105: Journal #7

[Molly Cramer]

Today I read the New York Times article about a Native American tribe that is actively working towards saving their dying language. A total of about five people currently speak Siletz Dee-ni and one of these speakers specifically has enlisted the help of the Living Tongues Institute in order to help him keep this language alive. He is creating an online dictionary that has a library of 10,000 audio entries so that non-speakers can learn the language on their own time. This article reminds me of the conversation we were having in class the other day and how we were commenting that having a language is so important to maintaining/creating a specific culture. For instance, the new state of Israel needed its own language if it was ever going to be successful. Likewise the speakers of Siletz Dee-ni are fearful that the last of their culture will be stamped out once no one else living can speak the language. This also reminds me of a movement I am pretty familiar with because of my Jewish background. Yiddish used to be a widely-spoken language in Eastern Europe that began to die out after the Holocaust. My grandparents do not speak fluent Yiddish but they both communicate a lot with Yiddish words that have been passed down from their parents. A rabbi from my hometown in the last few years has started a project similar to the Living Tongues Institute that focuses on keeping Yiddish alive by preserving it in a dictionary. It is important to the Jewish people that Yiddish stay alive because it is a keepsake from before the Holocaust and because it defines the culture of Eastern Europe prior to World War I. This is why it reminds me a lot of the Native American language preservation and I truly do believe that preserving their language will enable the culture to thrive long after those five speakers are gone.