The last speaker of Wichita
Posted by Jaiken Struck on March 2nd, 2009Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, 82, is the last Wichita Indian fluent in the language of her people, carries a small tape recorder to save as much of it as she can. For years, McLemore spoke Wichita into a microphone attached to a laptop computer. It is then transcribed by University of Colorado linguistics professor David Rood.
The loss of conversation was so gradual as to be imperceptible to her. The generations of elders passed away over decades, and she never saw this day coming. “I never expected to be the last speaker,” she said. “I never ever imagined it.”
The Wichita language is one of 199 that is critically endangered, meaning there are fewer than 10 elderly speakers, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. All told, some 2,500 languages are in danger of becoming extinct or have recently disappeared, taking with them poems, legends and proverbs, according to the organization, which released its Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger in mid-February.
Several hundred people spoke Wichita four decades ago, when linguistics professor David Rood started studying it. Today, only two or three know many of the words, and only McLemore is fluent, he said. The language is complex. Rood said it takes 60 to 90 minutes to transcribe even a small portion of it. There are no words for “hello” or “good-bye,” for example. The closest to a “hello” you can give someone is a phrase for “How are you?” –”e : si : raci : ci.”
When McLemore is gone, a unique form of expression will disappear. “Language reveals a lot about our cognitive system, about how you recognize the world you see around you,” Rood said. “Every time you lose a language, you’ve lost part of the picture of what the human intellect is capable of.”
Read more: The Wichita Eagle
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