Endangered Languages in Metropolitan New York

A recent article from The Economist on New York-based Endangered Language Alliance. The ELA has volunteer speakers of endangered languages; the Alliance works on figuring out each language's phonology and syntax, and in turn, help volunteers work on projects such as children's books in their language. Many endangered languages lack alphabets, or systems of writing, so the ELA also works to create sound-symbol systems for these languages using the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In order to determine whether a person is fluent in one of the endangered languages before taking him on as a volunteer, he is tested with a Swadesh List, a set of 207 high-frequency, slow-to-change words including body parts, colors and basic verbs such as eat, drink, and sleep.

According to the website, the ELA "...estimates that there may be as many as 400 endangered languages spoken in the metro area. If this is true, New York City could be the most diverse linguistic area of the planet, and have the highest density of endangered languages per square mile on earth. "

NYTimes: "My Family's Experiment in Extreme Schooling"

the New Humanitarian School in Moscow
While I found this article to be interesting, I also found the whole privileged slant of "oh, I left the comforts of Park Slope for the comparably comfortable life of a Times journalist in Russia" slightly irritating. Either way, these children are very lucky to have had this experience; hopefully they will maintain their Russian fluency now that they are back in the States.