Saving language with a Record-A-Thon (fwd link)

[Phillip E Cash Cash]

Saving language with a Record-A-Thon

By STEVEN SHORT on July 27, 2011 - 4:51pm
USA

[audio link]

The Bay Area is so diverse, that walking down the street or sitting on
BART, you might hear a number of languages being spoken. Some you
might recognize, like Spanish or Mandarin. And then there’s Arabic,
Italian, and French.

But linguists are predicting that nearly half of today’s languages
will be extinct within the next hundred years. Languages such as that
of the Wintu tribe here in California is endangered, and in northern
Australia, there were only 10 fluent speakers of the Wageman language
as of the year 2000.

But, as KALW’s Steven Short reports, one group in San Francisco is
working to make sure these languages don’t disappear without a trace.

Access full article below:
http://kalwnews.org/audio/2011/07/27/saving-language-record-thon_1120130.html