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November 21, 2011

New Home Movies Resurrect Endangered American Indian Language


Tribal language educator Mary Hermes at the University of Minnesota, Duluth documents endangered languages. With support from the National Science Foundation, her team is working with elders to record, translate, transcribe, and annotate conversations. At the same time she is helping train new scholars, young and old, who want to speak the Ojibwe language. Her team is going beyond just translating text; they’re creating videos of conversations among the elders. The videos, which will be a more engaging teaching aid for contemporary students, will become part of interactive multimedia learning modules. These modules may serve as a model for efforts to revitalize other endangered languages.

Credit: National Science Foundation


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