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Hundreds of Native American Languages in One Big Site

Thanks to Drake Library for the pointer to Native Languages of the Americas, available at http://www.native-languages.org/. This site contains over two thousand pages of information about several hundred Native American languages. The site’s been around for a long time, so I’m not giving you a cutting edge site, but what a huge wealth of data.

There’s actually a lot of information about various Native American tribes here, but the center of the site is a master list of Native American languages, from A’ananin to Zuni. Information about the languages varies from just a couple of sentences (Wazhazhe) to multiple paragraphs divided into several topical headings (Blackfoot).

Along with an overview each language page has links to language resources, language lessons, literature and texts, and course descriptions, language archives, and tapes. Of course how much is available varies by language, but I was pleasantly surprised that even an extinct language like Mattole had at least a few links available.

To get a sense of the wide variety of materials available on this site, visit its site map. I especially liked the “IAQ” (Infrequently Asked Questions) right next to the Frequently Asked Questions. Plenty to see here.

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