Keeping the Navajo language alive (fwd link)

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Keeping the Navajo language alive

By Steve Pfarrer
Staff Writer
Published on April 15, 2011
USA

While many native American languages have disappeared or become endangered,
spoken mostly by tribal elders, Navajo has survived, with its speakers
numbering over 100,000, possibly as many as 177,000 -- the highest number of
speakers of any native language in North America.

But Margaret "Peggy" Speas, a veteran linguist at the University of
Massachusetts Amherst, says Navajo faces an uncertain future -- a victim,
like other native languages, of U.S. policies from the late 1800s to mid
1900s that compelled many American Indians to stop speaking their native
tongues. Today, she notes, fewer than 5 percent of Navajo speakers are
children under age 5.

Access full article below:
http://www.amherstbulletin.com/story/id/204449/
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