Linguistics Students Help Revitalize Critically Endangered Language in Mexico (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Linguistics Students Help Revitalize Critically Endangered Language in
MexicoBy Ryan Dougherty
May 27, 2014

A professor and three Tri-Co students recently visited the leaders of a
city in Oaxaca, Mexico, to present theirZapotec Talking Dictionary
<http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/zapotec/>, designed to help
revitalize a native language on the verge of disappearing.

Carolyn Anderson '14 was nervous about that early-May visit to Tlacolula de
Matamoros. She and the rest of the Tri-Co team were proud of their work on
the dictionary but unsure of how it would be received. But those nerves
vanished as soon as Assistant Professor of Linguistics Brook Lillehaugen
displayed the dictionary on her phone.

"[The Tlacolula leaders] started smiling," says Anderson, a linguistics
major from Tacoma, Wash. "These are important, busy men, but they all took
the time to squint at the small screen and try it out. You could see their
faces light up as the phone was passed around the room."

The Zapotec language family is comprised of approximately 40 languages, all
endangered, says Lillehaugen. The variety spoken in Tlacolula de Matamoros
is critically endangered, with only about 100 elderly speakers
remaining. Key causes include economic and ideological factors that push
native-language speakers to adopt Spanish.

Access full article below:
http://www.swarthmore.edu/news-and-events/linguistics-students-help-revitalize-critically-endangered-language-in-mexico.xml
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20140607/24b93d85/attachment.htm>