Honors College Fellow quoted in National Geographic feature about revitalizing an at-risk language
Liliana Sánchez, Professor of Hispanic and Italian Studies and Honors College Fellow, is quoted in a National Geographic web article “Can songs save an endangered language?”, an article about language extinction and how a music-led movement is revitalizing the Garifuna language in Central America.
The threat of language extinction isn’t new. Some linguists estimate a language dies every two weeks, as some languages become dominant tools for social and economic exchange, while others are pushed to the margins.
But there are ways to save at-risk languages, as well. The key is that the language needs to be thought of less as preserved, “but indeed part of their present and their future,” says Liliana Sánchez, a linguist and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Read the full National Geographic feature here.