Linguistic Diversity Declines in Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea—frequently heralded as the most linguistically diverse place in the entire world—is in the middle of a language crisis. According to a new report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...
Cherokee Linguist Honored by Senate Act and Center
U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i), chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), vice chair of the committee, have introduced the Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act of...
Learning Guna on the Radio
When we talk about remote or distance learning, we often think of things like Zoom meetings, recorded lectures or Canvas assignments, but a group of teachers from Panama’s Indigenous Guna community is adding another...
Call for Sweden to Recognize Elfdalian
A Swedish parliamentary representative is calling for action to preserve an extremely vulnerable language spoken in Sweden’s forested countryside: Elfdalian (älvdalska in Swedish and övdalsk in the language itself). Currently, the Swedish government only...
Indigenous Taiwanese Languages Now Available on Wikipedia
The overwhelming majority of the world’s languages have a very small presence on the Internet—just 35 languages make up about 99% of the content on the web. In the interest of embracing the island’s...
Navajo Goes Extraterrestrial
The first scientific focus of NASA’s Perseverance rover is a rock named “Máaz” – the Navajo word for “Mars.” The rover’s team, in collaboration with the Navajo Nation Office of the President and Vice...
COVID Relief Bill Includes Support for Native American Languages
Native American communities will be receiving a big boost in the most recent COVID-19 relief bill—according to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, this bill includes the largest federal investment in Native American communities...
Russia Launches Project to Preserve Languages
The Federal Institute of Native Languages of the Peoples of the Russian Federation has announced an initiative to develop educational materials and revitalize indigenous languages in the Siberian republic of Yakutia, many of which...
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...