<h1 class="entry-title">Google Joins Fight to Save Nearly 3,000 Endangered Languages</h1><div class="entry-meta entry-author"><span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">By </span><span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://techland.time.com/author/kpwagstaff/" title="View all posts by Keith Wagstaff">Keith Wagstaff</a></span><span class="meta-sep"> | </span><a href="http://www.twitter.com/kwagstaff" class="author-twitter" target="_blank">@kwagstaff</a><span class="meta-sep"> | </span><span class="entry-date"><abbr class="published" title="2012-06-22T10:00:02-0400">June 22, 2012</abbr></span><span class="meta-sep"></span></div>
US<br><p>The last native speakers of Miami-Illinois died in the 1960s. Two 
centuries earlier, Jesuits came to the United States and found two 
tribes — the Miami and the Illinois, which both shared a common 
language.</p>
<p>“The Jesuits believed you had to understand the language and the 
culture of the people you were trying to convert,” says George 
Ironstrack, assistant director for the <a href="http://www.myaamiaproject.org/" target="_blank">Myaamia Project</a>. “Then you could preach to them in their language and translate religious materials for them.”</p>
<p>While the Jesuits may not have had the purest of intentions, they did
 create an extensive record of the language, including dictionaries in 
French that matched words with sentences that put them in context. In 
the 1990s, researchers started the task of bringing the extinct language
 back to life, teaching it to the Miami community in Oklahoma.</p><div style="overflow:hidden;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:rgb(255,255,255);text-align:left;text-decoration:none;border:medium none"><br>Read more: <a style="color:rgb(0,51,153)" href="http://techland.time.com/2012/06/22/google-joins-fight-to-save-nearly-3000-endangered-languages/#ixzz1yd8bOp1R">http://techland.time.com/2012/06/22/google-joins-fight-to-save-nearly-3000-endangered-languages/#ixzz1yd8bOp1R</a><br>
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