Linguistics experts are turning to cutting-edge technologies to revitalize threatened Native American languages — and rejuvenate generations of indigenous tradition — through new approaches such as children’s books and smartphone apps.
In one such endeavor, three Native American women rack their brains as they gather around a computer, trying to remember — and record — dozens of Apache language words related to everyday activities such as cooking and eating.
They are creating an online English-Apache dictionary, just one of several projects working to preserve endangered indigenous languages in the US.
Photo: AFP
The women are working with Rapid Word Collection (RWC) software, which uses an algorithm to search Apache text and audio databases for so-called forgotten words.
The words are then defined, translated into English, and their pronunciation recorded, so the dictionary’s users will know how to say them properly. Teacher Joycelene Johnson and two of her colleagues validate the definition of the word Apache word “kapas,” which means potato in English.
“The applications in the written language are good for (a) non-speaker — at least they’ll have a museum of it where they can go to for reference,” Johnson, a 68-year-old who teaches Apache vocabulary and grammar, said.
Photo: AFP
According to her, the bilingual school on her reservation has about a thousand students — but only one, an eleventh-grader, is fluent in Apache. Johnson spoke at just one of several workshops at the International Conference on Indigenous Language Documentation, Education and Revitalization (ICILDER) last weekend at the University of Indiana.
Representatives from around 40 Indigenous groups from around the world gathered in the college town of Bloomington just days after the US — which counts about 6.8 million Native American residents, or about two percent of the population — marked Indigenous People’s Day.
4,500 LANGUAGES AT RISK
Photo: AFP
Linguists, teachers, students, researchers and indigenous leaders spent the weekend brainstorming how exactly to rescue these vulnerable languages from the brink. Of the more than 6,000 indigenous languages recognized globally, nearly half of them are at risk of disappearing, with about 1,500 facing immediate extinction, according to a 2021 study from UNESCO.
The RWC was developed by The Language Conservancy (TLC), an NGO dedicated to protecting around 50 indigenous languages around the world, in order to churn out such dictionaries at super-speed. TLC, which has a US$3 million budget, regularly teams up linguists with Native American language teachers to work on these dictionaries.
The software has “increased the efficiency in the workflow,” said Wilhelm Meya, the CEO of TLC and one of the ICILDER organizers — now, an indigenous community can build a dictionary from scratch within a year, instead of 20.
Photo: AFP
“That allows us to serve languages quickly and build that infrastructure that they need to be able to survive moving forward,” the 51-year old Austrian-American anthropologist explained.
CRISIS LEVEL
That speed is vital, because time is of the essence: in the US and Canada, the last generation of native speakers are dying. According to TLC, 143 out of 219 languages are in danger of extinction in the US, while 75 of 94 are at similar risk in Canada. Those are still just a small fraction of the 400 to 500 indigenous languages that were spoken in the two countries before the arrival of Europeans and their decimation of native populations some 500 years ago.
“The situation is really at a crisis level,” Meya said.
With the average age of indigenous language speakers around 75, he added, there are only a few years left to document these languages before they disappear forever.
“Once it’s gone, it’s gone. You really can’t bring it back very easily,” Meya said. His organization distributes their learning materials for free throughout the US and on Native American reservations.
“When the language goes, so does the culture,” he said. Jacob Chavez, a 26-year-old Cherokee language learner who called himself a “really big supporter” of the language technology, said he appreciates how it allows communities to “record things a lot quicker and hold onto things for a lot longer than we could before.”
CULTURAL CONFLICT
Paula Hawkins, who teaches the Tahltan language — which is spoken in parts of British Columbia — said she is “really excited” to see an online dictionary, just as her parents helped create the first Tahltan print dictionary in the 1980s.
But her colleague, 51-year-old Danielle North King, from the Chemehuevi, or Nuwuvi nation, fears that such projects impose a “Western way of writing” onto “an indigenous way of speaking” — the vast majority of human languages are solely oral, with no writing systems. Indeed, Lakota indigenous leaders denounced TLC last year, after the organization tried to copywrite teaching material that included recordings from the nation’s elders.
“We don’t own the copyright or the IP (intellectual property) for any of the languages we work with,” Meya clarified, adding that his goal is to protect indigenous culture. “If we were at a hospital and I was a white doctor and I had an indigenous patient, would I not be allowed to work on him or serve him because I’m not indigenous?” Meya asked.
“Race can really become a hindrance to this type of work,” Meya explained, when dealing with such a sensitive subject. Language is “so fundamental to identity and to nationhood and sovereignty.”
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
RSS