La.'s Tunica tribe revives its lost language (fwd link)

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La.'s Tunica tribe revives its lost language

By MARY FOSTER Associated Press
Posted: 08/06/2011 08:46:41 AM PDT

In spring 2010, the 51-year-old Tunica Tribal Council member had been
searching the website of Tulane University in New Orleans when she
noticed that the school specialized in lesser-known languages.

"And I thought, they don't get much more unknown than ours," said
Lintinger, whose maternal great-great-grandfather was a tribal chief
in the 1930s, the last decade the language was spoken.

So she sought the help of Judith M. Maxwell, who heads the Tulane
Interdisciplinary Program in Linguistics. It fit the criteria for a
dead language, as the tribe has not found anyone who even remembers
hearing the Tunica language as a child.

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