<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default"><h2 style="margin:6px 0px 12px;padding:0px"><font face="times new roman, serif" size="6">Linguistics Students Help Revitalize Critically Endangered Language in Mexico</font></h2><h2 style="margin:6px 0px 12px;padding:0px">
<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;font-weight:normal;line-height:18px">By Ryan Dougherty</span><br></h2><div class="" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">
May 27, 2014<br></div><div class="" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px"><br></div><p style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 1.25em;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">
A professor and three Tri-Co students recently visited the leaders of a city in Oaxaca, Mexico, to present their<a href="http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/zapotec/" title="new window" target="_blank" style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 0.1em;color:rgb(163,20,27);text-decoration:none;outline:none;border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted;border-bottom-color:rgb(119,119,119)">Zapotec Talking Dictionary</a>, designed to help revitalize a native language on the verge of disappearing.</p>
<p style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 1.25em;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">Carolyn Anderson '14 was nervous about that early-May visit to Tlacolula de Matamoros. She and the rest of the Tri-Co team were proud of their work on the dictionary but unsure of how it would be received. But those nerves vanished as soon as Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen displayed the dictionary on her phone.</p>
<p style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 1.25em;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">"[The Tlacolula leaders] started smiling," says Anderson, a linguistics major from Tacoma, Wash. "These are important, busy men, but they all took the time to squint at the small screen and try it out. You could see their faces light up as the phone was passed around the room."</p>
<p style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 1.25em;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">The Zapotec language family is comprised of approximately 40 languages, all endangered, says Lillehaugen. The variety spoken in Tlacolula de Matamoros is critically endangered, with only about 100 elderly speakers remaining. Key causes include economic and ideological factors that push native-language speakers to adopt Spanish.</p>
<p style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 1.25em;padding:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);line-height:18px">Access full article below: </p><div><a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-and-events/linguistics-students-help-revitalize-critically-endangered-language-in-mexico.xml">http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-and-events/linguistics-students-help-revitalize-critically-endangered-language-in-mexico.xml</a><br>
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