7 votes

Guam starts new effort to save dying CHamoru language

3 comments

  1. [2]
    The_Fad
    Link
    What do you all think the odds are that Duolingo or some equivalent gets wind of this? I feel like adding a dying language to their product is kind of a win-win for them. Not really seeing much...

    What do you all think the odds are that Duolingo or some equivalent gets wind of this? I feel like adding a dying language to their product is kind of a win-win for them. Not really seeing much downside.

    4 votes
    1. alyaza
      Link Parent
      it's possible. duolingo has been dabbling in a few native languages recently like hawai'ian and navajo, so it's possible that at some point chamorro might be on the table. chamorro's kinda niche,...

      it's possible. duolingo has been dabbling in a few native languages recently like hawai'ian and navajo, so it's possible that at some point chamorro might be on the table. chamorro's kinda niche, though, and you could make a case that there are other native languages that might be better sells for preservation (like nearly every continental native language, since outside of navajo most of them have very, very few speakers and are in just as much decline as chamorro)

      2 votes
  2. alyaza
    Link
    for those of you who are unaware, chamorro was at one point the dominant language on guam, and its use has precipitously declined since the US took over control of the island in 1898. it still has...

    for those of you who are unaware, chamorro was at one point the dominant language on guam, and its use has precipitously declined since the US took over control of the island in 1898. it still has a decent speaker population on the island and some of the places on the island still bear chamorro names (like the capital, hagåtña), but it remains in decline generally and it's only been recently that serious efforts like this one have been taken to keep the language from eventually dying out.

    3 votes