Jeudi 24 janvier 2008
So, now ... guess who this woman is ...
I give you a hint : we said she was the last Alaska language speaker.
So by now you must have found her name.
Unfortunately, Marie Smith Jones has died at the age of 89. Go and read her
obituary - even if you have had enough of endangered languages!-.
About vanishing languages in general
An extract from an article from the New York Times :
About vanishing languages in general
An extract from an article from the New York Times :
'Dr. Anderson and Dr. Harrison worked on a report issued in September indicating that out of the world’s 7,000 languages, one is lost every few weeks. It is a human rights issue, Dr. Anderson said, as many native languages are silenced because of colonialism. Dying languages could also hold the key to finding native treatments for disease.
And then there are the less tangible reasons. “Language is essentially a historical library of information about a people and a culture,” Dr. Anderson said. “There are a lot of people who intrinsically value the search for knowledge.”'
