Response to the article:
The article “Tribe Revives Language on Verge of Extinction” talks about how a language has been literally brought back from extinction. The Siletz tribe was declared extinct in the 1950s. A few members of the tribe, as few as five, recovered the tribe and the language by the 1970s. About 4,900 individuals are currently enrolled in the tribe. In addition, a school curriculum has been created that teaches the Siletz language in grade school and it may extend to be taught in high schools as a foreign language. Non-members of the tribe, such as the linguistics graduate student Ms. Johnson, are taking special interest in the language. She helped members of the tribe in their seven-year project to create a Siletz dictionary, or the Coastal Athabascan dictionary.
This article was of special interest to me since I am studying Hebrew, another nearly extinct language. The stories of both languages show their important part of the people’s identity. Languages go extinct due to the expansion of other languages and the dispersal of the native speakers into other areas of the world. The only way to bring the language back from extinction is by gathering the speakers into a nation, a region, or a tribe, in order for it to flourish and spread.
Comments