Saving Native American languages (fwd link)

Wed Apr 1 18:29:35 UTC 2009

Wednesday, 1 April 2009 12:43 UK

Saving Native American languages

By Jane O'Brien
BBC News, Washington

More than 2,400 languages around the world are in danger of extinction,
according to Unesco, and the US is second only to India in having the highest
number of endangered languages.

The US has already lost more than a third of the indigenous languages that
existed before European colonisation, and the remaining 192 are classed by
Unesco as ranging between "unsafe" and "extinct".

As recently as 2008, the Alaskan tongue Eyak became officially extinct with the
death of Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker.

"We need more funding and more effort to return these languages to everyday
use," says Fred Nahwooksy, of the National Museum of the American Indian.

"We are making progress but money needs to be spent on revitalising languages,
not just documenting them. A lot of tribal communities say that is a defeatist
attitude, as if these languages are expected to become extinct."

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