phonaesthemes:

Nearly all of the dozens of Indigenous languages in British Columbia are threatened with extinction but, according to a local First Nations organization, the tide is turning as more and more young people learn the languages.

Aliana Parker, language programs manager with the First Peoples’ Cultural Council on Vancouver Island, said the “huge amount of effort” to revitalize the languages appears to be paying off.

“There has been 150 years or more of policies that have deliberately aimed to extinguish these languages and, because of that, all of the Indigenous languages in B.C. have severe threats to their vitality,” Parker said.

“But we have great hope that the trend is reversing.”

B.C. is home to 34 distinct Indigenous languages, from seven different language families.

The languages within a linguistic family could be as similar as Italian and Spanish, Parker said, but languages from different families can be as different as Korean and English.

According to the First Peoples’ Cultural Council’s report, though, about 78 per cent of the people learning the languages are under the age of 25.

“Language revitalization is very complex work and it won’t happen overnight but there’s a lot that is being done,” Parker said.

“We have great hope.”