March 26, 2009

Software Preserves Native Languages

By Nicole Wallace

A New Mexico charity is harnessing modern tools in the struggle to revitalize some very old and endangered languages.

Of the more than 400 languages that were once spoken by Native Americans in the United States, roughly 175 are still spoken today, according to Inée Yang Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute, in Santa Fe.

Of those, she says, only about 20 languages have speakers of all ages.

Native American groups, she says, cite the

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