Canadian Survey Reveals Youth Indigenous Language Loss
Statistics Canada has released the 2017 Aboriginal Peoples Survey this month, and it sheds lights on Aboriginal language and culture across the country. The study revealed that young people were far less likely to...
Canada Launches First Indigenous-Language TV Channel
A new, all-Inuit Inuktut language channel has been launched in Canada, serving as the country’s first channel broadcast entirely in an Indigenous language. Devised by the team at Nunavut Independent Television (NITV), Uvagut TV...
New Site Chronicles Endangered and Under-Documented Languages
The Pangloss Collection, an open archive containing more than 3600 audio and video recordings in 170 languages from across all continents, is now being revamped with a new website.
Examples from the archive include stories and...
Cherokee Nation Uses Covid Vaccine to Preserve Language
As the United States has begun distributing the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines against Covid-19, communities across the country have grappled with fairly and effectively administering the vaccine to vulnerable sectors of the population.
For the...
Study Sheds Light on Passive Language Acquisition
According to a new study published in Scientific Reports, New Zealanders acquire a sort of passive understanding of Māori phonology and phonotactics, despite actively speaking little to none of the language. “Most New Zealanders...
Indonesia to Digitize Indigenous Scripts
UNESCO and the Indonesian Internet Domain Registry (PANDI) have announced plans to work on digitizing the Indigenous scripts of Indonesia through an initiative called “Connecting the Nation through Ancient Character Digitalisation.”
Indonesia is home...
Card Game Aims to Revitalize Traditional Mongolian Script
The traditional Mongolian writing system—a vertical top-to-bottom, left-to-right alphabet—dates all the way back to the early days of the Mongol Empire. However, in the script’s homeland, official and day-to-day communications have been written in...
New Bipartisan Native American Language Bill
On October 30, U.S. Senators Tom Udall (D-N.M.), vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Native American Languages Act (NALA) with the announcement of new bipartisan...
Let’s Talk COVID-19
Conversemos COVID-19 (Let’s Talk COVID-19) is an initiative produced by the Indigenous and Diasporic Language Consortium at the NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies in collaboration with CUNY Mexican Studies Institute, Kichwa...
New Dictionary Preserves Rare Indigenous language Umpithamu of Cape York, Australia
Jean-Christophe Verstraete, a professor of linguistics at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, worked closely with two sisters who were the last speakers of Umpithamu to create a new dictionary. The Dictionary was released as a...