Saving Language From Extintion

[Andre Cramblit]

American Indians Trying to Save Languages From Extinction

By JAMES BROOKE

 [This article is from the April 9, 1998 issue of the New York Times].

HOOPA, Calif. -- At age 88 and blind in one eye, James Jackson Jr. keeps a
crystal clear memory of a tiny linguistic skirmish in a continental
campaign that has brought most of
North America's Indian languages to the brink of extinction.

"The teacher at the Indian school grabbed my friend by the arm and said,
'You're speaking your language -- I'm going to wash your mouth out with
soap,"' Jackson recalled.
"That's where we lost it."

Eight decades later, Jackson told his story, in English, to a small circle
of Hupa language students. Although the tribe has about 2,000 members, the
room contained the four
people who make up about half of the world's fluent Hupa speakers: Jackson,
his younger sister, Minnie, and two elderly friends. Two others died in
February.

Despite five centuries of population decline, assimilation and linguistic
oppression, North America's Indian languages have survived surprisingly
well: 211 still exist today; there
were about 300 such languages when Europeans first arrived in what is now
the United States and Canada.

But with the impact of television and radio and increased mobility, North
America's Indian languages are suffering their sharpest free fall in
recorded history.

Of the 175 Indian languages still spoken in the United States, only 20 are
still spoken by mothers to babies, said Michael Krauss, a linguist at the
University of Alaska who
surveys native languages. In contrast, 70 languages are spoken only by
grandparents, and 55 more are spoken by 10 or fewer tribal members.


Full STory @:
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~pwd/endangeredamerindian.html