In Alaska, a Frenchman Fights to Revive the Eyak's Dead Tongue (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

AUGUST 10, 2010

In Alaska, a Frenchman Fights to Revive the Eyak's Dead Tongue
Natives Take Dialect Lessons From Guillaume Leduey; Blurting Out 'Keełtaak'

By JIM CARLTON

CORDOVA, Alaska—Mona Curry recently stared teary-eyed at a film of her late
mother speaking in the native-Alaskan language of Eyak at a tribal ceremony.
Then she turned to a 21-year-old Frenchman for translation.

"She said that it's beautiful," Guillaume Leduey explained without
hesitation. "It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you God."

Eyak is an indigenous Alaskan language that has an unlikely ally- a 21 year
old Frenchman named Guillaume Leduey. WSJ's Jim Carlton reports.

Mr. Leduey, a college student from Le Havre, France, has made it his mission
to bring the Eyak tongue back from extinction. Eyak tribe membership once
numbered in the hundreds in south central Alaska, then dwindled over the
past two centuries as other tribes and Western settlement encroached.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704499604575407862950503190.html
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