Twenty students are holding several animated small-group
discussions, but no one in this Northern Illinois University
classroom utters a word.
Their fingers weave in complex patterns as they
converse in American Sign Language,
which the university has declared an official foreign language.
…
“These are people dependent on [...]
As far as the records show, no one has spoken Shinnecock or Unkechaug, languages of Long Island’s Indian tribes, for nearly 200 years. Now Stony Brook University and two of the Indian nations are initiating a joint project to revive these extinct tongues, using old documents like a vocabulary list that Thomas Jefferson wrote [...]
Dan Everett “Out on a limb over the Piraha”:
