What can we do to preserve endangered languages?

To save endangered languages it is important that we keep using them, not only within our own generation, but also by  teaching them to the next generation. Also more presence in the educational system is important to save the language. Bilingual education is an excellent example of this. Apart from teaching our children the language, it is important to make sure the language gets more attention within the dominant community, for example by more media presence. Last but not least it is extremely important to stop discriminating against certain languages. In this way people speaking a minority language will feel less tended to replace their own language with a majority language.

Organizations

In the past, language revitalization was mostly left to the speakers of the language. It was a process depending on individual initiative and funding. However, nowadays linguists and others have started a number of umbrella organizations to rescue endangered languages.

 

The Alaska state legislature made one of the earliest organized language-preservation by establishing the Alaska Native Language Center in 1972. Its work is typical for many other organizations. The center focuses on documentation, because that could be the basis of a revival in the future according to its director. Apart from documentation, the Center also supports bilingual education to keep their language alive within the young generations.