Like plants and animals, languages are threatened when their native habitats grow too small. In the case of endangered languages, those habitats are the communities of speakers that keep them alive in a world that often does not give them enough recognition.
Researchers in Poland pioneered new approaches and techniques as a way to revitalise and preserve endangered minority languages.
They took a collaborative approach, working in partnership with speakers instead of just studying them.
The researchers’ also brought academics and their institutions together with participating communities, benefiting everyone involved.
Their work and the work of researchers following the techniques they have developed also comes with a fast-approaching time limit: Once the last speaker is gone, it is difficult to bring a language back from the dead.
The activities included engaging young people with their community’s language and cultural history through plays written and performed in endangered languages.
As part of the collaboration, teenagers wrote the plays and young people performed them.
Minoritised languages are often seen as being less legitimate than the languages spoken in official settings like schools and healthcare centres. The project challenged this misconception by running a field school delivered in Nahautl, a Mexican language with Aztec roots that had never before been used in this kind of setting.
Closer to home, the project helped to revive the fortunes of a language specific to a small community in southern Poland: Wymysiöeryś is unique to the town of Wilamowice, where only a small number of speakers remain.
The project resulted in a new research centre at the University of Warsaw, Poland, where academics are studying how linguistic discrimination and the loss of a language impact health and well-being.