New website keeps Lakota language alive with the latest news


A screenshot of Woihanble.Com. Woihanble means "dream" in the Lakota language.

A new website is keeping the Lakota language alive with timely content.

Woihanble.com features articles from The Lakota Country Times and the Native Sun News. Co-creators Matthew Rama and Peter Hill of the Lakota Language Initiative translate the stories into Lakota and include audio versions so that people can hear the language in addition to reading it.

"A lot of fluent speakers are not necessarily accustomed to reading 1,500-word articles on arcane subjects," Peter Hill told the Associated Press. "So having the audio version and having the article read to you is going to make it a lot more accessible to a lot more people."

The number of fluent Lakota speakers has dropped to about 2,000 in recent years, the AP said.

Get the Story:
This News Website Is a Lakota-Speaker’s “Dream” (Smithsonian.Com 3/21)
In Effort to Preserve Language, Website Posts News in Lakota (AP 3/18)

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