How An Octogenarian Preserved An Endangered Native American Language (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

*How An Octogenarian Preserved An Endangered Native American Language*

Jordan Kushins
Yesterday 8:30pm

It's easy to take translations for granted when Google can swap between
Albanian and Zulu with the click of a button, but even that tech has real
world limitations. Marie Wilcox <https://vimeo.com/105673207> is the last
fluent speaker of Wukchumni, one of 130 different endangered Native
American languages in the United States that don't have any kind of
digital—or analog—legacy.

Over the course of seven years in California's San Joaquin Valley, she
worked with her daughter and grandson to catalog everything she knows about
the language. First, she hand-scrawled memories on scraps of paper; then,
she hunt-and-pecked on an old keyboard to complete a dictionary and type
out legends like "How We Got Our Hands." Next, she recorded the whole thing
on audio for pronunciation—it's very specific!—and posterity.

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Access full article
​and video clip ​
below:

http://gizmodo.com/how-an-81-year-old-woman-preserved-an-endangered-native-1639334577


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