documento | Like Growing Flowers: The Work of Saving Endangered Languages

Ajuawak Kapashesit goes straight to the nuts and bolts of documenting and reinvigorating “vanishing voices.” What does it mean for a language to be “endangered”? How many levels of endangerment are there, and what kind of situation does each level correspond to? And what can be done to reverse endangerment and re-establish the intergenerational transmission of language fluency? Ajuawak gives useful answers to such practical questions, while warning that the work is indeed difficult and slow. But the reward, he says, is like that of growing a flower: with the right care, you see it bloom.