://www.livescience.com/18553-endangered-native-languages-survival-aaas.html
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