Language on life support (fwd link)

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Language on life support
Dozens of First Nations tongues just a generation from extinction

Adam McDowell, National Post  Published: Saturday, January 24, 2009
Canada

The clock on the kitchen wall at the Moraviantown Reserve seniors' centre loudly
clicks away the seconds as Velma Noah waits to see if any of the few remaining
speakers of a vanishing language can remember the word for "beet."

Five elderly women and a man stare ahead of them, silently searching for a word
they may not have heard since they were children, when nearly everyone on this
small reserve could speak the language.

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