Did you know the Cherokee Nation offers a free online language course?

[conuly]

Not just a teach yourself textbook, but actual lessons with an actual instructor. I told the girls, and they're surprisingly enthused about having their own secret language. Well, it's more secret than their previous idea, which was Yiddish. Maybe it's secret in Oklahoma, where the Cherokee Nation is located, but it's certainly not a secret here in NYC. Their very doctor speaks Yiddish! I don't know why people keep saying it's a "dying" language. Only about half a million people speak it! Of course, I don't know where to learn Yiddish for free other than the usual way, which involves being born to a Yiddish-speaking family and learning via immersion, and I don't know, it seems a bit drastic. So that's not really an option, you know?

Anyway, they're excited enough about this Cherokee idea that I think we may have to do that, and also perhaps learn some history at the same time. The thing is, I don't know that much about history involving the Cherokee other than the Trail of Tears, and right now they got really into The War That Saved My Life, and so we're about to embark on a brave new world of World War II, and that's the Holocaust, and... well, I'd like to not sob my way through the rest of the school year. I mean, why not add in the Armenian Genocide to our history lineup? So I don't know if I'll actually do that much history.

Comments

[fiddlingfrog.livejournal.com]

I did not know that, thanks for the info.

This pushed me to look up whether the Seneca Nation provided a similar resource. Unfortunately, with only ~50 native speakers as of 2012, and a promised app to help teach gone dead, it seems unlikely. But I did find a neat list of endangered languages with mobile apps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_endangered_languages_with_mobile_apps).

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://www.endangeredlanguages.com

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

If you still want Yiddish resources, here's a free intro (http://www.surfacelanguages.com/language/Yiddish.html), and here (http://ilanguages.org/yiddish.php). Both Teach Yourself and Rosetta Stone have Yiddish. And you're right, Yiddish isn't dying, it's fine (http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/184639/stop-kvetching-yiddish-isnt-dying).

[conuly]

And not to put too fine a point on it, but the people most inclined to speak Yiddish in the home are also the people who usually have lots of kids.