Endangered languages

THIS story from McClatchy last week is a rare bit of good news on the endangered-languages front. Reporters and linguists are finding young people who think it's cool to use their small langauges for the things that teenagers like most: making music their parents hate, and texting each other.  Texting is reported among the Huave-speakers of Mexico, and speakers of Kapampangan in the Philippines. And hip-hop is happening in Huilliche, a language of Chile, and in Aka, in India's Arunachal Pradesh. 

For this critic, the Aka rapper, in particular, has skills, though I can't understand a bit. The pair rapping in Huilliche have a ways to go in their delivery and, judging from the Spanish lyrics, originality. But that's not the point, as far as language survival is concerned.  If we can also get bad love poetry and graffiti, we'll have most of what we need to keep these languages alive. When young people have an emotional connection to a language, it's likely to survive. If the kids find their grandparents' language uncool, all of the well-intentioned outside help by linguists is usually in vain, except for preserving the language as a museum-piece. So, ¡viva el hip-hop huilliche!