Krauss rewarded for language work (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Krauss rewarded for language work

By Robinson Duffy
Staff Writer
Published January 29, 2007
http://newsminer.com/2007/01/29/4827/

Michael Krauss, professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
and the founder of the Alaska Native Language Center, received the Ken
Hale Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for the Study of
Indigenous Languages of the Americas. The prize, awarded to an
individual who has dedicated his or her life to the understanding and
preservation of native languages, is the society’s highest honor.

Krauss joined the UAF faculty in 1960 and has been a professor of
linguistics since 1968. In 1972 he helped found the Alaska Native
Language Center and served as the institution’s first director.

“Back at that time very little attention was paid to Native languages in
the state,” Steve Jacobson, a professor with Alaska Native Language
Center, said. “They hadn’t been studied much by scholars, the schools,
of course, ignored them and suppressed them and even the speakers of
the languages often took them for granted. Michael Krauss changed all
that. Now everyone in the state is intensely aware of Native
languages.”

Krauss’ own personal work has centered on the Athabascan and Eskimo
languages and especially the Eyak language which used to be spoken in
the Cordova area. Now there is only one living fluent Native speaker.

“I’ve devoted a large portion of my life to providing the richest
possible documentation of that language,” Krauss said.

All over the world Native languages are threatened, Krauss said. Of the
earth’s remaining 6,000 languages, he said, about half of them will
completely disappear during this century with all but the last 5 or 10
percent dying in the next century. Krauss said he would like to see
governments work to stop, what he calls, the tragic loss of languages.

“We work to save endangered species but we don’t work to save endangered
languages,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to keep them alive than to bring
them back.”

Native languages are an important part of native culture, Krauss said,
and when they are lost an important component of a culture and society
are lost.

“When you lose a language and a language goes extinct it’s like dropping
a bomb on the Louvre,” Krauss said. “Ken Hale said that.”

Krauss said he was deeply touched to be given an award bearing Hale’s
name, especially since he and Hale were close friends who even shared
the same birthday. Hale, a professor of linguistics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spoke over 50 languages, died
in 2001.

“Ken Hale was one of the most revered of all modern American linguists,”
Krauss said. “A famed polyglot who learned languages amazingly and who
gave back with his talent to the people whose languages he was
recording.”

The Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas
presented the award to Krauss during the organization’s annual meeting
earlier this month in Anaheim, Calif.

Contact staff writer Robinson Duffy at 459-7523 or rduffy at newsminer.com.