Marie Smith Jones, Last Native Speaker of the Eyak Language

Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker of Eyak, died last month in Alaska -- and the language died along with her.  Via Out of the Woods Now, who attended a lecture on the future of languages by linguist David Crystal at the Hay Festival. Crystal asked the audience to imagine being the last speaker of a language. At present, there are 60 such people on the planet.

The U.N. has declared 2008 the International Year of Languages.

Comments

[amcorrea]

Thank you for the link to the BBC article. What an amazing woman she must've been.