Saving Our Extinct Languages
Here is a story that could be of extreme inspiration for Indians seeking to save a lost part of their heritage. It is the story of Jose Freeman, descendant of the Salinan tribe of California who made it his mission to track and record for posterity the lost languages of the North American continent.
The first time Jose Freeman heard his tribe’s lost language through the crackle of a 70-year-old recording, he cried.
“My ancestors were speaking to me,” said Freeman of the sounds captured when American Indians still inhabited California’s Salinas Valley. “It was like coming home.”
While the last native speaker of Salinan died almost half a century ago, more and more indigenous people are finding their extinct or endangered tongues, one word or song at a time, thanks to a late linguist and some University of California, Davis scholars who are working to transcribe his life’s obsession.
Driven to record the native languages he saw disappearing all around him, John Peabody Harrington spent four decades gathering more than 1 million pages of phonetic notations on languages spoken by tribes from Alaska to South America. When the technology became available, he supplemented his written record with audio recordings - first using wax cylinders, then aluminum discs.