Linguist's notes shed light on California's past (fwd link)

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Linguist's notes shed light on California's past
Harrington traveled state interviewing last surviving speakers of many native
tongues

By Lisa M. Krieger

MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Launched: 02/10/2008 03:05:34 AM PST

Bringing voices from the grave, volunteers at UC Davis are working to decipher
nearly a million pages of notes from conversations with long-gone Native
Californians, reviving more than 100 languages from the distant past.

Word by word, they type the scribbled and cryptic notes left by John Peabody
Harrington, an eccentric and tireless linguist who in the early 1900s traveled
throughout California interviewing the last surviving speakers of many native
tongues, including the local Muwekma Ohlone tribe.

Their effort to organize a database of Harrington's vast material will build a
Rosetta stone for these languages and their dialects, creating dictionaries of
words, phrases and tribal tales and customs that were destined to disappear.

To access the full article, juts follow the link below:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_8223769