Keepers of a Lost Language

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--ryan



Keepers of a Lost Language

An 82-year-old linguist and his young protégé are among the last speakers of a native California language — and its final chance.

Dashka Slater
July/August 2004 Issue

After devoting his life to understanding the mechanics and music of languages, William Shipley speaks fewer than you might expect. The 82-year-old linguist studied Latin and Greek as a youth, learned Mandarin during World War II, and is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. But the language Shipley is most proud of knowing, the one that has shaped his career and much of the course of his life, is understood by less than a dozen people on earth. It is Mountain Maidu, and it was once spoken by some two to three thousand California Indians who lived in the northern Sierra Nevada. . .