Students study to speak nearly lost Native American languages (fwd link)

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Students study to speak nearly lost Native American languages

Story Published: Feb 13, 2009 at 10:56 AM PST

By SHELBY MARTIN The (Eugene) Register-Guard

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) - When his foreign language instructor says something,
University of Oregon freshman Carson Viles knows it's important to pay
attention.

"I might never get a chance to hear that phrase again," he said.

It's true. Viles is taking Yakama Sahaptin, one of a family of American Indian
languages spoken along the Columbia River and offered for the first time this
year at the UO. The class, taught by native speaker and Yakama elder Virginia
Beavert, is not a typical foreign language class. There are no textbooks, no
study-abroad programs, no dubbed TV shows, and the instructor is one of only
200 people who can converse in the target language.

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