WOODFORDS, CALIF. — In a classroom amid the dusty hills southeast of Lake Tahoe, an unlikely duo sit across from each other and conjugate the verb "to sleep." They are working in Washo, a language with, at best, an uncertain future.
Elshim, to sleep. Lelshimi, I am sleeping. Elshimi, he is sleeping. Shelshimi, they are sleeping.
On one side of a yellow plastic table sits Ramona Dick, a 74-year-old elder of the Washo tribe, a great-grandmother and retired cook whose formal education ended at the eighth grade but who has a deep knowledge of the Native American language she learned as a child.
Facing her is Alan Yu, 30, a Hong Kong-born linguist who immigrated to California as a teenager, earned a doctorate at UC Berkeley and now is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
Despite differences in age, culture and education, the two have bonded in a way that they hope will bring lasting results.
What brings them together is their mutual interest in Washo, a tongue that tribe members estimate is spoken fluently by no more than 20 or 30 people. The big picture is even grimmer: Half of California's 100 Native American languages no longer have fluent speakers, and many of the rest have just five or six hanging on, experts say.
Attempts to document, if not revive, many of those languages have been going on for years. The goal is to preserve more than just conversation and literature; a vital part of cultural identity -- what it means, for example, to be a Washo -- slips away when a language becomes extinct.
Now, Yu and Dick are part of newer efforts applying contemporary technology worldwide.
Last year, Yu received a $160,000 federal grant to compile an online dictionary of 5,000 Washo words and phrases, complete with digitally recorded pronunciations by Dick and other Washo elders. Scheduled to be finished in 2009, the dictionary is designed partly as a tool to help younger Washos learn the language -- even if just a few words, such as da'aw (Lake Tahoe), gewe (coyote) and gu'u (maternal grandmother).
"It's going to be lost, I think, if nobody tries to teach them," Dick said of Washo, which had no written form until 20th century scholars began transcribing it phonetically. "If the young people could learn, maybe they can tell their children down the line a bit that it's important to our tribe. Because we are not a very big tribe."
--
