<div dir="ltr"><b><font size="4">How An Octogenarian Preserved An Endangered Native American Language</font></b><br><br>Jordan Kushins<br>Yesterday 8:30pm<br><div><br></div><div><p class="" style="margin:0px 0px 1.25rem;padding:0px;font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:24px;word-break:break-word"><span style>It's easy to take translations for granted when Google can swap between Albanian and Zulu with the click of a button, but even that tech has real world limitations. </span><a href="https://vimeo.com/105673207" target="_blank" style="color:rgb(40,173,230);text-decoration:none;line-height:inherit">Marie Wilcox</a><span style> is the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of 130 different endangered Native American languages in the United States that don't have any kind of digital—or analog—legacy.</span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.25rem;padding:0px;font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:24px;word-break:break-word">Over the course of seven years in California's San Joaquin Valley, she worked with her daughter and grandson to catalog everything she knows about the language. First, she hand-scrawled memories on scraps of paper; then, she hunt-and-pecked on an old keyboard to complete a dictionary and type out legends like "How We Got Our Hands." Next, she recorded the whole thing on audio for pronunciation—it's very specific!—and posterity.</p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.25rem;padding:0px;font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:24px;word-break:break-word"></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:large;display:inline">​</div><span style="font-size:0.9375rem">Access full article <div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:large;display:inline">​and video clip ​</div>below:</span><p></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.25rem;padding:0px;font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:24px;word-break:break-word"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:small;line-height:normal"><a href="http://gizmodo.com/how-an-81-year-old-woman-preserved-an-endangered-native-1639334577">http://gizmodo.com/how-an-81-year-old-woman-preserved-an-endangered-native-1639334577</a></span><span style="font-size:0.9375rem"> </span></p><p style="margin:0px 0px 1.25rem;padding:0px;font-family:Georgia,serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:24px;word-break:break-word"></p><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:georgia,serif;font-size:large;display:inline">​</div><br><p></p></div></div>