First Nations languages explored in global study on mother tongues

Interesting study:

At one point, Canada was home to more than 70 distinct First Nations languages. Recent figures suggest about a dozen have disappeared altogether and the others — with few exceptions — are extremely endangered.

“By our being there and fostering this interest in children learning the language, we’re hoping that maybe this will remind people how important it is to speak Dene to their kids so that they keep learning Dene,” Lovick said. “In many other places it’s too late.”

One aim of the research is to identify ways to teach First Nations languages more effectively to adults.

“We know how hard they are to learn as adults,” Jung said. “So everybody is actually really excited to see finally how children do it because we just don’t know how to do it easily.”

One idea — currently being challenged — is that children’s brains have a “hard-wired” grammar module called Universal Grammar from which all human languages can be derived.

Another idea is that learning a language relies on general cognitive mechanisms.

Much of the initial research on Inuktitut and East Cree is already underway or been done.

The other languages in the study are Turkish, Japanese, Russian, Sesotho, which is spoken in southern Africa, Yucatec Maya in Mexico, Chintang in Nepal, and Indonesian.

First Nations languages explored in global study on mother tongues – Saskatchewan – CBC News.