成人快手

Half of all languages may disappear over the next century, and many of them have never been recorded. Linguist Ross Perlin is racing against time to map little-known languages across the most linguistically diverse city in history - contemporary New York.

These programmes present a portrait of five remarkable speakers of little-known languages. Ross dives deep into their communities to discover how they are maintaining their language, and culture, against the odds.

This fifth episode presents a portrait of Karen, who grew up on the Munsee Reserve in Canada and moved to New York, where she became one of the last speakers of Lenape.

Lenape has now almost disappeared, but it was the original language of the land New York is built on, and was spoken there until the early 19th century. Native peoples who survived the initial impact of European settlement were almost all driven out and moved West, but gradually the Lenape diaspora is being knitted together again. Tribal enrolments are booming, and there are now over 25,000 members of the formally recognised Lenape tribes.

We hear Karen teaching Lenape, and the class struggling with a new and different way of plotting speech. Ross Perlin, who was in the class, admits, 鈥淚t was a challenge. As in any language, many words are stories in themselves, 鈥榝ossil poetry鈥� that at least seems to give a glimpse of how an ancestor might have seen things. So for instance the word for squirrel is 鈥榟e who has sticky fingers鈥�.鈥�

Ross Perlin is a linguist who teaches at Columbia University in New York and co-director of the Manhattan-based non-profit Endangered Language Alliance.

Reader: Adam Sims
Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke
Studio Production and Sound Design by Jon Calver
Executive Producer: Jo Rowntree

A Loftus Media production for 成人快手 Radio 4