Indigenous language

From MedBib.com - Medicine & Nature

An indigenous language or autochthonous language is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples but has been reduced to the status of a minority language. This language would be from a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for many generations. Indigenous languages may not be national languages, or may have fallen out of use, because of language deaths or linguicide caused by colonization, where the original language is replaced by that of the colonists.

See also

• Minority language
• Linguistic imperialism

External links

• Chakana: NGO & knowledge centre about Indians of the highlands (including language studies)
• Dutch Centre for Indigenous Peoples
• Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC)
• Indigenous Language Institute
• Aboriginal Languages of Australia
• The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)
• Electronic Metastructure for Endangered Languages Data (EMELD)
• Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI)

References

• Frawley, William, and Kenneth C. Hill. (2002) Making dictionaries : preserving indigenous languages of the Americas. Berkeley : University of California Press.
• Harrison, K. David. (2007) When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World's Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge. New York and London: Oxford University Press.
• Singerman, Robert. (1996) Indigenous languages of the Americas: A bibliography of dissertations and theses. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press
• Wurm, S. A. and Ian Heyward, (Eds.) 2001. Atlas of the world's languages in danger of disappearing. Paris: UNESCO Pub.

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