Sunday, April 13, 2014
Yurok Language Program in NYT
Posted on Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 9:18 AM
In case you missed it, Eureka High School's Yurok language program landed on the front page of yesterday's New York Times.
"A generation ago, linguists predicted that Yurok and many other Native American languages would become extinct around this time with the deaths of tribal members who grew up speaking the languages, the criterion used at the time," the story says. "All of the current Yurok teachers came to the language as adults, by painstakingly acquiring it from the last living elders and sometimes comparing notes with outside linguists."
The story offers a nice overview of the Yurok Tribe's campaign to revive its language, noting that it serves as a model to many other tribes.
"A generation ago, linguists predicted that Yurok and many other Native American languages would become extinct around this time with the deaths of tribal members who grew up speaking the languages, the criterion used at the time," the story says. "All of the current Yurok teachers came to the language as adults, by painstakingly acquiring it from the last living elders and sometimes comparing notes with outside linguists."
The story offers a nice overview of the Yurok Tribe's campaign to revive its language, noting that it serves as a model to many other tribes.
