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Of the nearly 200 living languages of the United States, most are slowly being forgotten. And Richard Grounds, a research professor of anthropology at the University of Tulsa, hopes to save one particularly endangered tongue, Yuchi. "We have very few fluent speakers who can help us learn our language and carry it forward," Grounds, a Yuchi himself, notes. Indeed, only five elderly members of the Native American tribe that speaks Yuchi are now fluent. But infused with $297,300 from the Administration for Native Americans, a new project hopes to change that. Grounds, who will serve director, sees three vital steps: documenting the language--including its vocabulary, grammar, sayings and stories--as it is spoken by the fluent elders; developing CDs that house the language; and creating training for teachers, volunteers, students and other elders so that they might pass the language on. (To hear a sample of the language, listen to Grounds offer a greeting). If the project succeeds, one day more people may say, "yUdjEhanAno s'unkAnAno," or "We, the Yuchi people, we are still here."
