Keepers of a Lost Language:
an 82-year-old linguist and his young protege are among the last
speakers of a native California language—and its final chance
First Published in Mother Jones
July/August 2004
Dashka Slater
AFTER DEVOTING HIS LIFE to understanding the mechanics and music
of languages, William Shipley speaks fewer than you might expect.
The 82-year-old linguist studied Latin and Greek as a youth, learned
Mandarin during World War II, and is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
But the language Shipley is most proud of knowing, the one that
has shaped his career and much of the course of his life, is understood
by less than a dozen people on earth. It is Mountain Maidu, and
it was once spoken by some two to three thousand California Indians
who lived in the northern Sierra Nevada.
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