Expert: Importance of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Language

Elena Benedicto. (Courtesy photo)

WHAT: UNESCO is capping off the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Language with an event Dec. 17 at the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Among the 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, 2,680 are in danger of disappearing, according to UNESCO.

EXPERT: Elena Benedicto, a linguistics professor in the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University, is director of the Indigenous and Endangered Languages Lab. She has spent the last 30 years studying the common properties of both mainstream and minority human languages

QUOTE: “The diversity of linguistic phenomena contributes to our understanding of the nature of human language. We miss a lot by just studying mainstream languages. What we do here at the lab is find the core that is common to all humans. It’s such a great diversity, and in the end, there are these very abstract principles that are shared by all languages.”

MORE INFORMATION: Benedicto was in Barcelona in 1996 during the Barcelona Declaration, also known as the Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights. As a graduate student, she collaborated with local indigenous teams in Nicaragua to develop linguistic materials for the country’s existing bilingual education program to teach and preserve the country’s many indigenous languages.

Writer: Joseph Paul, 765-494-9541, paul102@purdue.edu

Source: Elena Benedicto, 765-494-4442, ebenedi@purdue.edu