Extinct languages resurrected
Thanks to a long deceased linguist and the efforts of some scholars from the University of California Davis (UCD), the work of linguist John Peabody Harrington is being resurrected, along with the extinct languages that he recorded.
Harrington, who died in 1961, was driven by an almost fanatical determination to record for posterity all the native languages of California that he saw disappearing around him. He transcribed these languages word by word onto paper and later, when the technology was available, onto wax cylinders and aluminium disks.
Apparently, Harrington was so meticulous that he would often sit with his source subjects and practice a single word for hours until they agreed that he had mastered the word’s correct pronunciation. He would then phonetically transcribe it or record it.
Harrington’s work has only been collated within the past few years and is now becoming a major resource for native Americans whose languages have disappeared; the languages are gradually being reconstructed from the Harrington archives; often word by word or via recorded songs (which sometimes constitute the only survivals of certain languages).
Although it will be a great many years before the vast corpus of Harrington’s work is completely compiled properly, the great aim of the whole project is to give the indigenous Californian tribes access to the languages that were lost to them so very long ago; in a sense to return the languages to today’s ancestors of the old tribes.