Focus on North Carolina Community Roundtable: Language Revitalization and Maintenance

Speakers: Ben Frey (UNC Chapel Hill), Walt Wolfram (NC State University), & Carol-Rose Little (McGill University)

This roundtable discussion highlights the particular context of heritage speakers of endangered languages and dialects, the challenges for these learners and opportunities for community involvement. Talks in this session cover languages that are genetically and typologically distant from their communities’ majority languages (e.g. Cherokee/English, Ch’ol/Spanish) and others that are share significant structural and lexical similarities with the majority variety (e.g. Outer Banks and Lumbee English). What specific challenges and pressures become relevant when the heritage language has declining numbers of speakers? What can the larger community of researchers on Heritage Language learn from programs aimed at supporting speakers of endangered and Indigenous languages and dialects?

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Published: Wednesday, April 14, 2021