With the threat of global languagesbeing lost at the rate of at least one per month, linguists, institutions, researchers, and affected communities are collaborating to maintain, revitalize, and celebrate Indigenous languages.
Languages across the world are endangered due to steady declines in usage as successive generations become bilingual for a variety of political, societal, and cultural reasons, including pressure to avoid discrimination, according to The Language Conservancy (TLC), a U.S. nonprofit working to protect and revitalize languages across the globe.
Without intervention, this loss of knowledge could triple within 40 years. By the end of the century, 1,500 languages could cease to exist, according to a 2021 study by a group of Australian researchers, “Global Predictors of Language Endangerment and the Future of Linguistic Diversity,” published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. Research shows that certain Indigenous languages are at the greatest risk of disappearing.
Since speech is the core of one’s identity and culture, preservation of Indigenous languages can foster health and success, TLC finds. Experts also say language is essential to preserving cultural and historical knowledge, worldviews, and forms of correspondence.
Through Indigenous community partnerships, U.S. higher education institutions are a part of the movement working to stem this crisis. A project at Montclair State University (MSU), a public research university in New Jersey, focuses on reviving the Native American Munsee language, while faculty and students at Haverford College, a private liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, are working in Oaxaca, Mexico, to safeguard Zapotec languages.
MSU Advocates for Munsee Language
Scholars and students in MSU’s new Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) minor program are working with the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape Nation on projects encompassing both environmental justice and language revitalization.
“In order…