According to the New York Times article, Siletz Dee-ni currently has five speakers left and is on the verge of extinction. Speakers of Siletz Dee-ni have been putting in tremendous effort to keep the language alive. Bud Lane, a tribe member, has logged in around 10,000 audio entries to an online Siletz Dee-ni dictionary by himself. This effort has not gone unnoticed; there have been increase in the number of accesses to this online dictionary. The tribe members just want to bring stability to the language with enough speaker pool so that the language doesn't go away.
When you think about what language symbolizes for unique groups in the world, these immense efforts that the few speakers of the tribe are putting in is not surprising. Language gives identity to groups. When we talked about the Chinese letters being mixed in with the Korean language and the discussion of "purity" of language, we can see how people think of language as the symbol of identity of the group. Many Koreans wanted to make the language "pure" by getting rid of the usage of Chinese letters(hanja) because they felt that by using having these Chinese letters mixed in with Korean, they were tainting the identity of Koreans with a hint of Chinese. Similarly, if you think about what is lost when a language goes to extinction, the group that the language belonged to loses their identity. Once Siletz Dee-ni goes instinct and English takes over, they will slowly start losing their cultural identity. Language is a main tie one has to one's heritage. Without it, it is hard to feel the connection to one's heritage and culture.
Comments