Hurray!

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My link

Both Canada and the U.S. are full of native cultures and languages that are endangered. I, for one, am pleased to see using social media to help save them.

[Duke87 1,070]

Every language ought to be documented so that we don't lose them. However, as a matter of practicality, people need to be able to speak a language which is understood by more than just a few other people. I fully understand and support that Native Americans want to keep some knowledge of their native tongues out there, but realistically they need to speak English, French, Spanish, or Portugese (depending on location). Else they are just going to isolate themselves and he who isolates himself gets left behind.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Culture should be preserved and language needs to be documented but I see a future where all mankind can speak amongst each other in a common tongue.

[hym 358]

Preserving cultures for historical sake is fine, as it knowing how to speak any particular language. Past that, such efforts are futile at best and, more likely, counterproductive. He who can't communicate in the common language(s) of the nation needs help. He who won't communicate in the common language(s) of the nation dooms himself. (I would take it so far as to say that parents who won't help their children integrate into the society they live in don't deserve their children.)

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Chu vi parolas Esperante?

Every native culture is worth preserving, and there is every reason to encourage it. At the same time it is also necessary for native peoples to be able to get along with the majority. The suggestion that such efforts would isolate some peoples is rather ineffable.

[Alejandro24 575]

All the cultures deserves the protection to his heritage.

http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal%C4%ABxatl

http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/yua/Yich_T%C3%A1anil_Ju%27un

[Duke87 1,070]

http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal%C4%ABxatl

Whoah, what language is that?

[Alejandro24 575]

http://nah.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal%C4%ABxatl

Whoah, what language is that?

Nahuatl, aztec language, spoken by indians of the center and south of Mexico, with some local variations -mostly of them dead- in the western and central altiplano.

Also is spoken in some parts of Central America -principally the north- and by some people in United States and Canada.

Nahuatl is like english for us as nahuatl for the indians before the conquest by spanish people, the most important language. There are a lot of indian languages, just for example in my region -western and north west- before the spanish there was around more than 15 languages between the people, but the universal was western nahuatl, a variation of the standard nahuatl from Tenochtitlan. There are not too many knowledge about the variations and only survives the standard one.

Just as example: the name of my city in spanish is Guadalajara, the official name; but the name of the city in nahuatl is Ātemaxac. At the end means more or less the same.

  Edited February 20, 2012 by Alejandro24  

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I did not know Nahuatl was so widespread. I thought Central America had a different language than South Anerica. I know that the West Coast, East Coast, Central Plains, and Arctic all had different languages in North America (West Coast had Samish).

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I did not know Nahuatl was so widespread. I thought Central America had a different language than South Anerica. I know that the West Coast, East Coast, Central Plains, and Arctic all had different languages in North America (West Coast had Samish).

There are several variations of the language of the Huron confederacy that was in place for centuries before the Europeans arrived. They are still around. One of these is Ojibway. At the college where I taught there was a native studies program which had an admission requirement of fluent Ojibway.

In the north, of course, the big native language is Inuktatut, the language of the Innu peoples. In the legislature of Nunavut, it is the language of record, while English and French translations are required by national law. Our friend, S.i.x, seems to be a speaker as well as a writer of native tongues.