IF THEY HAD ANYTHING IMPORTANT TO SAY...:

A campaign to save American Indian languages: As many American Indian languages pass away with their last few elderly speakers, so do the unusual worldviews phrases can impart. (Faye Flam, 6/03/08, Philadelphia Inquirer)

In the Lakota language, a single word expresses the awe and connectedness with nature that some feel looking at the Northern Lights. In Euchee, the language makes no distinction between humans and other animals, though it does differentiate between Euchee people and non-Euchee.

And the Koasati language of Louisiana provides no word for good-bye, since time is seen as more cyclical than linear. To end a conversation, you would say something like, "This was good."

More than 300 American Indian languages flourished in North America at the time of Columbus, each carrying a unique way of understanding the world.

And despite an often-brutal campaign to stamp them out, more than half of those languages have survived, including the Delaware Valley's Lenape, though the pool of speakers has dwindled.

Can they be saved?

...they'd have figured out how to write it down.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 2, 2008 11:52 PM