Language Survival

[Andre Cramblit]

Nearly half of the more than 6,000 languages spoken in the world are  
in danger of extinction. And leading the world's epidemic of  
disappearing dialects is the U.S. state of California. This weekend,  
members of 40 tribes from around the state met with linguists to  
discuss the challenges of saving those endangered languages

More than half of the over one hundred native California tongues have  
disappeared. Many others have only a few, aging speakers. When this  
last fluent generation dies, languages spoken by Californians over  
centuries, will also die. At a recent gathering of some 200 Native  
Americans struggling to maintain their dialects, Robert Geary  
remembered driving in his car, listening to a tape of his long- 
deceased great uncle speaking the native Elém Pomo language. "I was  
so lost hearing my language that I was doing 80 [mph] and I didn't  
even know it. I got a [speeding] ticket, yeah, I got a ticket."

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