The Center for American Indian Languages (CAIL) was a research and outreach arm of the Department of

Linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

at the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

. Its mission was to assist community members in the maintenance and revitalization (where possible) of

endangered languages An endangered language or moribund language is a language that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers die out or shift to speaking other languages. Language loss occurs when the language has no more native speakers and becomes a "dead langu ...

, to document these languages, and to train students to do this sort of work.

History

The Center was founded in 2004 by the well-known Americanist and

historical linguist Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

Lyle Campbell Lyle Richard Campbell (born October 22, 1942) is an American scholar and linguist known for his studies of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages, especially those of Central America, and on historical linguistics in ...

, and located in the

Fort Douglas Camp Douglas was established in October 1862, during the American Civil War, as a small military garrison about three miles east of Salt Lake City, Utah, to protect the overland mail route and telegraph lines along the Central Overland Route. In ...

part of the University of Utah campus. A library, which contains over 3,000 books and journals on languages of the Americas, was part of the center.

Shoshone language program for youth

A summer Shoshone/Goshute Youth Language Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP), held at the University of Utah's Center for American Indian Languages since 2009 has been featured on NPR's

Weekend Edition ''Weekend Edition'' is a set of American radio news magazine programs produced and distributed by National Public Radio (NPR). It is the weekend counterpart to the NPR radio program ''Morning Edition''. It consists of ''Weekend Edition Saturday'' ...

program. Shoshoni youth serve as interns, assisting with digitization of

Shoshoni language Shoshoni, also written as Shoshoni-Gosiute and Shoshone (; Shoshoni: soni ta̲i̲kwappe'', ''newe ta̲i̲kwappe'' or ''neme ta̲i̲kwappeh'') is a Numic language of the Uto-Aztecan family, spoken in the Western United States by the Shoshone ...

recordings and documentation from the Wick R. Miller collection, so that the materials can be made available for tribal members.

Closure of center in 2012

In August 2012, the

announced plans to close the Center for American Indian Languages. "The College of Humanities instead will concentrate language-preservation efforts on Utah's tribal tongues," according to one article. This closure, said to be for focusing efforts on the language of Utah tribes, "has shocked many in the language conservation world. Linguists, including

Ives Goddard Robert Hale Ives Goddard III (born 1941) is a linguist and a curator emeritus in the Department of Anthropology of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. He is widely considered the leading expert on the Algonqui ...

of the Smithsonian have expressed serious concern about the negative impact on efforts to preserve indigenous languages throughout the Americas.

References

External links

Center for American Indian Languages
{{University of Utah Mesoamerican studies Organizations established in 2004 University of Utah Shoshone Native American language revitalization