Indigenous languages rapidly disappearing

Wednesday, September 19, 2007  

A joint project of the National Geographic Society and the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages of has identified five "hotspots" where indigenous languages are in danger of dying out.

Of the five hotspots, three are in the United States and Canada. The threatened languages include 40 in Oklahoma and the southwestern United States, 54 in the Pacific Northwest and 113 in the central South America.

In Oklahoma, only five elderly men of the Yuchi Tribe can still speak their language, which is unrelated to any other in the world. In Oregon, there is just one man can speak Siletz Dee-ni.

The Enduring Voices project aims to catalog some of the languages before they are completely lost.

Get the Story:
Vanishing Languages Identified (The Washington Post 9/19)
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Some Indian languages in Oklahoma on endangered list (The Oklahoman 9/19)
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Languages Die, but Not Their Last Words (The New York Times 9/19)
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$rl Enduring Voices - http://www.languagehotspots.org