Language revival is when people try to make a language that is not spoken, or is spoken very little, spoken more

often again.Language death is what happens when a language is not used by the people who spoke it before. Language revival wants to save a language that is dead or endangered. The Hebrew language was once a language that was not used, but because the language was revived, people now speak and use it again. Many languages today are now trying to be revived.

Language revitalization, language revival or reversing language shift is the attempt by interested parties, including individuals, cultural or community groups, governments, or political authorities, to reverse the decline of a language. If the decline is severe, the language may be endangered, moribund, sleeping (see Wesley Leonard's work), or extinct. In these cases, the goal of language revitalization is often to recover the spoken use of the language. Although the goals of language revitalization vary by community and situation, a goal of many communities is to return a language that is extinct or endangered to daily use. The process of language revitalization is the reverse of language death. "There are various ethical, aesthetic and utilitarian benefits of language revival - for example, historical justice, diversity and employability, respectively.

Theory
Reversing language shift has been an area of study among sociolinguists, including Joshua Fishman, in recent decades. Reversing language shift involves establishing the degree to which a particular language has been 'dislocated' in order to determine the best way to assist or revive the language.

Revival linguistics

Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes Revival Linguistics as a new linguistic discipline and paradigm. "Zuckermann's term 'Revival Linguistics' is modelled upon 'Contact Linguistics' (<language contact). Revival linguistics inter alia explores the universal constraints and mechanisms involved in language reclamation, renewal and revitalization. It draws perspicacious comparative insights from one revival attempt to another, thus acting as an epistemological bridge between parallel discourses in various local attempts to revive sleeping tongues all over the globe."[2] Zuckermann acknowledges the presence of "local peculiarities and idiosyncrasies"[3] but suggests that "there are linguistic constraints applicable to all revival attempts. Mastering them would help revivalists and first nations' leaders to work more efficiently. For example, it is easier to resurrect basic vocabulary and verbal conjugations than sounds and word order. Revivalists should be realistic and abandon discouraging, counter-productive slogans such as "Give us authenticity or give us death!"[3]

According to Zuckermann, "revival linguistics combines scientific studies of native language acquisition and foreign language learning. After all, language reclamation is the most extreme case of second-language learning. Revival linguistics complements the established area of documentary linguistics, which records endangered languages before they fall asleep."[3] Zuckermann proposes that "revival linguistics changes the field of historical linguistics by, for instance, weakening the family tree model, which implies that a language has only one parent."[3]
[edit]

Steps in reversing language shift

Joshua Fishman's model for reviving threatened (or sleeping) languages, or for making them [4][5] sustainable, consists of an eight-stage process. Efforts should be concentrated on the earlier stages of restoration until they have been consolidated before proceeding to the later stages. The eight stages are as follows: 1. Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language). 2. Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language). 3. In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively. 4. In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups encourage literacy in the language but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system. 5. Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education. 6. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace (lower worksphere). 7. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media. 8. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated encourage use of the language in higher education, government etc. This model of language revival is intended to direct efforts to where they are most effective and to avoid wasting energy trying to achieve the later stages of recovery when the earlier stages have not been achieved. For instance it is probably wasteful of effort to campaign for the use of the language on television or in government services if hardly any families are in the habit of using the language.

[edit]Factors

which help an endangered language to progress

[6]

David Crystal, in his book Language Death, proposes six factors which may help a language to progress. He postulates that an endangered language will progress if its speakers: 1. increase their prestige within the dominant community 2. increase their wealth 3. increase their legitimate power in the eyes of the dominant community 4. have a strong presence in the education system 5. can write down the language 6. can make use of electronic technology [edit]Specific

examples

Total revival of a "dead" language (in the sense of having no native speakers) into a self-sustaining community of several million first language speakers has happened only once, in the case of the Hebrew language, now the national language of Israel. In this case, there was a unique set of historical and cultural characteristics that facilitated the revival (see Revival of the Hebrew language). However, during several periods in the past, literary languages without native speakers nonetheless enjoyed great prestige and practical use as lingua francas, often counting millions of fluent speakers at a time. In many such cases, a decline in the use of the literary language, sometimes precipitous, was later accompanied by a strong renewal. This happened, for example, in the revival of Classical Latin in the Renaissance, and the revival of Sanskrit in the early centuries A.D. Many of these literary languages, although having few or no native speakers, were far from "dead", and were quite often used even in extemporaneous speech. This type of situation exists to this day in Arabic-speaking areas, where the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic, a form of the Classical Arabic of the 6th century A.D.) is taught to all educated speakers and is used in radio broadcasts, formal discussions, [citation needed] etc. In addition, literary languages have sometimes risen to the level of becoming first languages of very large language communities. An example is standard Italian, which originated as a literary language derived from the language of 13th-century Florence, especially as used by most important Florentine writers such as Dante and Bocaccio. This language existed for several centuries primarily as a literary vehicle, with few native speakers; even as late as 1861, on the eve of Italian unification, the language only counted about 500,000 speakers, many non-native, out of a total population of c. 22,000,000. The subsequent success of the language has been through conscious development, where speakers of any of the numerous Italian languages were taught standard Italian as a second language and [citation needed] subsequently imparted it to their children, who learned it as a first language. Note that in the case of Italian, and similar situations such as the eventual dominance of modern German, Czech, Finnish and other languages that originated as largely or purely literary languages, is that even though these literary languages by themselves had at one point few or no native speakers, they were dialects of existing spoken languages that already had large communities of native speakers hence the language cannot reasonably be said to have been "dead". Furthermore, many of the speakers who eventually adopted the languages were already speakers of closely related languages (e.g. other Romance languages or Germanic languages). The uniqueness of the revitalization of Hebrew is that before its revival, there were no native speakers of any variety of Hebrew, and the early community that led to its revitalization was composed largely of speakers of the [citation needed] unrelated Yiddish language (a variety of Middle High German).

Other than Hebrew, there are no cases of completely dead languages revived into communities of larger than a few thousand speakers (often composed largely of enthusiasts, and often not passed on from one generation to the next). The Cornish, though still used in the home into the 20th century, had spent a century extinct as a visible community language. Its revival started in 1904 and there are now a growing number of speakers, currently in the thousands, some of whom were brought up bilingually. The development of revivedPrussian started in the second half of the 20th century by the work [citation needed] of Vytautas Maiulis and others. Official attempts to revitalise languages under threat from extinction, such as the promotion of Irish in both the Republic and Northern Ireland (see Gaelic revival), Welsh in Wales, Galician in Galicia, Basque in Basque Country, [citation needed] and Catalan in Catalonia have met with mixed success. In China, too, a few groups of Manchu language enthusiasts are trying to revive the language of their ancestors using available dictionaries and textbooks, and even occasional visit to Qapqal Xibe [7] Autonomous County in Xinjiang, where the related Xibe language is still spoken natively. Some Amerindian groups have attempted to revive moribund languages.
[8]

Hundreds of rare languages have teaching materials available on the web for use by members of the [9] community as well as anyone who wants to learn them. About 6,000 other languages can be learned to some extent by listening to recordings made for other purposes, such as religious texts, [10][11] where translations are available in more widely known languages. Often the organization reviving the language chooses a particular dialect, even standardizes one from several variants, and adds new forms, mainly modern vocabulary, through neologisms, extensions of meaning for old words, calques from sibling languages (Arabic for Modern Hebrew, Welsh and Breton for Cornish), or plain borrowings from the modern international languages. Supporters of other variants can feel that the chosen form is not "the real one", and that the original purpose of the revival has been defeated. In recent times alone, more than 2000 languages have already become extinct around the world. Still others have only a few known speakers; these languages are called endangered languages. The UN estimates that more than half of the languages spoken today have fewer than 10,000 speakers and that a quarter have fewer than 1,000 speakers and that, unless there are some efforts to maintain them, over the next hundred years most of these will become extinct. The Endangered Language Fund is a fund dedicated to the preservation and revival of endangered languages. [edit]Europe In Europe, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of both local and learned languages declined as the central governments of the different states imposed their vernacular language as the standard throughout education and official use (this was the case in the United [citation needed] Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy and Greece, and to some extent, in Germany and Austria). In the last few decades, local nationalism and human rights movements have made a more multicultural policy standard in European states; sharp condemnation of the earlier practices of suppressing regional languages was expressed in the use of such terms as "linguicide". Campaigns have raised the profiles of local languages to such an extent that in some European regions, the local languages have acquired the status of official languages, along with the national language. The Council of Europe's action in this area (see European Charter for Regional or Minority

Languages) is in contrast to the European Union's granting of official status to a restricted number of [citation needed] official languages (see Languages of the European Union). On the other end of the spectrum, Latin, the learned language in which higher education and academic communication were carried out in Europe for many centuries, thus providing a cultural link to the continent across all of its universities until the aforementioned period, has also been the object of a language revival movement and is precariously growing in number of speakers (cf. Living Latin), although, as a language which is native to no people, this movement has received little support from [citation needed] governments, national or supranational. [edit]Asia The Ainu language of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan is currently moribund, but efforts are underway to revive it. A 2006 survey of the Hokkaido Ainu indicated that only 4.6% of Ainu [12] surveyed were able to converse in or "speak a little" Ainu. As of 2001, Ainu was not taught in any elementary or secondary schools in Japan, but was offered at numerous language centres and [13] universities in Hokkaido, as well as at Tokyo's Chiba University. [edit]Criticism The concept of protecting languages from extinction is considered unnecessary by some, such as writer Kenan Malik. Malik argues that it is "irrational" to try to preserve all the world's languages as language death is natural and in many cases inevitable even with intervention. It is also argued that language death improves communication by ensuring more people speak the same language, this [14][15] may benefit the economy and reduce conflict.

Revived Language

A revived language is one that, having experienced near or complete extinction as either a spoken or written language, has been intentionally revived and has regained some of its former status.[citation needed] The most frequent reason for extinction is the marginalisation of local languages within a wider dominant nation state, which might at times amount to outright political oppression. This process normally works alongside economic and cultural pressures for greatercentralisation and assimilation. Once a language has become marginalised in this way, it is often perceived as being "useless" by its remaining speakers, who associate it with low social status and poverty, and consequently fail to pass it on to the next generation.

[edit]Ainu
Main article: Ainu language The Ainu language of the indigenous Ainu people of northern Japan is currently moribund, identified by Japanese scholars as a "dying language" since the 1920s.[1] A 2006 survey of the Hokkaido Ainu indicated that only 4.6% of Ainu surveyed were able to converse in or "speak a little" Ainu.[1] As of 2001, Ainu was not taught in any elementary or secondary schools in Japan, but was offered at numerous language centres

and universities in Hokkaido, as well as at Tokyo's Chiba University.[2] An Ainu language radio station was established in Hokkaido in 2001, and manga books have been produced in the language.[3] The work of researcher Kayano Shigeru has been prominent in the revival of Ainu, including the recording of the Ainu oral epics known as yukar. Shigeru also began the Nibutani Ainu Language School in 1983, the first Ainu school in Japan.[4]

[edit]Barngarla
Main article: Barngarla language Barngarla (Parnkalla, Banggarla) is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Barngarla people in Eyre Peninsula, South Australia,Australia. It is currently being revived by Ghil'ad Zuckermann (University of Adelaide) and the Barngarla community, based on 170-year-old documents.[5]

[edit]Belarusian
Main article: Belarusian language The whole nation of Belarusians was "invisible" 150 years ago, with the area's people being known as Litvins, from the name of theGrand Duchy of Lithuania, to whom the Belarusian land belonged. The nation was under heavy Polonization, followed by Russification. The language recovered after the Russian Revolution, followed by another period of neglect. A second chance of revival appeared after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, followed by significant increase of interest in Belarusian culture, language and historical heritage. The government of Alexander Lukashenko has been accused of associating these interests with opposition to his policy of union with Russia. As of 2005, Minsk, the capital of Belarus, does not have a single school with education carried out in the Belarusian language.

[edit]Chochenyo
Main article: Chochenyo language The Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of California has revitalized the Chochenyo language, which was last spoken in the 1930s.[6][7][8] As of 2009, many students were able to carry on conversations in Chochenyo.[9]

[edit]Cornish
Main article: Cornish language

The opening verses of Origo Mundi, the first play of the Ordinalia (the magnum opusof medieval Cornish literature), written by an unknown monk in the late 14th century

Cornish was used as a community language in Cornwall, United Kingdom, until the late 18th century. A limited number of people did continue to use the language throughout the 19th and possibly the early 20th centuries. Literature from the Medieval and Tudor periods, and substantial fragments, including grammars, from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries survived, which allowed Cornish to be revived in the early 20th century as part of the Celtic Revival. The revival of the language was known for disputes over orthography during the late 20th century, until a Standard Written Form was agreed in 2008. The number of Cornish speakers is now in the thousands and growing, and the language is now taught in some schools. UNESCO recently reclassified the language from "extinct" to "critically endangered".[10]

[edit]Hawaiian
Main article: Hawaiian language On six of the seven inhabited islands of Hawaii, Hawaiian was displaced by English and is no longer used as the daily language of communication. The one exception is Niihau, where Hawaiian has never been displaced, has never been endangered, and is still used almost exclusively. Native speakers of Niihau Hawaiian speak among themselves in a way significantly different from the Hawaiian of the other islands so different that it is unintelligible to non-Niihau speakers of Hawaiian. Efforts to revive the language have increased in recent decades. Hawaiian language immersion schools are now open to children whose families want to retain (or introduce) Hawaiian language into the next generation. The local NPR station features a short segment titled "Hawaiian word of the day". Additionally, the Sunday editions of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin feature a brief article called Kauakukalahale, written entirely in Hawaiian by a student.

[edit]Hebrew
Main article: Revival of the Hebrew language

First Hebrew school in Rishon Lezion

Hebrew was revived as a spoken language two millennia after it ceased to be spoken, and is considered a language revival "success story". The language was extinct as a spoken language until the 19th century when it was revived by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda; prior to that, though respected and preserved as the holy language of Judaism, it was considered impractically archaic or too sacred for day-to-day communication, although it was, in fact, used as an international language between Jews who had no other common tongue, with several Hebrew-medium newspapers in circulation around Europe at the beginning of the 19th century, and a number of Zionist conferences being conducted exclusively in Hebrew. It is now, however, spoken by over 7,000,000 people. Most of these live in Israel, where Hebrew is the official and most commonly spoken language, but many in Jewish communities outside Israel have undertaken its study.

[edit]Kaurna
Main article: Kaurna language Kaurna is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Kaurna people in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. It is currently being revived by the Kaurna Warra Pintyandi, a committee of Kaurna Elders and youth, teachers, linguists and other researchers based at the University of Adelaide.

[edit]Latin
Main article: Contemporary Latin

Latin in use on an ATM.

Latin was historically the language of the Roman Empire, but spread through Europe and beyond, thanks partially to its role in the Roman Catholic Churchand in higher register. Feature films and broadcasting have been conducted in Latin. Two notable examples include 1976's Sebastiane by Derek Jarman and Paul Humfress, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (which also contains long sections in Aramaic.) Harry Potter has even been translated into Latin andancient Greek.[11] Somewhat like Sanskrit, Hebrew, Maori and Manx, Latin has never been entirely out of view, and has always had some speakers, but a lack of native speakers.

[edit]Lazuri,

aka Laz

Main article: Laz language The UNESCO Atlas of the Worlds Languages in Danger (2010) declares Lazuri as a language that is definitively endangered. Lazuri is a Southwest Caucasian language spoken by ca 30,000 people as their mother tongue along the East Black Sea coast of Turkey and in some parts of the Autonomous Republic of Adjara (Salminen, 2007). The region where the Lazi people live is called Lazona (Benninghaus, 1989). Because Lazuri is primarily an oral language, and all new speakers tend to grow up bilingual (typically speaking Lazuri and Turkish), the language is at risk of extinction (e.g., Yuksel-Sokmen & Chasin, 2008). Although the Lazuri alphabet was first established around the late 20s by a native folklorist, named Iskender Tsitasi, who published periodicals and poems until 1938, there were many obstacles to learn and to teach Lazuri due to the lack of language learning resources and limited documentation of the language (interview with language activist smail Avc Bucaklii in Istanbul, April 2012). Hence, Lazuri remained a primary spoken language until Lazoglu and Feuerstein re-introduced the Lazuri Alboni or Alphabet in Latin letters in 1984 and started to publish periodicals, called 'Ogni' (Did you hear). The first L azuri Dictionary (Bucaklii & Uzunhasanolu, 2006) was among the first one to adopt the Lazuri Alboni. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery become the first book which has been formally translated into the Lazuri Alboni by Sinan Albayrakolu (2011) who worked four years on the Turkish to Lazuri translation. Also, in 2011 the Bosphorus University of Istanbul started to offer Lazuri as an elective class for beginners. With the recent establishment of the Lazika Yayin Kolektif (Lazika Publication Collective) in 2010, current and future generations of students, teachers, authors, and scholars of Lazuri are encouraged to contribute to the process of language revitalization, thus paving the way for a Lazuri Literature.

[edit]Leonese
Main article: Leonese language Leonese was recognised as a seriously endangered language by UNESCO, in 2006. The only legal reference to this language is in theAutonomy Statute of Castile and Len. The Province of Len government supports the knowledge of this language through courses, by celebrating "Leonese Language Day" and by sponsoring literary efforts in the Leonese language, such as "Cuentos del Sil", where nine writers from teenagers to people in their eighties develop several stories in Leonese. The Leonese Local Government uses the Leonese language in some of their bureaus, organizes courses for adults and in 2007 organized Leonese Language Day. The Leonese Local Government official website uses the Leonese language. The Leonese language is taught in two schools of Len city since February 2008. The local authority for education said it would be taught in all Leonese schools next course.

[edit]Manx
Main article: Manx language

Use of Manx on the national museum; note the smaller font size of the Manx.

Manx is a language spoken in the Isle of Man, which is in the Irish Sea, between Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. Manx ceased to function as a community language during the first quarter of the 20th century, but was revived by enthusiasts at a time when there were still a number of native speakers alive. Although, at one point, no native speakers of the language were alive and it may have been officially classified as "dead" in 1975, the revival appears to have gained strength in recent years. There is a regular programme in Manx on Manx Radio. As of 2006 there were forty-six pupils undergoing their education through the medium of Manx at theBunscoill Ghaelgagh.

[edit]Mori
Main article: Mori language Mori is the indigenous language of New Zealand, where it was commonly spoken until the 20th century.[12] In recent times initiatives have been taken to revitalize Mori as a spoken language. [13]

[edit]Occitan

Gascon

Main article: Aranese language

Aranese signage in Bossst, Val d'Aran

The Aranese language, a standardized form of the Pyrenean Gascon variety of the Occitan language spoken in the Aran Valley, in northwestern Catalonia is still spoken. Once considered to be an endangered language[citation needed], spoken mainly by older people, it is now experiencing a renaissance; it enjoys coofficial status with Catalan and Castilian(Spanish) within the Aran Valley, and since 1984 has been taught in schools.[14]

[edit]Palawa

kani (Tasmanian language)

Main article: Palawa kani Palawa kani is an attempt to revive various Tasmanian dialects in a single combined form. The original Tasmanian languages, which may have number a dozen or more, became extinct in 1905 when the last native speaker died. As part of community efforts to retrieve as much of the original Tasmanian culture as possible, efforts are made to (re)construct a language for the indigenous community. Due to the scarcity of records, Palawa kani is being constructed as a composite of the estimated 6 to 12 original languages. Theresa Sainty and Jenny Longey were the first two "language workers" to work on the project in 1999.

[edit]Sanskrit

A revived language being put to another use, the Agni, and Prithvimissiles of India.

Sanskrit was a pan-Indian language in Vedic times but lost its prominent place amongst spoken dialects in modern India. A number of attempts to revive Sanskrit have been made from the 18th century onwards. However, it has been challenged in this role by various community languages,Hindi, Urdu and English. Many of India's and Nepal's scientific and administrative terms are named in Sanskrit, as a counterpart of the western practice of naming scientific developments in Latin or Classical Greek. The Indian guided missile program that was commenced in 1983 by DRDO has named the five missiles (ballistic and others) that it has developed as Prithvi, Agni, Akash, Nag andTrishul ('Akash', 'Nag' and 'Trishul' are, however, Hindi; though written the same in theDevanagari script, these three words in Sanskrit are - both for pronunciation and transliteration - 'Akasha', 'Naga', and 'Trishula'). India's first modern fighter aircraft is named HAL Tejas.

Neo-Sanskrit is spoken in around 4 villages in India. The Mattur village in central Karnataka, Shimoga district claims to have native speakers of Sanskrit among its population. Historically the village was given by kingKrishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Telugu.[15] Samskrita Bharati (Sanskrit: , IPA: s skrt b r ti ) is a non-profit organisation working

to revive Sanskrit, also termedSanskrit revival. The organization has its headquarters in New Delhi, and U.S. chapter headquarters in San Jose, California. The Samskrita Bharati office in Bangalore is called "Aksharam" and houses a research wing, library, publication division, and audio-visual language lab for teaching spoken Sanskrit.

[edit]Wampanoag
Main article: Massachusett language In the 21st century, Wampanoag became the first Native American language in the United States to be revived, with young children brought up in the language.[16]

[edit]

Revival of the Hebrew language

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia History of the Hebrew language

Biblical Hebrew Mishnaic Hebrew Medieval Hebrew Ashkenazi Hebrew Sephardi Hebrew Yemenite Hebrew

Hebrew Language Revival Modern Hebrew

The revival of the Hebrew language was a process that took place in Europe and Palestine toward the end of the 19th century and into the 20th century, through which the language's usage changed from the sacred language of Judaism to a spoken and written language used for daily life in Israel. The process began as Jews started arriving in Palestine in the first half of the nineteenth century and used [1] Hebrew as a lingua franca. However, a parallel development in Europe elevated Hebrew from [2] primarily a sacred liturgical language into a literary language which played a key role in the [3] development of nationalist educational programs. Modern Hebrew, along with Modern Arabic, has been an official language in Israel since the British Mandate for Palestine, a situation that continued after Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948. More than purely a linguistic process, the revival of Hebrew was utilized by Jewish modernization and political movements, and became a tenet of the [4] ideology associated with settlement of the land, a safe homeland,Zionism and Israeli policy. The process of Hebrew's return to regular usage is unique; there are no other examples of anatural language without any native speakers subsequently acquiring several million such native speakers, and no other examples of a sacred language becoming a national language with millions of "first language" speakers. The language's revival eventually brought linguistic additions with it. While the initial leaders of the process insisted they were only continuing "from the place where [Hebrew's] vitality was ended", what was created represented a broader basis of language acceptance; it includes characteristics derived from all periods of Hebrew language, as well as from the non-Hebrew languages used by the longestablished European, North African, and Middle Eastern Jewish communities, with Yiddish (the European variant) being predominant.

To understand the terms "revival" and "revitalization," first you have to understand the current state of these languages. Linguists have a variety of grim-sounding terms for languages with few or no native speakers. A language which has no native speakers (people who grew up speaking the language as a child) is called "dead" or "extinct." A language which has no native speakers in the youngest generation is called "moribund." A language which has very few native speakers is called "endangered" or "imperilled." Language revival and language revitalization are attempts to preserve endangered languages, and that is precisely what our website project is about. Of the 800+

Amerindian languages, five hundred are endangered or worse. Most of the others are in Central and South America; in North America only Navajo usage is increasing, and even the relatively "healthy" languages like Cherokee--spoken by 22,000 people--are threatened by low percentages of children learning the languages. It is true that in the natural course of things, languages, like everything else, sometimes die. People choose, for a variety of valid social reasons, not to teach their children their own mother tongue. In the case of American Indian languages, however, the language drop-off has been artificially induced and precipitous, and just as with the human-caused endangered species crisis, it is worth doing something about it. Amerindian languages were deliberately destroyed, particularly in North America. In the earlier days of European contact, Indians were separated from their linguistic kin and resettled hundreds of miles away with individuals from other tribes who couldn't understand each other. Historically, this is the single most effective way to eliminate minority languages (for obvious reasons). Even as recently as the 50's, Indian children were being forcibly removed from nonEnglish-speaking households and sent to boarding schools to be "socialized." They were routinely punished there for speaking their languages, and Indian-speaking parents began hiding their languages in hopes of keeping their children in their houses or at least making school life easier for them. The percentage of Cherokee children being raised bilingually fell from 75% to 5% during the US boardingschool-policy days. Other languages, with smaller userbases and no literary tradition like Cherokee's to buoy them, have died entirely. This was not a natural death. Existing linguistic communities do not normally lose their languages after losing a war, even after being conquered and colonized, the way immigrant groups do. The usual pattern is bilingualism, which may be stably maintained indefinitely (most West Africans have been raised bilingually ever since colonization there; so have many South American natives, where the linguistically destructive policies used by the US and Canada were never implemented. In Paraguay, for example, more than 90% of the population is bilingual in Spanish and Guarani, and has been for centuries.) Now that the Amerindian languages of North America are in the precarious situation they are, though, simply leaving them alone will not cause their extinction trends to end. Once the majority of the young people in a community don't understand a language anymore, its usage declines rapidly. This is where language revival and language revitalization come in. Language revival is the resurrection of a "dead" language, one with no existing native speakers. Language revitalization is the rescue of a "dying" language. There has only been one successful instance to date of a complete language revival, creating a new generation of native speakers without even one living native speaker to help. (That instance was the reincarnation of Hebrew in modern Israel, and there were many extenuating circumstances associated with it.) However, there have been successful

partial revivals--where a no-longer-spoken language has been revived as a second language sufficiently for religious, cultural, and literary purposes. There have also been successful language revitalizations, where languages in decline have recovered. It may sound silly and New Agey to say that the prestige of a language and the self-esteem of its speakers plays a pivotal role in revitalization, but it has been proven again and again. Navajo, for instance, was in steep decline until the 40's, when the language, once deemed worthless, was used by the Navajo Code Talkers to stymie the Germans and Japanese in World War II. With Navajo's validity as a real, complex, and useful language suddenly nationally acknowledged, its usage shot up, and today this language, once on the brink of extinction, is in good health. By inspiring the younger generations to take an interest and pride in their ancestral languages, and by providing the means for them to learn it (something we hope this website can help contribute towards,) it is possible to reverse downward linguistic trends. The true revival of a "dead" language is something I am more reluctant to raise hopes about, but to revive such a language enough for children to have access to traditional literature, to use it for cultural and religious purposes, even to speak it as a second language in limited fashion? Certainly! Kids can learn Klingon or Tolkien's Elvish if it suits them, and they can just as easily learn Miami or Siuslaw. Latin, the most famously "dead" language of all, is learned by millions of schoolchildren well enough that they can read Virgil (or snigger over Catullus), and is used liturgically by Catholics worldwide. It may be true that once a language is dead it is dead forever, but some kinds of dead are clearly preferable to others. If the lost languages of the Americas can all be as dead as Latin, then, well, as we say in my own successfully revived ancestral language: dayenu, that would be enough. Laura Redish. March, 2001