Vol. 13 (2019), pp.

446–513
http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/ldc
http://hdl.handle.net/10125/24871
Revised Version Received: 22 May 2019

Global Survey of Revitalization Efforts:

A mixed methods approach to understanding language
revitalization practices

Gabriela Pérez Báez

University of Oregon & Smithsonian Institution

Rachel Vogel
Cornell University

Uia Patolo
Auckland University of Technology

The world’s linguistic diversity, estimated at over 7,000 languages, is declining

rapidly. As awareness about this has increased, so have responses from a number
of stakeholders. In this study we present the results of the Global Survey of Re-
vitalization Efforts carried out by a mixed methods approach and comparative
analysis of revitalization efforts worldwide. The Survey included 30 questions,
was administered online in 7 languages, and documented 245 revitalization ef-
forts yielding some 40,000 bits of data. In this study, we report on frequency
counts and show, among other findings, that revitalization efforts are heavily fo-
cused on language teaching, perhaps over intergenerational transmission of a lan-
guage, and rely heavily on community involvement although do not only involve
language community members exclusively. The data also show that support for
language revitalization in the way of funding, as well as endorsement, is critical
to revitalization efforts. This study also makes evident the social, cultural, polit-
ical, and geographic gaps in what we know about revitalization worldwide. We
hope that this study will strengthen broad interest and commitment to studying,
understanding, and supporting language revitalization as an integral aspect of the
history of human language in the 21st century.

1. Introduction1 The world’s linguistic diversity is estimated to encompass over 7,000

languages (Hammarström et al. 2018; Simons & Fennig 2018). This diversity, as has
1This research has been made possible primarily through funding from the Recovering Voices initiative of
the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. This study greatly benefited from the support of
the Auckland University of Technology and the intellectual stimulus and research assistance from mem-
bers of the Linguistics Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa: Andrea Berez, Lyle Campbell,
William O’Grady, and Ken Rehg, and their students and alumni: Carolina Aragon, Raina Heaton, Bradley
Rentz, and Kaori Ueki. The interest of national and international interns at the undergraduate and grad-
uate level was critical for the research. Thus, we thank Carlos Cisneros, Sarah Johnson, Kate Murray,
Jessica Nesbitt, Chris Pérez, Skyler Rachlin, and David Silverman. We appreciate the time that colleagues
took to review drafts of this paper. Above all, we are grateful to the respondents of the surveys for taking
the time to share their experiences with us.

Licensed under Creative Commons E-ISSN 1934-5275

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Global Survey of Revitalization Efforts: A mixed methods approach to understanding language … 447

been reported for decades, is declining rapidly. Early calculations estimated that as
many as 90% of the world’s languages could go dormant by the end of the 21st cen-
tury (Hale et al. 1992). More recently, Simons & Lewis (2013) calculated that from
a sample of 7,480 languages, the process of intergenerational transmission has been
interrupted in 1,480 (20%) of them, and 2,384 (32%) languages are in some stage of
shift. The Catalog of Endangered Languages (ELCat; 2018) lists 3,150 languages at
some level of vulnerability, amounting to 46% of the 6,879 languages (Campbell &
Rehg 2018). To give but a couple of precise examples of the extent to which linguistic
diversity has been reduced, of the more than 300 languages documented to have been
in use at the time of European contact in what are now the United States and Canada,
over half no longer have native users (Campbell & Rehg 2018). Of some 700 lan-
guages currently still in use in Latin America, most are in some degree of vulnerability
(Pérez Báez et al. 2016). In Africa, home to about a third of the world’s languages,
more than one quarter of the languages are endangered (see Belew & Simpson 2018
for details about language endangerment in all other regions of the world). Critically,
24% of the world’s linguistic diversity has been lost in the last 60 years alone (Barlow
& Campbell in press, as cited in Campbell & Rehg 2018). The estimates and figures
might vary from one study to another and debate has arisen based on the fact that
languages have changed and gone out of use throughout history. However, there is
general agreement on the realization that the rate at which languages are going out
of use is unprecedented in recorded history.
As awareness about the issue of language endangerment has increased, so have
responses from a number of stakeholders and supporting parties. Independently of
the debates about whether it is valid, reasonable, or recommended to intervene and
attempt to change the course of the ongoing decline in linguistic diversity (see, for
instance, the oft-cited Ladefoged 1992 and ensuing responses), the fact of the mat-
ter is that there are numerous ongoing efforts to maintain languages in use. These
range from documentation of extant languages; efforts to preserve, disseminate, and
analyze historical documentation of languages without first-language speakers; devel-
opment of methods in language teaching; approaches to open or re-open domains of
use for endangered languages; raising awareness about the importance of sustaining
linguistic diversity; and establishing policies at the local, national, and international
levels intended to support it. The goal of the present study is to gain greater knowl-
edge of the extent of these efforts and as many of their particularities as possible,
and to do so in a systematic, comparative manner that might pave the way for future
growth and improvement in our understanding of language revitalization.
The academic literature reporting on language revitalization efforts is now co-
pious and dates back several decades. In order to contribute to this literature, we
present here the results of what we believe to be the first study to survey, at a global
scale and in a mixed methods and comparative format, efforts to revitalize languages:
the Global Survey of Language Revitalization Efforts (henceforth the Survey). This
study follows a pilot project in which the Survey methods were tested, with prelim-
inary results reported in Pérez Báez et al. (2018). Through the Survey we obtained
data on 245 efforts to revitalize languages, providing some 40,000 bits of data on lan-

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guage revitalization practices around the world. In this paper we present frequency
counts from most sections of the Survey followed by a discussion of the contribution
of such data to what is currently known about language revitalization.
This study provides data to back some assumptions about language revitalization.
This study also presents new findings, some which are surprising. For instance, efforts
that began after the year 2000 make over 50% of the sample, prompting the question
as to what factors might be motivating an increase in engagement in revitalization.
This study provides evidence that while languages in the more advanced stages of lan-
guage shift make up a large percentage of the cases surveyed, the data do not support
the assumption that engagement in revitalization might be dependent on the realiza-
tion that a language is in an advanced stage of shift – cases of maintenance of extant
vitality are well represented in the survey. The Survey reveals a strong focus on lan-
guage teaching over language socialization and intergenerational transmission of the
language amongst its respondents. Nevertheless, practitioners engage in a diversity of
activities which require collaborations which are not limited to the language commu-
nity: Over half of the efforts documented involve collaborations between individuals
from within the language community as well as individuals external to it. The Sur-
vey shows unequivocally that support for revitalization, both in the way of funding
and in the way of moral, social, political, and institutional support, constitutes the
greatest asset to the efforts as well as their greatest need.
This study is the result of an interdisciplinary collaboration directed by the lead
author and made possible by the Recovering Voices initiative of the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of Natural History. The impetus for this study came from numer-
ous discussions with colleagues in the Linguistics Department at the University of
Hawai‘i at Mānoa about the need to develop methods of comparative analysis in or-
der to better understand how revitalization is being practiced around the world and
how best to contribute towards revitalization depending on one’s own set of skills
and the particular circumstances of any given effort. The research began painstak-
ingly with an extensive literature review carried out primarily by co-author Vogel
(see Pérez Báez et al. 2018 for details). A pilot survey ensued, followed by analysis of
its results and improvements leading to the implementation of the full Survey. Data
processing was carried out by co-author Patolo, sociologist with the International
Center for Language Revitalization whose participation in the research was made
possible by the Auckland University of Technology.
§2 explains the rationale for a comparative mixed-methods study of this kind
based on the review carried out of the literature on language endangerment and revi-
talization. In doing so, it builds upon Pérez Báez et al. (2018). In §3, we describe the
methods used during the research, both in terms of the design, pilot, and full-scale
implementation of the survey, and in terms of the processing and analysis of the data.
Results of the Survey are presented in §4 mostly in the form of frequency counts. This
is followed by a discussion in §5 of the implications of these findings and concluding
remarks in §6.

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2. Research rationale It should be noted that languages span a wide range of lan-
guage vitality situations with different labels being given in the literature to different
levels of vitality and correspondingly to the efforts to sustain the languages at these
different levels. For a more detailed discussion on terminology, see Pérez Báez et
al. (2018). In the present paper we use the term revitalization as a general and in-
clusive term to refer to any effort intended to foster the use of a language that has
or could cease to be used. Thus, under the label of revitalization we consider the
full spectrum of efforts including language maintenance, development, revitalization,
and reclamation. In this respect, this paper aligns with Hinton et al. (2018:xxvii).

2.1 Brief overview of existing literature The research and literature on language re-
vitalization has grown substantially over the last several decades and covers a diverse
range of topics. Pérez Báez et al. (2018) provides an extensive overview of the lit-
erature reviewed in preparation for the implementation of the pilot Survey. Rather
than repeating such review, we provide a brief summary here and give emphasis to
incorporating literature that has emerged in the last couple of years.
Over the course of the present study we have identified what we have termed
segments in the literature on language revitalization. The first segment focuses on
some of the earliest known language revitalization efforts and includes for instance
the cases of Hebrew, which began in 1889, of West Frisian, which also began in the
1800s, and of Cornish and Breton, both of which began in the early 1900s. In a
second segment, the focus moves towards efforts and movements which emerged
in the second half of the 20th century. These efforts are mostly concentrated in
Oceania, the United States and Canada, and in Europe. In this stage of the litera-
ture, efforts such as those in support of Māori and Hawaiian are cited repeatedly
as model cases, and coverage on and dissemination of case studies of revitalization
practices in other parts of the world are limited. In this second segment, the litera-
ture presents substantial coverage of strategies for language revitalization including
various immersion-based approaches such as language nests, family and home-based
efforts, and immersion schools, as well as uses of technology and various pedagogical
issues in revitalization.
A third segment can be discerned in the literature published mainly within the five
or so years preceding the preparation of this publication. In this stage, an effort is
visible to expand beyond the oft-cited case studies of the Pacific, North America, and
Europe. Filipović & Pütz (2016) includes case studies on language shift, loss, and sur-
vival from Sri Lanka and the East African region. Austin & Sallabank (2014) includes
a case study in Sumu-Mayangna in Nicaragua (Freeland & Eloy Frank Gomez 2014)
and an excellent analysis of the densely diverse region of Lower Fungom in Cameroon
(Di Carlo & Good 2014). Latin American case studies are presented in Coronel-
Molina & McCarty (2016) and Pérez Báez et al. (2016). Walsh & Yallop (1993) is
a much earlier publication that, although centered in Oceania, does expand beyond
the more frequently reported work in support of Māori and Hawaiian by providing
some case studies on the revitalization of Aboriginal languages in Australia. Hin-
ton et al. (2018) provides dedicated sections for the Arctic, the Americas, Asia, and

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Africa, in addition to Europe and Oceania, with a few chapters each. Roche (2018)
introduces the chapter and comments on the limitations of geographic coverage in
the revitalization literature to date.
Also recently, a number of new topics have emerged in the revitalization literature.
These include but are not limited to assessment of language acquisition in the revi-
talization context (e.g., Peter et al. 2008; Housman et al. 2011) and the social and
community health impact of language vitality (e.g., Hallett et al. 2007; Chandler &
Lalonde 2008; Whalen et al. 2016). The studies mostly focus on languages from the
areas of the world favored in the literature from the second segment. Thus, we do
not know much about how these issues play out in a broader range of contexts. In-
creasing attention is being given to sign languages in the literature on documentation
and analysis. In terms of language revitalization, Hinton et al. (2018) include a sec-
tion on Special Representations of Language that includes a chapter on the topic of
endangerment and revitalization of sign languages (Bickford & McKay-Cody 2018).

2.2 Research goal The research leading to the Survey began in Summer 2014 at a
time when the geographic and analytical gaps were especially marked (see Pérez Báez
et al. 2018). Even with the recent expansion in the literature, these gaps remain to an
extent. For instance, it is unclear whether there are in fact fewer efforts outside the
regions better represented in the literature or whether such efforts are simply not well
documented. Furthermore, we do not know how efforts in different regions might be
similar to the better documented cases or whether there are areal trends that might
emerge if the literature contained more case studies from a diversity of regions. Simi-
larly, we do not have an understanding as to whether similar strategies are applicable
in different geographic contexts, or whether the inventory of strategies in the existing
literature is indeed representative of what is taking place in revitalization initiatives at
a global level. It is also difficult to ascertain how best to think about efforts to sustain
the use of languages in various parts of the world if our understanding of revitaliza-
tion is dominated by knowledge of the efforts in only certain regions of the world
(see Di Carlo & Good 2014 for a similar argument). These are but a few of the many
questions that cannot be answered with the knowledge available on revitalization at
this time.
Through the Survey we aim to gain a more comprehensive picture of how revital-
ization is viewed and carried out by practitioners around the world. In particular, we
aim to gain further insight into the following: (1) the geographic spread of language
revitalization efforts in the hopes of extending our knowledge into some of the thus
far underrepresented areas (or “elsewhere” areas as Roche (2018) refers to them) that
are in regions with substantial linguistic diversity and endangerment; (2) the vitality
of languages being revitalized; (3) the inception and evolution of initiatives, specifi-
cally in order to understand whether there are developmental stages of revitalization
and gain a better understanding of what can be expected of revitalization at different
stages; (4) the objectives of initiatives and activities that they engage in, as articulated
by the practitioners themselves; (5) reports on how the objectives of such efforts are

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being met;2 and (6) the resources that practitioners believe have helped them or are
needed in order for them to meet their objectives. In §3, we outline the methods
implemented for the Survey as preamble for the presentation of the Survey results.

3. Methods This section outlines the design and implementation of the Survey. It
includes sections on the planning, processing, and analysis, including instrument de-
sign, sampling methods, strategies for non-response, coding, language versions, er-
rors, management of personal information, anonymity, and reporting of results. The
research was carried out in three phases. The first was an extensive literature re-
view done primarily by co-author Vogel in Summer 2014. This first phase produced
an extensive inventory of literature and a directory of revitalization initiatives (hence-
forth “the directory”) of some 400 revitalization efforts documented in the published
works that were reviewed. The directory was supplemented by the efforts of two as-
sistants hired to carry out research beyond the literature in order to identify efforts in
Latin America, with a focus on Brazil, and in Asia broadly. This directory informed
the design of a pilot Survey carried out in 2015. Both the first and second phase of
the Survey are explained in detail in Pérez Báez et al. (2018). The pilot Survey was
conducted and evaluated in Spring 2016, informing the full-scale Survey launched in
July 2016, which is when the first responses were received, and ran through July 2017.
Data analysis was carried out in Summer 2017, with data processing done primarily
by co-author Patolo and results analysis carried out by the team of co-authors.

3.1 Recruitment, sampling, and analysis A mixture of convenience and snowballing

was used to advertise and recruit participants. The directory constituted the initial list
of potential participants invited to complete the survey. The individuals mentioned
as contact persons for each of the directory cases were contacted directly. The project
director and lead author carried out a significant outreach effort throughout the Amer-
icas to contact via email, phone, and video conferencing language community mem-
bers working on language revitalization. In some cases, she also administered the
survey in field contexts in Mexico. Numerous enthusiasts assisted in similar ways
to reach revitalization practitioners around the world. The research team contacted
institutions and organizations directly and across time zones with requests to assist
in disseminating the Survey. For instance, we engaged in correspondence with the
African Academy of Languages (ACALAN) and with the Resource Network for Lin-
guistic Diversity (RNLD). With the latter, located in Victoria, Australia, 16 hours
ahead of the US East Coast where the Survey research team was based, the team
had a video conference call to consult on ways to extend the reach of the Survey in
the region.
2In this paper we maintain our position stated in Pérez Báez et al. (2018) where “[…] we do not use the
word ‘success’ to refer to the outcomes of revitalization efforts, since it creates a dichotomy of success and
failure without capturing the complexity of the process of revitalization. Furthermore, the term can be
damaging to the morale of those involved in the efforts”. This position aligns with Principle 2 proposed in
McCarty (2018): “There are many [Community-Based Language Planning] pathways and no single vision
or formula for ‘success’”.

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Further, snowballing was encouraged throughout the collection phase. Using con-
venience and snowball sampling, statistical inference can be problematic because re-
spondents could potentially remain within the networks of the research team. There-
fore, a consideration for the Survey was to avoid under-sampling of the population.
Although the research uses non-probability sampling, we used formal statistical tests
to make sure that the analysis was statistically robust despite the fact that the data is
not necessarily probability-based. In addition, several strategies were used to promote
the project. Lessons learned from the pilot guided these strategies. These included
promotion in various languages at appropriate conferences. The Survey was first pro-
moted at the First International Conference of the Caucasus University Association
for Endangered Languages held at Ardahan University, Turkey in October 2014. The
Survey research team contacted all attendees with invitations to complete the Sur-
vey once it was ready. An important venue in which the Survey was promoted was
the First International Conference on Revitalization of Indigenous and Minoritized
Languages in Barcelona, Spain in May 2017 whose program included some 300 pre-
sentations by revitalization practitioners from around the world. For this event, flyers
promoting the survey were disseminated in Catalan in addition to English, French,
and Spanish. Other venues included the International Conference on Language Doc-
umentation and Conservation (ICLDC) in March 2017, the 48th Annual Conference
on African Linguistics from March 30–April 2, 2017, and the Symposium for Ameri-
can Indian Languages (SAIL) in April 2017. In addition, the Survey was disseminated
via social media, primarily through the Recovering Voices outlets but also through
collaborations with various entities around the world interested and/or engaged in
language revitalization.
In an effort to increase inclusivity in the Survey and reach more areas of the world,
including those that have been thus far underrepresented in the revitalization litera-
ture, the Survey was disseminated in seven languages. The Survey was initially writ-
ten in English and subsequently localized into Spanish by the lead author, a native
speaker of Spanish. The Survey was then translated from its English version into
Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, French, Portuguese, and Russian. The languages chosen
function as regional lingua francas throughout the world, and in fact, six of the seven
languages in which the Survey was presented (all but Portuguese) constitute the set of
six official languages of the United Nations. The research team included individuals
who were native or proficient speakers of most of these languages and were able to
evaluate and refine the translations with a focus on appropriate wording and avoid
jargon as well as complex or context-specific terminology. The project director and
lead author has native-like proficiency in English and French as well as the ability
to read Portuguese. The analysis of the data was also done with the participation
of native or proficient speakers of most of the lingua francas.3 In the end, the full-
scale Survey obtained 1 survey through the Arabic version, 161 through the English
version, 4 through the French version, 3 through the Portuguese version, 7 through
the Russian version, and 47 through the Spanish version. In addition, 22 responses
3This level of editorial oversight could not be provided for the Mandarin Chinese survey given the compo-
sition of the Survey research team.

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came through the English and Spanish versions of the pilot Survey. 3 responses were
initiated in the Mandarin Chinese version of the Survey, but none had sufficient data
to be included in the analysis.
Several statistical software packages were considered for the quantitative analy-
sis of the Survey. These included Statistical Analysis System (SAS), SYSTAT statistical
analysis and graphics software, R statistical software for computing and graphics,
Microsoft Excel, and IBM’s Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Ex-
cel (primarily) and SPSS were the tools chosen, based on the timeframe for analysis,
familiarity of the researchers with the software, and the resources available. The
platform used to collect the data was Survey Monkey. This platform was selected
as it is the preferred survey tool of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural
History where the Survey team was based at the time of the research (Pérez Báez et
al. 2018:14). Survey Monkey allowed the survey responses to be downloaded into
Microsoft Excel where the data was processed and coded before being imported into
SPSS. SPSS was used to extract and analyze the data. Bivariate and multivariate de-
scriptive frequency and cross tabulations statistical tests were generated from this
tool to examine the data. Graphs were produced in SPSS and Excel.

3.2 Data coding The analysis of the data required careful consideration of the cod-
ing standards. When possible and appropriate, we sought coding systems that were
already established, generally accepted, and currently in use. Languages were coded
by their ISO 639 code. This was complemented with the Glottocode set by the Glot-
tolog (Hammarström et al. 2018) in the case of languages without an ISO 639 code.
The vitality categories were based on ELCat (Lee & Van Way 2016) as were the re-
gional categories.
The research from phase 1 informed the coding system for other sections of the
Survey. Revitalization activities were coded based on the initial literature review and
the results from the pilot Survey (Pérez Báez et al. 2018). This resulted in a set of
15 revitalization activity types. The open-ended text responses for Question (Q) 10
What are the main objectives of the revitalization efforts? were coded on the basis
of an emic to etic approach. Initially, a coding system was set on the basis of the
pilot Survey data. This coding system was refined during the analysis of the full-scale
Survey. The resulting coding system was also used in the coding of the data from Q13
What are the top assets that have helped the revitalization work? and Q14 What are
the top needs that the initiative has?

3.3 Privacy, confidentiality, and consent The Survey offered the option for respon-
dents to provide contact information for their revitalization initiatives, if available.
Following Smithsonian policies on the collection of personally identifiable informa-
tion by a third-party site, the wording on screen 7, which included Q27–30, was re-
viewed, edited, and approved by the Office of Information Technology of the Smithso-
nian’s National Museum of Natural History. The wording specifies that any contact
information should be for the revitalization initiative and not for any given individual.
The same is stated in the Survey’s introductory screen. Q29 asked the respondents

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whether they would consent to the publication of contact information if a version

of the directory containing their effort’s contact information were to be made public.
Q30 states the research team’s intent to anonymously cite excerpts of the responses
when reporting the survey results and asks for the respondents’ consent. Any excerpts
included in this paper are exclusively from Survey respondents who consented to the
inclusion of excerpts from their responses in Survey reports.

3.4 Instrument design The pilot Survey included 25 questions displayed over five
screens. The pilot Survey was made available in English and Spanish. As reported in
Pérez Báez et al. (2018), we obtained 30 responses to the pilot Survey on efforts to
revitalize 25 different languages. We evaluated these responses for data sufficiency
and included 22 of them in the full-scale Survey analysis: three for African languages
(Babanki, Uncunwee, and TjiKalanga), three for Australian languages (Miriwoong,
Ngunawal, and Kaurna), Udi from the Caucasus, Truku and Jejueo from East Asia,
four European languages (Cornish, Kurmanji, Frysk, and Manx Gaelic), and nine for
languages of the Americas. The design and results of the pilot Survey are presented in
detail in Pérez Báez et al. and were used to inform our design of the full-scale Survey
as discussed below.
Given the different backgrounds of respondents, the fact that their revitalization
efforts were at different stages, and the fact that some of the topics might be sensi-
tive to some respondents, all questions in the Survey were optional, and respondents
were not forced to complete any one question before moving on to the next. This,
of course, brought on the challenge of item non-response across the data set. One
attempt to minimize item non-response while maintaining the optionality of all parts
of the survey was to get contact information for the respondents. This allowed us to
follow up with those who did not finish the survey, encouraging them to complete
more sections before the data gathering phase closed. We did so with some success.
Nevertheless, parameters were put into place in order to manage item non-response.
To enhance the accuracy and consistency in terms of quality of the data, checks were
carried out on the first few variables of the Survey. These checks were focused on the
first set of questions of the Survey which required significant resources to preserve the
integrity of the data. For example, if a survey did not show an answer to Q1 List the
language you are working to revitalize, then efforts were made to gain a response. If
no response was forthcoming, then the survey would not be included in the analysis.
Another example is the use of the coding system explained in §3.2. This system en-
ables the Survey to compare with other international statistical data and information,
which helps promote consistency within accuracy.
The full-scale Survey contained 30 questions distributed across eight screens. The
Survey in its English version and in PDF format is included in Appendix 1. The first
screen introduced the Survey, the last screen thanked respondents for their participa-
tion, and the middle six screens were used for the survey questions themselves; the
questions were divided among these screens by theme. The questions were designed
to elicit a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. In general, open-ended questions
preceded multiple choice questions in order to allow participants to describe their

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experiences in their own words first and to minimize the possibility of priming par-
ticipant responses with the categories that the Survey might impose through multiple
choice options.
The first set of questions was designed to collect information about the language
and its vitality. In particular, Q1 asked for the language’s name(s) and its ISO code,
if known, and where the language is used. This question also provided an open
textbox for respondents to include further information, such as details about diaspora
communities. Q2 and Q3 concerned the language’s vitality: Q2 asked respondents
about the composition of the community of use, and Q3 about an estimated number
of users. These two questions were multiple choice, and the options provided were
based on vitality categories from ELCat (Lee & Van Way 2016).
The next section, comprised of 12 questions, focused on details about the revital-
ization initiative itself, including information about the individual(s) or organization
that started the effort, current leaders of the initiative, when the efforts began, and
a general description of the efforts. It also included questions regarding the initia-
tive’s objectives, with an open-ended question asking respondents to fill in their own
descriptions of their initiatives’ top five objectives and additional questions asking
respondents to rate the extent to which the objectives are being met. The question
was presented as a four-point or forced Likert scale with the following options: 4
“very well”, 3 “well”, 2 “not very well”, and 1 “not at all”. The even number of
options was adopted in order to avoid neutral answers with no judgement value that
would come from the selection of a middle point in a three- or five-point Likert scale.
Finally, in this section, we asked about the major assets and needs of the initiative,
using the same open-ended format as for the objectives.
The third section included a series of questions about the structure of the efforts
in terms of the kinds of activities members engage in, the age range each activity tar-
gets, the setting of each activity and its frequency, and the participation rates in each
activity. The first of these questions, Q16, was an open-ended question that asked re-
spondents to list the activities they carry out. The rest of the questions in this section
were multiple choice qualitative questions. Q17 provided a list of 15 revitalization
activities, accompanied by definitions in most cases, and asked respondents to select
all categories that describe their initiative’s activities. The categories included here
were based on patterns that emerged from the directory and revised in some cases
after analyzing results from the pilot survey as well as comments from some of the
pilot respondents. For example, the pilot Survey had an option for electronic media
but no option for other types of media, such as print or radio, nor for other types of
technology, such as computer or phone-based learning software. The full-scale Sur-
vey was modified to include two separate categories, one for media more generally
and one for technology and cyberspace, in order to cover a greater range of activities
in both areas.
Q18 asked about the sources of funding for each activity selected above. We pro-
vided six options for respondents to select: community, local government, federal
government, grants, private donations, and little to no funding available/needed. A
text box was included at the end of this question for respondents to elaborate on their

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answer or to explain cases in which more than one option accurately characterized
their situation. Q19 included several parts, focusing on who is involved in each activ-
ity. Specifically, it asked respondents how many people benefit from and organize the
activity and whether those in each category are internal or external to the language
community. This question was modified after the pilot Survey, which only asked for
numbers of participants. The change was made in order to further investigate the role
in language revitalization of individuals external to the language community. Q20
asked for the target audience of the activities, with options for children and adults,
and three levels of knowledge of the language (from novice to proficient), from which
respondents could select as many as appropriate. Q21 asked whether activities are
carried out in a school setting, and if so, what grade level they serve. Finally, Q22
asked about the frequency at which the activity is held, how long participants meet
each time, and the percentage of time the target language is used or taught per session.
In the fourth section, Q23 asked respondents to rate how well they felt each ac-
tivity was going. For this question, a four-point forced Likert scale was also used for
the reasons explained above. Q24 was an open-ended question asking respondents
to elaborate on their own assessment of the activities. Finally, we concluded with
two questions asking participants to tell us why the revitalization of their language
is important and whether there was anything else they wished to share with us.

4. Basic results In this section we present frequency counts from the quantitative
questions as well as results from the analysis of qualitative data. As a reminder, a
total of 245 surveys were analyzed, which provided over 40,000 bits of data. We
begin the analysis of these data in §4.1 with the number of survey responses obtained
from each of the regions. We then systematically report in the subsequent sections
on basic counts for most of the survey questions. Throughout these sections, the
data are presented as they were articulated in the surveys, with minimal adjustments
for clarity and typographic error corrections. For instance, language names will be
spelled as they were spelled by the respondents. This may give at times an inconsistent
appearance. However, we have adopted these practices following the principle that
we are to represent the data as provided by the respondents. Any quotes presented
here are from surveys in which the respondent explicitly authorized the anonymous
publication of response excerpts.

4.1 Revitalization efforts documented Q1 asked respondents to List the language

[they] are working to revitalize. The efforts reported in the 245 surveys have the
distribution presented in Table 1. As mentioned earlier, the geographic distribution
in Table 1 is based on the categories for geographic regions used by ELCat.⁴ Figure 1
provides a visual representation of the regional distribution of the responses showing
the percent of total survey responses by region.

⁴http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/lang/region. (Accessed 18 July 2017).

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Table 1. Geographic distribution of Survey responses

Region Frequency Percent Unique languages
Africa 13 5.3 13
Australia 12 4.9 9
Caucasus 11 4.5 11
East Asia 6 2.4 6
Europe 39 15.9 28
Mexico, Central America, Caribbean 37 15.1 36
Near East 2 0.8 2
North America 70 28.6 55
Pacific 10 4.1 9
South America 35 14.3 30
South Asia 5 2 5
Southeast Asia 5 2 4
Total 245 100 208

Figure 1. Percentage of Survey responses by region

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Note that the frequency reported in Table 1 correspond to the number of surveys
obtained and not to the number of languages for which a revitalization effort was
documented. Some languages have more than one revitalization effort represented in
the Survey, as is the case of Catalan, Gumbaynggirr, and Kitanemuk. In a couple of
cases, more than one individual involved with the same revitalization effort filled out
a survey. To the best of our ability, we are able to state that revitalization efforts were
documented for 208 unique languages.⁵ This count is made based on the way the
names of languages were spelled by the Survey respondents and the location where
they were reported to be used.
As Table 1 and Figure 1 show, the largest number of surveys obtained is for lan-
guages in North America, defined by ELCat as comprising Canada and the United
States. 70 surveys were received for this region amounting to close to a third of the
Surveys obtained and reporting on efforts for 55 languages.
The second largest group is Europe with 39 revitalization efforts reported for
28 languages. Europe has 23 official languages and some 79 minority languages
recognized in the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in addition
to the many other endangered languages reported in Belew & Simpson (2018).⁶ The
Survey includes 29 reports on 19 minority languages in addition to 7 reports on other
endangered languages in Europe.
The region with the third largest number of surveys completed is comprised of
Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. For this region, 32 of the 37 efforts
documented are from Mexico. Belew & Simpson (2018:31) report 199 endangered
languages for North America and 175 endangered languages for Mexico, Central
America, and the Caribbean. Based on these numbers, and after controlling for lan-
guages with more than one response, the Survey documented revitalization efforts
for 28% of endangered languages in North America and 21% of those in Mexico,
Central America, and the Caribbean.
The fourth largest group represented in the Survey is South America. Belew &
Simpson (2018:33) report a staggering 342 languages endangered in South America.
The Survey documented 35 revitalization efforts in South America. This number is
small compared to the number of endangered languages in the region. However, it
shows an increase from the 20 efforts reported in López & García (2016:116) for
Latin America more broadly.
Some rather vast and linguistically diverse regions of the world are represented in
the Survey only with a small number of responses. Africa, the Pacific, and Southeast
Asia are considered to be the top three regions in terms of raw numbers of endan-
gered languages (Belew & Simpson 2018). The Survey was only able to document
13 language revitalization efforts for Africa, 9 for the Pacific, and 4 for Southeast
Asia amounting to 1–2% of the number of reported endangered languages in each
region. Belew & Simpson report that the endangered languages in Africa are in a less
critical stage in which case it could be that there is a low(er) number of revitalization
⁵By offering this count we make no claims about dialectology.
⁶https://rm.coe.int/states-parties-to-the-european-charter-for-regional-or-minority-langua/168077098c.
(Accessed 23 January 2019).

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efforts in the region at this time as compared to other regions. Overall, however, the
low numbers of responses collected in the Survey from some regions should not be
considered as a reflection of the actual extent to which languages in those regions are
receiving revitalization attention but rather of our ability to reach out more exten-
sively around the world. Despite the difficulties in obtaining a more robust number
of responses from certain regions of the world, all regions as identified in ELCat are
represented in the Survey including the Near East which has traditionally been un-
derdocumented (Belew & Simpson 2018:31). More importantly, the Survey confirms
the existence – as of the time the Survey data were collected – of revitalization efforts
for about 7% of the world’s more than 3,000 endangered languages.

4.2 Language vitality Q2 and Q3 in the basic information screen asked questions
about the vitality of the language in the relevant community(ies) and about the num-
ber of users of the language, respectively. More specifically, Q2 asked What is the
situation of the language? and provided eight possible vitality situations, while Q3
asked How many people speak the language and provided seven different number
ranges. In both cases, the categories and ranges used in the Survey follow those used
by ELCat in their Language Endangerment Index (LEI; Lee & Van Way 2016).
Table 2 lists the vitality reports from 245 surveys, noting that in 3 surveys, no
vitality indicators were provided (Euskara, Irish, and a group of Chatino languages
whose communities have different vitality situations). The percent of total responses
is given in the rightmost column. Table 2 shows a relatively even distribution of the
surveys across all vitality categories. The largest number of surveys were provided
for languages with few elderly users – category 2 with 16.7% of responses – and
languages that are being used by the grandparent generation but not by the younger
people – category 3 with 16.3% of responses – thus for languages at a greater degree
of endangerment. However, languages for which the effort is centered on maintaining
their vitality – category 7 – are strongly represented in the Survey with 11.8% of
responses, as are languages in early stages of shift – category 6 – with 11.4% of
responses. If we aggregate categories 1 and 8, we can see that in fact, the languages
that are more strongly represented in the Survey are those that are or have been
dormant. Languages with no first-language users – category 1 – and languages defined
by a new population of speakers⁷ or people are beginning to learn the language after
a period of time in which no one spoke the language – category 2 – together make up
19.2% of the responses, as shown in Table 3. In other words, about 1 in 5 surveys
report on revitalization efforts for dormant or once dormant languages.
It is tempting to think that the numbers in Table 2 suggest that advanced endan-
germent or even dormancy are necessary in order to trigger a concerted effort to
revitalize a language. The LEI categories make distinctions across degrees of endan-
germent and only offer one category for languages with vitality that is deemed to need
only maintenance – category 7 – thereby favoring the documentation of languages

⁷In this paper, we use the term user rather than “speaker” as to be inclusive of sign languages and not only
oral languages. The instances in which we do use the term “speaker” are strictly cases in which we cite
definitions from other sources or responses from the Survey.

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Table 2. Vitality of languages with revitalization efforts

Vitality categories as per ELCat Frequency Percent
1 There are no first-language speakers. 22 9

2 There are a few elderly speakers. 41 16.7

3 Many of the grandparent generation speak the 40 16.3

language, but the younger people generally do not.

4 Some adults in the community are speakers, but 31 12.7

the language is not spoken by children.

5 Most adults in the community are speakers, but 26 10.6

children generally are not.

6 Most adults and some children are speakers. 28 11.4

7 All members of the community, including children, 29 11.8

speak the language, but we want to make sure this
doesn’t change

8 There is a new population of speakers or people 25 10.2

are beginning to learn the language after a period
of time in which no one spoke the language.

No data 3 1.2
Total 245 100

Table 3. Revitalization efforts in relation to the existence of child users

Aggregated categories Frequency Percentage
Total languages once dormant (categories 1 and 8) 47 19.18

Total languages that have lost their child users 159 64.90
(categories 1 to 4 and 8)

Total languages with increasingly less children 54 22.04

(categories 5 and 6)

Total languages with children (categories 6 and 7) 57 23.27

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with speaker numbers actively falling. This is in keeping with the objective of the
LEI. One way to analyze these data further, though, is based on the existence, or lack
thereof, of child users in relation to action taken by a language community to sustain
a language. Table 3 presents this view of the data. The total set of languages that
have lost their child users amounts to 65% of the Survey responses. An aggregate of
the languages that still have child users – categories 5, 6, and 7 – amounts to 33.8%
of the Survey responses. This suggests that while languages that have lost their child
users make up a larger percentage of the survey responses, it is very much the case
that communities whose languages still have child users are taking early action.
The optimism that the proactive stance of communities with younger users lends
to this analysis is supported by the data reporting on numbers of users of the lan-
guages being revitalized. Q3 asked the respondents to estimate the number of users
that their languages might have. The raw numbers reported and the percent of total
responses that they constitute are presented in Table 4 using LEI ranges for number
of users. It is noteworthy that the two categories with the highest numbers of users
ranging from 10,000 to 99,000 and from 100,000 onwards are robustly represented
in the Survey with 76 responses amounting to 31% of the total. In other words, about
1 in 3 surveys report revitalization efforts with languages that have over 10,000 users,
and 1 in 5 are for languages with over 100,000 users. These contexts are likely to
provide better opportunities for immersion-based revitalization. At the same time,
a large percentage of the efforts are taking place in contexts in which the user base
does not or is likely not able to provide an immersion setting for language learning.
The ranges below alone do not allow us to establish a clear threshold by which to
quantify how many surveys report this particular situation. However, an aggregate
of the first three categories – 0 to 99 users – would suggest that over one quarter of
the revitalization efforts documented in the Survey are taking place in situations in
which immersion-based revitalization is especially difficult if not unrealistic at this
time.

Table 4. Distribution based on estimated number of users

Estimated 1 10 100 1000 10000
No
number 0 to to to to to 100000+
data
of users 9 99 999 9999 99000
Frequency 5 35 28 45 43 26 50 13
Percentage 2.04 14.29 11.43 18.37 17.55 10.61 20.41 5.31

Table 4 also suggests an interesting trend related to languages that were once dormant
or that have lost their child users. Table 3 earlier reported 47 languages that are or
have been dormant and therefore have no first language users, yet Table 4 above lists
only 5 languages with no users: Kitanemuk, Pataxó Hãhãhãe, Anishinaabemowin,
Coahuilteco, and Nonuya. This points to tangible results that can be reported for the
revitalization of once dormant languages and of languages that lost their child users.
Indeed, 25 respondents report on languages that have a new population of speakers
or people beginning to learn the language after a period of time in which no one

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spoke the language. These include the well-known cases of Cornish, Manx, Myaamia,
and Wopanaak, along with perhaps less widely known cases: Dhurga, Gumbaynggirr,
Kaurna, Mpakwithi, Ngunawal in Australia, Baltic Prussian and Masurian in Europe,
the Chumash languages Šmuwič and Tiłhini, as well as Quinault and Tunica in the
United States, and Tembé and Chibcha in South America.

4.3 Inception and evolution of revitalization efforts One goal of the Survey was to
gain insight into how revitalization efforts emerge and evolve, who is involved at
various stages, and if possible, whether efforts are more likely to have certain char-
acteristics depending on their age or stage of development. As a starting point, we
sought to find out whether there were any trends in terms of when the revitaliza-
tion efforts began. Q7 asked In what year did the revitalization efforts begin? The
question offered the possibility to select a year between 1960 and 2016 as well as
the possibility of typing in any other year as to allow for earlier efforts to be prop-
erly documented. We categorized the responses into seven categories according to
the year the initiative started: one category for efforts prior to 1960, five categories
for each decade between 1960 and 2010, and one category for efforts initiated after
2010. Figure 2 below shows a visual representation of the distribution across these
seven time periods of the responses provided in the 137 surveys that reported a year
of inception. In this figure, the bars show the percent of total responses in each time
category.

Figure 2. Revitalization efforts by year of inception

The earliest efforts documented are in support of Cornish (three surveys were submit-
ted reporting on different efforts) and Irish in Europe, Southwest Ojibwe in North
America, and Jaqaru in South America. Breton is known to have a history of more
than a hundred years of revitalization efforts but no date was reported in the Survey.
34% of the efforts – about one in three – for which a date of inception is reported
began before the year 2000. Then there is a sharp increase in the number of efforts

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that began in the 21st century with 49 efforts equivalent to 35.5% in the first decade
and an additional 41 efforts equivalent to 29.7% starting in the current decade. This
sharp increase is visually salient in Figure 2. Among the languages for which efforts
were initiated on or after the year 2000 are 9 in Africa (Tjwao, Yorùbá, Dajim, Kisii,
Babanki, Ekegusii, Mani, Guébie, and TjiKalanga), 5 in Australia (Dhurga, Dhar-
rawal, Thaua, Mpakwithi, and Ngunawal), 4 in the Caucasus (Karelian, Chuvash,
Erzya-Mordovian, and Nanai), 4 in East Asia (Truku, Jejueo, Tibetan Sign Language,
and Hokkien), 7 in Europe (Udmurt, Francoprovençal, Cypriot, Arabic, Asturian,
Frysk, and Croatian), 16 in Mexico in addition to Kalinago in the Caribbean, 24 in
North America, Marshallese in the Pacific, 18 in South America, Gangte in South
Asia, and Kristang and Balinese in South East Asia.⁸
It should be noted that the cases of inception listed are per effort and not per
language. In other words, there may have been various efforts in place initiated at
different times for any given language, as in the case of Asturian with two responses
for efforts starting in 1969 and again in 2011; Anishinaabemowin with three surveys
reporting efforts in 1998, 2008, and one with no inception date; or Frysk for which
revitalization efforts have existed since the 19th century (see Pérez Báez et al. 2018).
The data provided here refers to the specific revitalization efforts reported in the
Survey.
Q7 asked In what year did the revitalization efforts begin? and was designed as
a way to begin to understand some details about possible stages in the evolution of
revitalization efforts, especially. The qualitative data from Q7 provides some data
which largely points to a protracted process to initiate an effort. Efforts for Didxa
xhon in Mexico, for instance, required two years from 2010 to 2012 to material-
ize. For Anishinaabemowin, a respondent reports “Talking about it at 1998, then I
helped them start an Immersion School in 2009”, revealing a process of eleven years
needed for this particular effort to come into being. For Hanunuo Mangyan and
Buhid Mangyan in the Philippines, the growth of the efforts span from 1986 to 2012.
For Myaamia in the United States, the process spans from 1988 when language re-
construction began to 1995 when community efforts began. For Kotiria in Brazil and
Colombia, “The collection of material began in 1978” and “texts were published in
2014 and 2015”. Emerging practitioners may find some comfort in seeing that re-
vitalization efforts overall take time to even begin. This may also provide insight
into the strategic planning that may be required for a revitalization effort to prosper,
knowing that the life span of such an effort will be years and maybe decades long.
An important interest of ours in designing the Survey was to gain a better under-
standing of the role of actors of various kinds in initiating a revitalization effort. To
begin, it is valuable to understand what sort of human capital is necessary for revital-
ization to begin. 24 surveys report on efforts initiated by a single person working on
an individual initiative, and 48 surveys report on efforts initiated by a group of col-
laborating individuals. 19 surveys report that their efforts required the collaboration
of an individual with a group of individuals. Of interest is the fact that 19 surveys
mention the initiator(s) of the effort by name and an additional 11 surveys make ref-
⁸No dates were offered for the efforts in support of Ashriat Neo-Aramaic and Mehri in the Near East.

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erence to individuals identifiable by their social and/or institutional role. This is the
case even for an effort as long-standing as that for Jaqaru reported to have begun
around 1945. This shows considerable recognition for those who began the effort.
The interest in understanding the role of different actors is prompted in part by
the tendency that the lead author of this study has observed in the revitalization lit-
erature to prescribe limits to the participation of individuals external to a language
community. Pérez Báez (2016) expounds on the matter and provides extensive bib-
liographic references and discussion, hence there is no need to reproduce these here,
rather, we focus on the Survey results. 51 surveys report that their efforts were ini-
tiated by member(s) of the language community only. 22 surveys report that their
efforts were initiated by a collaboration between member(s) of the language com-
munity and individual(s) from outside the language community. 29 surveys report
that the efforts were started by individual(s) from outside the language community.
Therefore, about half of the efforts for which we have data involved actors who are
external to the language community. The role of organizations and institutions was
also explored in the Survey. 23 surveys report the involvement of an institution in
the inception of the revitalization efforts while 28 report the involvement of a non-
for-profit organization. The value of these data is not simply on the numbers or the
numerical validation of the role in revitalization of individuals external to a language
community. Rather, the value is in understanding what drives the involvement of
these various actors. Future studies may focus on analyzing in detail the motivations
of and the interactions among the various actors in a revitalization effort. For now,
we turn to the analysis of the objectives of revitalization practitioners as well as the
assets that have most benefited the efforts and the needs that continue to challenge
them.

4.4 Objectives A fundamental goal of the Survey has been to understand revital-
ization as it is described by those closest to the efforts themselves. Thus the Survey
sought to document the objectives of revitalization initiatives as articulated by the
practitioners themselves, as well as the practitioners’ own views of what helps and
what hampers their efforts. To this end, Q10, Q13, and Q14 were designed to elicit
qualitative data about the objectives, assets, and needs of each documented effort.
Q10 asked What are the main objectives of the revitalization efforts? while Q13 and
Q14 focused on the top assets and top needs of the revitalization efforts, respectively.
In the three questions, 5 text fields allowed respondents to provide up to 5 responses.
As explained in §3.2, qualitative data was analyzed within an emic to etic method.
All three questions were qualitative questions which were analyzed individually and
subsequently coded into one of ten themes or categories which emerged from the
emic analysis. The categories and associated concepts are listed in Table 5.
A total of 543 responses were provided by the respondents. Of these, 67 responses
articulated the general goal of language revitalization. An example is the response
for one of the objectives for Tibetan Sign Language (Glottocode: tibe1277, China):
“Language maintenance”. In the analysis presented in Figure 3, we did not include
responses that articulate the general goal of language revitalization as to focus specif-

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ically on the objectives of the respondents’ efforts. Therefore, Figure 3 presents fre-
quencies and percentages on a subset of 476 objectives documented.

Table 5. Coding categories for objectives, assets, and needs, and associated concepts
Categories for Q10–14 Associated concepts
1 General Goals To revitalize a language

2 Language and Community To generate interest and community support, to

foster the engagement with the language, to
generate new users, to generate community
cohesion, to strengthen a language through the
community and vice versa

3 Language Teaching Curriculum development, teacher training,

production of pedagogical materials, development
of teaching methods, insertion of revitalization
within institutional schooling

4 Dissemination Opening or expanding domains of language use

through mass media including online, social media
and paper-based publications

5 Support Funding to cover operating funds, whether coming

from the government or institutions of various
kinds, capacity-building, job opportunities for
participants in revitalization efforts, and moral
support within and outside the language
community

6 Linguistic analysis Language documentation and analysis,

development of grammars, dictionaries and writing
systems

7 Leadership Fostering the emergence of a cohesive group of

activists, organizers and leaders committed
long-term to the revitalization effort

8 Logistics Space, equipment, consumables, time,

administrative support, personnel

9 Awareness-raising Fostering awareness over the importance of

revitalizing a language within and outside the
language community, and working to improve
language attitudes

10 Other Other

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Figure 3. Global frequencies and percentages of objectives of revitalization

As is evident from Figure 3, over a quarter of the responses describe objectives cen-
tered around language teaching and the use of the language in the schools. Examples
(1)–(4) provide some sample responses coded into this category.

1. Kisii (iso:guz, Kenia)

“Get the Kisii language taught in regional schools in Kenya”

2. Zapoteco de Macuiltianguis (iso:zaa, Mexico)

“Elaborar materiales didácticos y lúdicos escritos en o traducidos a la lengua, y
difundirlos a la población”
‘To create pedagogical and play-based materials written in or translated into
the language, and to disseminate them within the community’

3. Wopanaak (iso:wam, USA)

“Continuously developing curriculum to grow a school to Grade 12”

4. Dhurga (iso:dhu, Australia)

“To teach language in schools”

The second most frequent objective centers around efforts to strengthen the use of
a language through the community and conversely, to improve the wellbeing of the
community through the use of the language. Close to a quarter of the total objectives
articulated by respondents are community-focused. Examples (5)-(7) illustrate these
objectives.

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5. Yorùbá (iso:yor, Benin and Nigeria)

“To improve the quality of life”

6. Myaamia (iso:mia, USA)

“Contextualize language and cultural revitalization as part of a larger commu-
nity revitalization effort”

7. Gangte (iso:gnb, India)

“Create pride in the language among the community speakers”

The third most frequent type of objective centers around the dissemination of the
language in mass media, online, in social media, and in paper-based publications.
Relevant to the linguistics profession, from which this paper might find numerous
readers, is the fact that the fourth most frequent type of objective centers on research,
documentation, and analysis. 72 objectives amounting to 15% of the total articulate
an interest in the development of dictionaries, grammars, orthographies, and similar
products. Examples (8)–(11) illustrate these objectives. The dominant focus on lan-
guage teaching in revitalization, along with the interest in language documentation
and analysis, speak to the relevance of linguistics as a discipline that is well posi-
tioned to make a positive contribution to language revitalization. These results point
to the need for practitioners of documentary, descriptive, and applied linguistics in
coordinating efforts in support of language revitalization efforts.

8. Tibetan Sign Language (Glottocode: tibe1277, China)

“Research”

9. Cumanagoto (iso: ciy, cuo, Venezuela)

“Describir las estructuras gramaticales de la lengua a partir de fuentes colo-
niales”
‘To describe the grammatical structure of the language based on colonial docu-
mentation’

10. Hñähñö (iso: ote, México)

“Documentación de las variantes del hñähñö de Querétaro”
‘Documentation of the variety of Hñähñö in Querétaro’

11. Desano (iso: des, Brasil)

“Development of a uniform practical orthography”

On the flip side, a surprising finding is the fact that intergenerational transmission
of the language was articulated only a few times throughout the survey responses.
The respondent for Gangte stated that one of the objectives is to “Encourage par-
ents to speak Gangte with their children”. An explicit focus on intergenerational
transmission was only articulated by this and eight other respondents for a total of 9
responses out of 476. Eleven additional objectives could entail a focus on intergener-
ational transmission. For instance, for Jaqaru, the objective is “Transmitir la lengua
Jaqaru a los niños y niñas” (‘To transmit the Jaqaru language to boys and girls’).

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The respondent for Kumeyaay (dih, Mexico-US border), who listed as an objective to
“Have the children sustain the language by speaking to other children,” was the only
respondent in the survey to make reference to the relevance of language transmission
within child peer groups. Even after consideration of the large percentage of revital-
ization efforts for highly endangered and dormant languages which rely on strategies
other than intergenerational transmission, this finding is striking. The few responses
that refer to intergenerational transmission of a language, combined with the large
percentage of objectives focused on language teaching, suggest that language revital-
ization is largely focused on language teaching rather than on language socialization.

4.5 Activities In this section we report on the activities in which respondents are
engaged as part of their revitalization efforts. In order to research these activities we
asked a combination of qualitative and quantitative questions. Q16 provided a free
response text field for the question What activities does the revitalization initiative
carry out? Q17 then asked respondents to select the categories that best described
their activities, from the set listed in Table 6. Respondents could select as many as
appropriate. The categories were initially defined based on the extensive literature
review carried out in the first phase of the research. They were then tested during
the Survey pilot, and subsequently refined. Q17 also included a text field to allow
respondents to list other activities that might not fall neatly under the suggested cat-
egories.

Table 6. Activity categories

Activity Associated concepts
Language nest language revitalization through child care provided by
users of the language

Pre-school language instruction in early childhood education

Bi/multilingual school school with the language as a medium of instruction

along with one or more languages

Immersion school school in which the language is the only exclusive or

almost only medium of instruction; the language may or
may not be a student’s heritage or dominant language

Mother tongue school with instruction in a language of the local

community for students who speak it

Language classes classes outside the school system, regular or occasional

Language camps programming offered primarily to children during the

school off-season

Family programming programming designed to support families speaking the

language in the home

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Continued from previous page

Activity Associated concepts

Master-apprentice partnership between learners of the language and users
for one-on-one learning

Teacher training training for teachers of the language

Educational materials development of lesson plans and educational resources

Technology and cyberspace presence of the language on the Internet or in phone

apps, social media, video games, etc., or use of these
platforms for language learning

Documentation audio and video language recording; linguistic analysis

for the development of grammars and dictionaries

Cultural events any event of a cultural nature

Media language in radio, television, or in print

The text fields, especially in Q16, allowed for answers such as the one in (12) which
reports efforts that do not seem to be adequately represented in quantitative question
Q17.

12. Cmiique Iitom (iso: sei, Mexico)

“Many of the following questions do not seem to be pertinent. Our efforts have
been, in fact, not to “revitalize” in some programmatic way, but to support and
encourage the use of the language, especially through helping people to be able
to read and write it effectively…Furthermore, since the community itself has not
taken on the idea of “revitalization”, I am even more reluctant to give formal
characterization of our literacy efforts in that way.”

The most frequently reported single activity was documentation with 13.8% of the
responses, followed by the development of educational materials with 12.1% of the
responses and language classes with 11.1%. This can be seen in Figure 4. The cate-
gories in Q17 break down schooling activities in order to understand the presence of
language revitalization efforts at different levels and in different education systems
and formats. Yet, the results from the Objectives question pointing to a strong fo-
cus on language teaching prompt us to aggregate the schooling responses and more
broadly, the language teaching responses. School-based activities in pre-school, bi-
/multilingual and immersion schools, and schools with mother-tongue education com-
bined amount to 13.8% of the total responses. If we add language classes and camps,
the total jumps to 30.7%. In other words, about one in three activities documented
focus on some form of language teaching.

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Figure 4. Global frequencies for revitalization activities

Given the apparent popularity of language teaching, it is not surprising to see that
the development of educational materials is the second most frequently listed activity.
We might expect that the documentation activities underway are being carried out in
order to support language teaching activities as in (13) for Tjwao. However, some
documentation efforts described seem to focus only on documentation and analysis
as in the case of Ponca in (14) and Quechua in (15), rather than on teaching.

13. Tjwao (iso: hio, Zimbabwe)

“We have crafted an orthography with CASAS and we have also crafted a Tjwao
language syllabus. We do language workshops and during the bush camps we
pair young people with an elder to learn the language. We have started a Tjwao
early childhood language project to teach children the language at their early
age.”

14. Ponca (iso: oma, United States)

“Putting language words into a dictionary”

15. Quechua (iso: que, Andean region)

“Speech and text Corpus gathering. Transcription and alignment. Development
of a Deep Learning model.”

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In general, though, respondents described revitalization efforts that are multi-pronged

and involve a number of different activities aimed at supporting larger objectives.
Examples (16) and (17) illustrate this.

16. Lakota (iso: lkt, US/Canada border)

“continuing language documentation – continuing language description (lexi-
con, grammar) – neologism coinage to meet the needs of the immersion schools
– teacher training – language classes for community members – Lakota Sum-
mer Institute – various language events – support for various community based
efforts (language nests, immersion schools, master-apprentice programs, etc.)”.

17. Wauja (iso: wau, Brazil)

“There are several initiatives being carried out by various members of the com-
munity, not one centralized initiative. Some are organized by the whole commu-
nity (such as the bi-lingual school in each community), while other initiatives are
carried out by various individuals and groups. Individual community members
might participate in one or several of the initiatives below: (1) Bi-lingual pri-
mary and middle school…(2) Documenting history in the native language…(3)
Online tools for classroom and general use…In addition, at least two commu-
nity members are individually authoring their own hardcopy manuscripts of
dictionaries and grammar descriptions”.

The Survey was designed to obtain some details about how revitalization activities
come about. Q19 asked How many people are involved in the activities? The ques-
tion was formatted as a matrix with several options for the number of people who
are behind the organization of the activities and who benefit from the activities, and
whether each group belongs to the language community or is external to it. 282 ac-
tivities, constituting 70.7% of the responses, recorded are reported as being carried
out by 10 or less organizers. About a fifth of the activities, 85 amounting to 21.3% of
the total, require a group of 10 to 50 organizers. 3% of the activities require a larger
group of 50–100 organizers, and in 5% of the activities, a rather large group of over
100 people are involved in their organization. With the exception of language nests
and immersion schools, at least one case was recorded for all other activities where
a 50+ person group of organizers is involved. The response tallies are presented in
Figure 5.
Out of 394 responses, we learned that in 150 or 38.1% of them, the organizers are
members of the language community, while in 29 or 7.4%, the organizers are external
to the language community. In half the cases, the organization of the activities is done
by a collaboration of individuals, both from within and from outside the language
community. This was the case for 215 of the activities, or 54.6% of the total.
About a quarter of the activities, 119 amounting to 26.8%, benefit an audience
of 10–50 people. Of interest is the fact that about a fifth, 92 activities or 20.7% of
the total, are focused on audiences of up to 10 people. In all categories except for
family programming, we found efforts in this range of beneficiaries: 8 such cases
were for language classes, 15 for master-apprentice, 17 for teacher training, and 13
for the development of educational materials. There is roughly an equal amount of

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Figure 5. Number of individuals who benefit from the activities

activities reaching audiences that range between 50–100 and 100–500, about 15%
of the activities in each case. Now, if we aggregate the remaining categories, we find
that 22% of the activities, or slightly more than a fifth of the activities documented,
are benefitting audiences of 500 people or more.
As we designed the Survey, we hypothesized that revitalization activities are aimed
only or mostly at members of the language community. Just under half of the activ-
ities documented, 177 amounting to 43.5%, were dedicated to members belonging
to the relevant language community. However, the Survey documented that over half
of the activities, 216 activities amounting to 53.1% of a total of 407 responses, ben-
efitted both people from within the community as well as individuals external to it.
There were in fact 14 activities reportedly aimed solely at individuals external to the
community. This set of activities spanned most categories except for language camps,
family programming, and categories related to schooling.
The total set of activities documented are split roughly evenly in terms of the age
and the language abilities of their audience members. 46% of activities are designed
for children while 54% are designed for adults. 36% of the activities are designed
for novice learners, 35% are for learners with prior language knowledge, and 29%
percent are for proficient users.
Through the Survey, we sought to get a glimpse of how practitioners of language
revitalization feel their efforts are going. Q23 specifically asked How well is each
activity doing? Respondents were presented with a matrix of activity types with a
four-point value scale. This scale, the total number of responses for each of the four
points, and the percentage of total responses each number constitutes are presented
in Table 7. As can be seen, about half of the activities are going “well” and a fifth
are going “very well”. However, a third of the activities for which a response was
recorded provide an unfavorable report. In an effort to begin understanding what

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helps and what hinders revitalization efforts, in the section that follows we turn to
the analysis of the greatest needs felt by practitioners at the time of their participation
in the Survey, as well as that which has helped their efforts the most.

Table 7. Perceived evaluation of revitalization activities

Assessment Frequency Percent
Not well at all 45 8.20%
Not very well 125 22.90%
Well 264 48.30%
Very well 113 20.70%

4.6 Needs and assets In an effort to contribute to an understanding of how best

to support revitalization efforts, the needs of revitalization efforts were researched
as the objectives were, with qualitative questions coded into categories in an emic to
etic manner. The most frequent need in revitalization as per Figure 6 is unequivocal:
language revitalization efforts around the world need support.

Figure 6. Global frequencies and percentages of needs in revitalization

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We defined the category of support broadly rather than narrowly as to avoid limiting
it to financial support. We therefore coded into this category the need for moral,
social, and political support for revitalization efforts to come from within and outside
the language community at various levels of government and institutional spheres.
For example, a respondent on behalf of a not-for-profit attending to the needs of
indigenous peoples in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, listed as a need “El apoyo de la
sociedad civil” (‘support from the civil society’). Additional examples are presented
in (18)–(19).

18. Kisii (iso: guz, Kenya)

“A strong lobbying presence to convince Kenyan legislators to allow Kisii in
public schools”

19. Keres Cochiti-dialect (iso:kee, United States)

“Ongoing community support”

Funding in particular appeared notably often in the responses. Within the English
responses alone, we documented 34 instances of the use of the word “funding” and
eight of the word “funds”. The respondent for Kari’nja (iso: car, Suriname) lists
as a need “Money–all efforts by community members are unpaid”. In fact, of the
699 language revitalization activities documented in the survey, 168 or 24%, indeed
operate with little to no funds. The respondent for Cornish (iso:cor, UK) which lists
the following need: “Funding - steady funding to enable long term planning”, points
to the difficulty in planning strategically for growth when funding is short-term and
limited. Other responses coded into this category state the need for funds for capacity-
building and for paid jobs for revitalization practitioners.
Second to the category of support are language teaching needs. Numerous re-
spondents express a need for more and better trained teachers. The respondent for
Desano specifically indicates needing a “specialist in language pedagogy”. Also fre-
quent is the ability to open spaces in the schools for language teaching including
the ability to extend the language teaching programs to higher schooling grades. A
close third is the category of logistics which includes anything from the need for a
physical space in which to hold activities and for basic furniture such as tables and
chairs, to the need for access to technology including computer equipment and in-
ternet connectivity. The respondent for Tjwao (iso: hio, Zimbabwe) listed a “Solar
system/generator” as a need. Time was listed as a need by 9 respondents for the pur-
poses of studying and learning the language, to interact with elders, and to attend to
the many needs of a revitalization effort.
The Survey also asked about assets that have most helped a revitalization effort.
The results are summarized in Figure 7. Having analyzed the results about needs,
it should come as no surprise to see the category of Support as the most frequently
cited asset. Of the 115 responses coded under the Support category, 36 explicitly
recognized the importance of funding for their revitalization efforts. Funders that
were recognized in survey responses included government entities at various levels,
non-governmental organizations, and funding agencies such as the National Science
Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Administration

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for Native Americans in the United States, as well as the Endangered Language Doc-
umentation Program. The respondent for Yorùbá listed “Funding assistance from
family and friends” as well as “Personal loans”, making a striking statement as to
the fact that funding is critical yet it is not easy to come by, leading this particular
revitalization practitioner to make use of personal resources to finance the work.

Figure 7. Global frequencies and percentages of assets in revitalization

24 of the Support responses center on the importance to revitalization efforts of

recognition, endorsement and approval from leaders at various levels of government.
Examples (20)–(22) illustrate these needs.

20. Halkomelem (iso:hur, US/Canada border)

“Supportive chiefs”

21. Roman (iso:rmc, Austria/Burgenland)

“official recognition and support by authorities”

22. Ekegusii (iso:guz, South-Western Kenya, East Africa)

“Goodwill from the local government”

The community as a whole also emerged as an important asset constituting the

second most frequently stated asset in the Survey. Some examples of the responses are
listed in (23)–(26) below. Example (21) is noteworthy in that it evokes the relevance
of family to facilitate an individual’s involvement and dedication to a revitalization

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effort. Overall, respondents focus on the importance of the commitment of native

users of the language and community elders, and conversely, of language learners
and the youth. Of the 92 responses coded into this category, 12 make reference to
the language users as an asset. Parental involvement was mentioned 4 times only. This
is reminiscent of the low frequency of the concept of intergenerational transmission
with the responses about revitalization objectives.

23. Kristang (iso: mcm, Singapore)

“A community that is open and receptive”

24. Lakota (iso: lkt, US/Canada border)

“Involvement of young community members in organizing language events and
increasing awareness”

25. Cypriot Arabic (iso: acy, Cyprus)

“The involvement of individuals from the community who are willing to work
for the revitalization process”

26. Central Yup’ik (iso: ypk, United States)

“The organizer’s family support (the laundry can wait)”

The third largest category in the Assets results is Leadership. Informally, we referred
to this category during the analysis process as the “people power” category. In other
words, we sought to capture here the responses that made reference to specific contri-
butions of either a devoted individual or group of individuals who overtime provided
stability and continuity to the efforts. In some instances, those individuals are named,
as in the case of Maribel Caguana and Arquímides Velásquez whose determination
was listed as an asset for the Cumanagoto (iso: cuo, Venezuela) efforts, and of the
contributions by Kate Riestenberg (Georgetown University), Marilyn Valverde Vil-
lalobos (Instituto Lingüístico de Verano), and John Foreman (University of Texas
Brownsville) to the efforts in support of Macuiltianguis Zapotec (iso: zaa, Mexico).
The responses in this category also captured intangible assets with terms such as will-
ingness, commitment, enthusiasm, persistence, and passion.
Unlike in the Objectives and Needs results, Figure 7 above shows that beyond lan-
guage teaching, dissemination, linguistic analysis, and logistics, it is the investment
and commitment of individuals that constitutes the greatest asset for language revital-
ization efforts. The results of the Assets question show that people’s involvement at
various levels and from various constituencies is critical. These constituents include
users and teachers as well as learners; elders and the youth; community leaders along
with community members; and to this point, participants and supporters who are
external to the community, working together with community members. This should
not surprise us. After all, language is a vehicle for communication within a social
group, making the interdependence between language and community paramount.

5. Discussion To begin, we must recognize as a significant achievement the fact that

this study represents the first concerted effort to document language revitalization

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extensively around the world. As explained in §4.1, 245 Surveys were obtained and
analyzed for the study we present here, creating an undoubtedly unique and valuable
resource. Indeed, while the number of revitalization efforts reported in the literature
has increased in the current decade, there remains a need for systematic documen-
tation of revitalization practices (see Nathan & Fang 2013 for a similar statement)
of the kind presented in this study. At the same time, it is important to recognize
that the number of efforts documented in the Survey are likely to amount to only a
fraction of the efforts underway at this time. We suspect that the limited numbers of
surveys obtained in certain regions of the world are due to a variety of factors. The
first relates to the challenges in reaching revitalization practitioners in certain regions
of the world. The research team made every effort to develop resources and reach
areas beyond their networks, notably in Africa and Asia. The results, as has been
stated, were modest. In particular, the Mandarin Chinese version of the Survey did
not yield responses that could be included in the analysis, and we attribute this partly
to the lack of a member of the research team with a specialty in the region. This
relates to a second point: differences in terminology related to revitalization. While
we attempted to use terminology that was as inclusive and non-technical as possible,
it may be that the language in the survey was not always in line with the terminol-
ogy used by some revitalization practitioners in particular regions to describe their
efforts. One such case might be the preference in African contexts to refer to lan-
guage development and mother tongue education rather than language revitalization.
Also, the lack of a research member with Mandarin Chinese proficiency meant that
our team could not proof the relevant version of the Survey as was done with all
other versions. An important third point is the challenge that adverse sociopolitical
conditions present for those who are engaged in revitalization and which may pre-
vent them from carrying out their activities or report on them even when the Survey
is taken anonymously. Future research efforts, whether by the Survey research team
or by other emerging researchers may focus on collecting additional data from the
regions less represented in this iteration of the Survey. Nevertheless, it is important
to acknowledge that despite these limitations, the Survey obtained responses from all
the regions of the world identified in ELCat, including 13 responses from Africa, 16
from all three regions in Asia including a Survey on Tibetan Sign Language, and 2
from the Near East. The latter is especially meaningful as it includes a response by a
participant who took the time to report on an effort in Syria during war times.
It is important to acknowledge the diversity of language vitality situations that
are represented in the Survey. Languages that have lost their child users make up a
large percentage of the survey responses, which suggests dedication and perseverance
in the revitalization efforts despite what they entail in terms of sustained, long term
action involving rigorous research and creative and innovative approaches to create
new users. At the same time, it is encouraging to realize that communities whose
languages continue to have child users are robustly represented in the survey as taking
early action to sustain the use of their languages and avoid reaching advanced stages
of language shift.⁹
⁹We thank Daryl Baldwin for discussions about this particular topic.

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The realization that well over half of the efforts documented in the Survey be-
gan after the year 2000 should prompt us to ask about the factors that may have
stimulated this increase. The Survey itself prompts some thoughts. Pérez Báez et
al. (2018:481) suggests a link between the timing of efforts that started in the late
1980s and early 1990s, and the timing of calls issued within the linguistics discipline
to raise awareness as to the problem of language endangerment (cf. Bechert 1990;
Hale et al. 1992; Krauss 2018). It would be important to investigate similar calls to
action in other disciplines and professions that lend support to language revitalization.
More broadly yet, language policy should be surveyed for its impact. For instance,
the Ley General de Derechos Lingüísticos, legislation that protects linguistic rights in
Mexico, was passed in 2003. The Survey results for Mexico show that among the 18
surveys which report a date of inception, all but 2 report on efforts that began after
the year 2003. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
was adopted in 2007. The Survey results show that 58 surveys equivalent to 42% of
the total began after the year 2007.
Of course, the ways in which revitalization efforts emerge are diverse, and there
are plenty of cases in which revitalization has emerged and operated in ways diver-
gent from the patterns that the Survey has produced. For instance, Grinevald and
Pivot (2013) describes the efforts on behalf of Rama and show that their history pre-
dates the calls issued within the linguistics discipline in the late 80s and early 90s.
Gustafson, Julca Guerrero, and Jiménez (2016) argue that the implementation of leg-
islation at the national level is at odds with the aims of the laws themselves in Latin
America, notably in Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. The authors also offer the case
of Guatemala where a diversity of efforts have existed for decades, despite a lack of
supportive legislation among other conditions that disfavor revitalization including
armed conflict.
Other activities to consider for their impact on the increase in revitalization efforts
include training, capacity building, and networking. For instance, in 1995 the Aus-
tralian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies published a manual
on archives-based language research (Thieberger 1995). In the United States alone,
training opportunities for community members wishing to engage in language doc-
umentation and analysis have been operating since the mid-1990s. These include
among others the Indigenous Language Institute (formerly Institute for the Preserva-
tion of the Original Languages of the Americas) created in 1992 in Santa Fe, New
Mexico; the Breath of Life Archival Institute for Indigenous Languages with its many
regional and national iterations held since 1996 (see Fitzgerald & Linn 2013; Bald-
win, Hinton, & Pérez Báez 2018); and the Northwest Indian Language Institute cre-
ated in 1997 at the University of Oregon (see Dwyer et al. 2018). One respondent
specifically stated that revitalization began immediately after participation in the in-
augural Breath of Life.
It should be noted that the aforementioned observations do not necessarily sug-
gest correlations or causality. It would take a dedicated and careful study in order
to determine such relationships. We do hope, however, that these observations will
stimulate an interest among revitalization practitioners and scholars to carry out pre-

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cisely the sort of research needed in order to ascertain the impact of policy, awareness
raising, training, networking, etc. on revitalization efforts.
Beyond the question of how revitalization efforts emerge, the Survey sought to
gain some initial insights about the evolution of revitalization efforts. It is the ex-
perience of the lead author that emerging revitalization practitioners often hope for
tangible results of their efforts within a short period of time. A Zapotec teacher in
Mexico once commented on his frustration – bordering on despair – at the fact that
his elementary school children, who are now Spanish-dominant, would finish the
school year not yet speaking the local endangered language despite his efforts. This
interaction raises a number of issues. To the point at hand, it suggests that there is
a need to better understand the life stages of a revitalization effort and the length of
time that one must allow for revitalization efforts to produce tangible results, in order
to manage expectations and enable the formulation of strategies that are realistically
timed. Revitalizing a language is an endeavor that may need to go on for decades
and even generations. Better documented efforts such as those for Hawaiian, Māori,
and Mohawk have roughly spanned three decades each. So has the case of Rama
in Nicaragua where current supporters of the revitalization movement were, decades
ago, kindergarten students of Eleonora Rigby, known as Ms. Nora, the community’s
revitalization leader (Grinevald & Pivot 2013). The revitalization of Myaamia also
dates back to the late 80s. To its revitalization leader, Daryl Baldwin, it is clear that
the objective of the efforts at this time is not necessarily to create new users but rather,
to create a generation of novice users who will foster new attitudes towards the lan-
guage and will facilitate the emergence of a new generation of users in the future
(Baldwin & Costa 2018; Baldwin et al. 2013). This raises the intriguing question as
to whether generational cycles might be relevant to the growth of any given revitaliza-
tion effort. Of course, if more than half of the efforts documented in the Survey began
after the year 2000, then the answer to this question will not come for another decade
or more. Nevertheless, it would be worth understanding the progression of efforts
with a longer history to begin to set the stage for a comparative analysis of the life
stages of language revitalization efforts as they develop longer histories. Sociology as
a discipline could greatly contribute in this area.
The efforts as they are reported in the Survey seem to be complex, multi-pronged
and diverse, involving many actors and different skill sets. About two thirds of the
efforts involve groups of collaborating individuals and over half the efforts constitute
collaborations between members of the language community and individuals exter-
nal to it. The data suggests that collaborations are critical because of the diversity
of objectives that a revitalization effort may have and the various skill sets that must
be brought together in order to meet such objectives. To recall, the most frequently
reported activities are focused on documentation and linguistic analysis, the devel-
opment of educational materials, and offering language classes. These activities are
in line with the most frequently cited objectives: language teaching, revitalizing lan-
guage through community and vice versa, dissemination, and linguistic analysis. The
Survey also shows that any given language may have more than one single effort.
This is rather obvious since recreating the conditions for language reproduction re-

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quires efforts in many areas of daily community life. These efforts are not necessarily
coordinated. López and García (2016) describe some of the efforts in support of the
revitalization of Kukama-Kukamiria in Peru which occur in parallel. The main au-
thor of the present study has also seen this to be the case for Diidxazá in Southern
Mexico. A future line of research could analyze these contexts to understand whether
seemingly uncoordinated efforts could in fact be effectively contributing towards cre-
ating a support network that extends well beyond the locus of any single, if broad,
effort.
Of special interest to linguists is the co-occurrence of language documentation and
linguistic analysis as the most frequently cited activity along with language teaching
as a dominant objective. This speaks to the relevance of linguistics as a discipline
that is strongly positioned to make a positive contribution to language revitalization.
Specifically, these results point to the need for practitioners of documentary, descrip-
tive, and applied linguistics to coordinate efforts in support of language revitalization
(see also Nathan & Fang 2013). Without a doubt, gains have been made in these areas
since the late 80s and early 90s when the discipline was called to attend to the issue
of endangered languages. For instance, since its founding in 2002, the Endangered
Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) has funded over 400 such projects
around the world.1⁰ The Documenting Endangered Languages Program (DEL) of the
National Science Foundation funded 110 projects between 2012 and 2018, amount-
ing to over $21 million US dollars.11 Since its inception in 2000, the Volkswagen
Foundation DOBES programme (Dokumentation bedrohter Sprachen) has funded
67 documentation projects.12 Language documentation efforts at a regional or na-
tional level also exist. For instance, the Projeto de Documentação de Línguas Indíge-
nas (PRODOCLIN) in Brazil is currently engaged in extensive documentation of 13
indigenous languages.13 The efforts to document the world’s languages are reflected
in the growing holdings in archives with regional and global reach. The Archive
of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA) holds 192 collections with
data from 397 languages.1⁴ The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in
Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC) reports language documentation materials for
over 1,000 languages in regions well beyond the Pacific, its original area of focus.1⁵ 13
global and regional archives are organized within the Digital Endangered Languages
and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN) established in 2003. Beyond documen-
tation, the Glottolog lists over 180,000 bibliographic references that include texts
and word lists as well as dictionaries, grammars, and other descriptive and analytical
works related to 8,475 languoids – language families, languages, and dialects (Ham-
marström et al. 2018). It will be critical to continue to further these efforts and more
importantly, to design them with the goal of supporting language revitalization (see
1⁰https://www.eldp.net/en/about+us/. (Accessed 31 May 2018).
11https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/advancedSearchResult?ProgEleCode=7719&BooleanElement=ANY&
BooleanRef=ANY&ActiveAwards=true&results. (Accessed on 31 May 2018).
12http://dobes.mpi.nl/dobesprogramme/ and http://dobes.mpi.nl/projects/. (Accessed 31 May 2018).
13http://prodoclin.museudoindio.gov.br/index.php/projetos. (Accessed 31 May 2018).
1⁴Smythe-King, personal communication. 31 May 2018.
1⁵http://www.paradisec.org.au/. (Accessed on 31 May 2018).

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Campbell & Rehg 2018 for a discussion on the ideal coordination between language
documentation and language revitalization). An important point to recognize is that
practitioners of linguistics or of language teaching are not necessarily trained in more
than their own discipline to the point of being able to effectively extend their exper-
tise beyond it. Hinton et al. (2018) makes a similar point. The coordination across
these disciplines in order to support language revitalization might be possible through
interdisciplinary degrees that provide overarching training focused on language revi-
talization as well as collaborations between practitioners of the different disciplines,
not only for post-graduate professionals but also for students who may grow to be-
come a new generation of interdisciplinary professionals capable of addressing both
the analytical and the applied needs of language revitalization. An example of such
a degree program is the Maestría en Revitalización y Enseñanza de Lenguas Indíge-
nas (‘Master’s Degree in Revitalization and Indigenous Language Teaching’) at the
Universidad del Cauca in Colombia. Theses types of programs focusing on language
revitalization have begun to emerge but remain few in number.
The few responses obtained in the Survey that refer to intergenerational trans-
mission of a language, combined with the large percentage of objectives focused on
language teaching, show that at this time, language revitalization is largely focused on
language teaching (see also Todal 2018 on this topic). This makes it clear that exper-
tise in language learning pedagogy, teacher training, technology, and materials devel-
opment specifically for the revitalization of endangered languages is critical. Topics
such as language purism, the contradictions in models of bilingual and/or intercul-
tural education that introduce children to a dominant language and culture (cf. López
& García 2016), excessive emphasis on literacy at the expense of the development of
oral skills, and challenges of high diversity regions such as the Indian subcontinent,
Papua New Guinea, and Mesoamerica continue to require attention. Further, the dis-
tribution of the documented efforts across the language vitality spectrum highlight
the need for first and second language acquisition expertise in language revitalization.
The latter is especially crucial for the more than 25% of the revitalization efforts doc-
umented in the Survey which are taking place in situations of advanced language shift
or dormancy. For these cases, immersion-based revitalization is difficult if not unreal-
istic at this time and expertise in second language acquisition, assessment of language
skills, and similar are especially pertinent (cf. Riestenberg 2017; Todal 2018). Col-
laborations that bring together language documentation, linguistic analysis, language
acquisition, and language teaching stand to make well rounded contributions to lan-
guage revitalization as would training in the form of interdisciplinary degree-granting
programs on language revitalization that would bring these skills together. It is our
hope that the data presented here will help foster such collaborations globally.
The second most frequent objective documented in the Survey relates to efforts
aimed at strengthening the relationship between language and community. The high
frequency of this category would seem to align with Principle 3 proposed in McCarty
(2018) for Community-Based Language Planning – “Language planning is commu-
nity planning” – and efforts such as those reported in Hinton (2013), O’Regan (2018),
Bommelyn with Tuttle (2018), and Zahir (2018) inter alia. It is thought-provoking,

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then, that despite the relevance of the relationship between language and community,
the concept of intergenerational language transmission surfaced minimally in the Sur-
vey data. This should prompt us all to give the topics of intergenerational language
transmission and language socialization serious consideration. One interpretation of
the data would make us ask whether our focus on the language itself might be leading
to neglecting a larger, overarching need to recreate the conditions that would enable
the necessary socialization that language transmission requires. Hornberger and de
Korne (2018) elaborate on the need to complement school-based revitalization with
efforts that would foster socialization in the target language and that are indeed very
much in line with the concept of strengthening the language through strengthening
the community and vice versa. Another interpretation may be that recreating the nec-
essary conditions for a language to flourish requires the participation of actors who
are not yet sufficiently involved in revitalization, or that the processes to recreate such
conditions still need time to evolve.
Again, it is critical to give careful consideration of the languages whose advanced
stage of language shift makes it difficult if not impossible to recreate intergenerational
socialization of the target language outside a language teaching setting. Nevertheless,
it is clear that the discussion about the roles of the home-school-community interface
requires continued attention. Messing and Nava Nava (2016) report that studies
of socialization in endangered languages contexts are few in number. Hornberger
(2008) is entirely dedicated to the analysis of the role of schooling in language revi-
talization. Further, the process that caregivers might need to go through in order to
resume speaking an endangered language to children who are potential users of an
endangered language, requires careful consideration. Messing and Nava Nava (2016)
mention this topic briefly but succinctly. They explain through a case study based in
Mexico, that caregivers in these scenarios find themselves having to reconcile pres-
sures – even trauma – lived earlier in life that discouraged the use of the language in
question, with the emerging pressures to speak the language again. Therefore, pro-
moting language socialization in endangered language situations requires the support
of various actors including those with expertise in sociology and psychology, and of
enough community members – and enough need not be a large number, as cases pre-
sented in Hinton (2013) show.
The emergence of the categories of Support, Language and Community, and Lead-
ership combined, added to the fact that funding is so frequently cited as a need and
an asset, strongly supports a call for increasing opportunities for funding and train-
ing specifically designed to enable the long-term involvement of individuals dedicated
to language revitalization. There are certainly funding sources to support language
revitalization. For example, the Resource Network for Linguistic Diversity (RNLD)
provides a non-exhaustive list of International and country-specific granting agencies
for language work including revitalization.1⁶ However, as Pérez Báez (2018) argues,
there is a contradiction when funding is made available for the documentation of
endangered languages but funding for their revitalization is explicitly excluded from
the mission of funding agencies. López & García (2016) and Nathan & Fang (2013)
1⁶http://www.rnld.org/node/76.

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make similar arguments. Also, more opportunities for long-term funding beyond the
one-time or the three-year funding format are undoubtedly needed. If revitalization
takes years, or decades, as the Survey data suggests, then funding to support it must
be in line with the life cycles of revitalization efforts.

6. Conclusions In this study we have endeavored to report on the results of the

Global Survey of Language Revitalization Efforts. The data set analyzed includes 245
surveys from practitioners around the world and the reported results are primarily
based on frequency counts for a large subset of both qualitative and quantitative
questions that make up the Survey. This study was motivated by the need to develop
methods of comparative analysis for the study of language revitalization practices.
The goal of this study, however, is not to come up with any sort of best practices
or how-to guide. As has been shown in this paper, language revitalization is multi-
pronged, combining any number of elements that together may contribute towards
re-creating the conditions that will strengthen the vitality of a language. Making
recommendations would amount to oversimplifying the complexity of conditions and
contexts within which any given language revitalization effort might operate.
A critical contribution of the Survey is that it shows the large number of efforts
underway at this particular point in the history of the world’s linguistic diversity, the
many ways in which a diversity of strategies are put in place by practitioners and
the many different contexts in which they occur. This research was carried out, then,
with the goal of experimenting with data gathering methods that might enable us
to break through the particulars of individual revitalization efforts in such a way as
to understand commonalities across case studies. The objective has been to have a
rigorous and methodologically sound process through which to provide data from a
diversity of contexts that substantiates claims about language revitalization moving
forward. Further, and in doing so, we hope these data will promote critical thinking
about revitalization through comparative analysis from a large enough sample as to
guide future approaches to supporting language revitalization efforts through policy
at various levels of government, through sensible funding, and through collaborations
from a number of research disciplines.
This study also makes evident the social, cultural, political, and geographic gaps
in what we know about the existence of revitalization efforts around the world and
their characteristics. Further, the frequency counts reported in this paper should mo-
tivate further research into revitalization topics that the data highlights. This paper
alone makes evident a number of studies that ought to be carried out. These include
dedicated studies of the role of language socialization in language revitalization in
light of the heavy focus on language teaching and schooling documented in the Sur-
vey; an analysis of the factors that may have contributed towards the sharp increase
in the number of revitalization efforts documented in the survey as emerging after
the year 2000; statistically valid correlations between characteristics of revitalization
efforts and the reported assessment of satisfaction with their outcomes; reported use
of the target language in the revitalization activities, analyzed against the vitality of
a language and the need that learners have to receive a minimum of exposure to a

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target language; life cycles of revitalization efforts; commonalities based on regions,

language vitality situation, shared resources and needs; and improvements to data
gathering methods, to mention but a few possible lines of future research.
Humankind has been characterized for millennia by the diversity of languages
used around the world. Human language and its vast diversity have constituted the
study of researchers in a number of disciplines and fields starting with anthropology
and linguistics but also in sociology, demography, cognitive science, psychology, the
medical sciences, artificial intelligence, education, communication technology, among
others. Linguistic diversity, as we know, is in rapid decline and as this study shows,
this decline has prompted a diversity of responses around the world from a diversity
of interested parties. The large number of efforts documented in the Survey show
that language revitalization is a phenomenon that is now undeniably an integral part
of human language. The various drivers behind revitalization are indicative of the
importance of language in society. The challenges facing revitalization are in turn
indicative of the social, cultural, and political aspects of contemporary human history,
and so will be the responses that are emerging in order to meet and overcome such
challenges. We would be remiss to dismiss language revitalization as a field of study
as this would amount to neglecting the study of an emerging global approach to a
critical aspect of language in its social setting – diversity and the need to sustain it. We
hope that this study will further strengthen the interest and commitment to studying,
understanding, and supporting language revitalization as an integral aspect of human
history in the 21st century.

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Gabriela Pérez Báez

[email protected]

Rachel Vogel
[email protected]

Uia Patolo
[email protected]

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Appendix 1. English version of the Global Survey of Language Revitalization Efforts

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Appendix 2. List of languages for which efforts were documented

Language Name Alternate Name(s)

Aanaar Saami Inari Saami
Alutiiq Sugpiaq, Sugt’stun, Alutiit’stun, Pacific Eskimo
Amazigh Berber
Amri Karbi Mikkir
Anishinaabe
Anishinaabemowin (Odawa, Ojibwe, Chippewa)
Anishinaabemowin Ojibwe Language
Anishinaabemowin Ojibwe
Anishnaabemowin Odawa
Anishnaabemowin Ojibwe
Añu Chaima, Cumanagoto, Waikeri
Aragonés Fabla Aragonesa
Ashriat Neo-Aramaic Syrian
Asturian Asturianu, Bable, Leonés
Asturiano Asturleonés
Babanki Kejom
Balinese Bahasa Bali, Basa Bali
Baltic Prussian And Masurian Prūsiskan And Mazurská Gádkia
Baniva Baniwa
Bebeli
Besɨro Chiquitano, Monkox.
Blackfoot Blackfeet, Siksika
Boruca Brunkah
Breton Brezhoneg
Català (Catalan) Valencià, Mallorquí, Menorquí, Eivissenc,
Formenterenc
Catalan Català
Catalan Valencian
Chamacoco Yshyr
Chibcha Muisca, Muysc Cubun
Chickasaw Chikashshanompa’
Chippawa / Ojibway Ojibway / Odawa
Chippawa / Ojibway Ojibwa / Odawa/
Chitimacha Sitimaxa
Chuvash
Coahuilteco Pajalate
(UIA-Https://En.Wikipedia.Org/Wiki/Pajalat)
Coeur d’Alene
Comanche Nʉmʉ Tekwap
Cornish Kernewek
Cornish Kernewek
Cornish Kernow
Cornish Kernewek
Croatian Hrvatski
Crow Apsaalooke
Cuicateca Dbaku, Duaku, Dubaku
Cuicateco Dibaku

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Continued from previous page

Language Name Alternate Name(s)
Cumanagoto Chaima
Da̱jim Cham
Dakota Dakota Sioux
Desano
Dhurga South Coast Language As Spoken By Elders
Dhurga South Coast Language as spoken by elders
Dhurga, Dharrawal, Thaua South Coast Language as spoken by elders
Diidxazá Zapoteco del Istmo, juchiteco, zapoteco de la
planicie costera
Diné Bizaad Navajo
Dinjii Zhuh K’yaa Gwich’in
Ekegusii Gusii, Guzii, Kisii, Kosova
Elfdalian Övdalian
Espagnol Español
Euskara Basque, Euskera, Euska, Eskuara,…
Fernandeno / Tataviam
Fijian
Francaise
Francoprovençal Arpitan
Francoprovençal Arpitan
Francoprovençal Arpitan, Patois
Frysk Westerlauwers Frysk – Frisian
Gaelic Gàidhlig
Scottish Gaelic Gàidhlig
Scottish Gaelic Gaidhlig
Galego
Gallego Galego
Gangte
Gawri Kalami, Bashkarik
Guébie Gabogbo
Guienagati Zapotec Dadiidznu
Gumbaynggirr
Gumbaynggirr
Halkomelem 2 Dialects: Halq’emeylem, Hən̓q̓əmín̓ əm̓
Hän
Hanunuo Mangyan
Hanunuo Mangyan And Buhid
Mangyan
Hausa Language
Hawaiin ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i
‘Olelo Hawai‘i Hawaiian
Hesquiaht Nuu-Chah-Nulth
Hiaki Yaqui, Yoeme, Jiaki
Hidatsa
Hñähñö Hñähñu, Hñätho, Hñuhu, Otomi
Hnahnu Otomi
Hokkien Min Nan, Taiwanese, Southern Min, Hoklo
Ikpeng Txicão, Txikão, Chicão, Xicão

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Language Name Alternate Name(s)
Iquito Ikiitu
Irish Gaeilge, Gaelainn, Gaedhilge, Irish Gaelic, Gaelic
Isinay Inmeas, Insinai, Isnay, Isinai
Ixcateco, Chontal y Chocholteco Xjuani, Chontal y Nguiba-Nguigua
Jaqaru
Jaqaru
Jejueo Jejumal
Kaáⁿze Íe Kaw Language
Kalinago Island Carib
Kanien’kéha Mohawk
Kanien’kéha Mohawk
Kanienkeha Mohawk
Kanyenkeha Mohawk
Kari’nja Carib
Karuk Karok
Kaurna
Kawaiisu
Kawaiisu Nuwa
Keres-Cochiti Dialect
Kichwa Runashimi, Quichua
Kichwa (Ecuadorian Highlands, Quichua
Amazonia And Galapagos)
Kisii Ekegusii
Kitanemuic Kitanemuk
Kitanemuk
Klallam Clallam
Koasati Coushatta
Komi-Zyrian Komi
Koryak Chavchuven
Kotiria Wanano (Also Guanano)
Kristang Cristang, Papiá Kristang, Malaccan Portuguese,
Malacca Creole Portuguese, Portugis Di Malacca,
Serani, Bahasa Serani
Kuman Chimbu
Kumeyaay Iipay, Tipay, Diegueno
Kurmanji Kurdish
Kwak̓wala Kwakw!ala
Ladino Judeo español
Lakota Lakȟóta, Teton, Sioux, Dakota
Lamkang Ksen
Las lenguas indígenas de México Específicamente las lenguas de Oaxaca de Juárez
Lenguas chatinas Chatino de Zenzontepec, Tataltepec y Este
Lokoo Arawak
Mako Maco
Mani
Manx Manx Gaelic / Gaelg
Manx Gaelic
Māori Te Reo Māori

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Language Name Alternate Name(s)
Mapudungun Mapuzugun
Marshallese
Media Lengua Chaupishimi
Mehri
Menominee
Meskwaki Fox
Miami-Illinois Myaamia, Myaamiaataweenki
Myaamia Miami-Illinois
Miriwoong
Mixteco Del Oeste De Juxtlahuaca Western Juxtlahuaca Mixtec
Moose Cree
Mpakwithi
Mutsun
Náhuatl Mexicano, Masewaltlahtolli
Náhuatl
Naso Teribe
Navajo Diné
Ngunawal
Nheengatu Yeral, Ñengatu, Yegatú
Nonuya
Nuosu Yi Lolo, Sichuan Yi, Liangshan Yi
Ofayé
On∧ Yoteaka Oneida
Onöndowa’ga Gawëno’ Seneca Language – ”Iroquoian”
Panará Kreen-Akarore
Pataxó Hãhãhãe Pataxó Hãhãhãi
Pite Saami Arjeplog Saami (also spelled Sámi Or Sami)
Ponca Language
Português Brasileiro PB
Potawatomi Bodéwadmimwen
Quechua Qichwa
Quechua Qhichwa, Runasimi
Quechua Ashaninka
Quechua
Quinault
Rapa Nui Rapa Nui
Roman Burgenland-Romani
Ryukyuan / Uchinaaguchi Okinawan
Seneca Onödowa’ga’ Gawënö’
Seneca
Seneca Language Onondowa’ga:’
Seri Cmiique Iitom
Serrano
Shelta Irish Romany
Shina
Shmuwich, Chumash Barbareño
Šmuwič Barbareño Chumash
Sicilian Sicilianu

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Language Name Alternate Name(s)

Southern Quechua
Southwest Ojibwe Anishinaabemowin
Sumu-Mayangna Sumu / Panamahka / Tuahka
Tabuybu Yurakaré
Tahitian None
Tashelhit Berber Berber, Tamazight
Te Reo Māori Māori Language
Tembé Tenetehara; Guajajara
Tének Huasteco
Tepehuano Del Sur O’dam
Tetst’ıné Yellowknife, Chipewyan, Dëne Sųłıné
Tewa
Tibetan Sign Language
Tiłhini Obispeño, Or Northern Chumash
Tjikalanga Kalanga
Tjwao Tshwa
Tlicho, Inuktitut, Inuvialuktun,
Inuinnaqtun, Cree, Dene Suline,
Sahtuo’tine, Dene Zhatie, Gwich’in
Tlingit
Tlingit
Toba Qom
Totonaco
Trinidadian French-Lexicon Creole Patois
Truku Toroko
Tsotsil Bats’i K’op
Tunica Tunica
Udi Udin
Udmurt Votjak
Uncunwee Ghulfan
Washiw Washo, Washoe
Wauja Waurá, Aurá, Uaurá
Welsh Cymraeg
Wendat Huron
Western Apache San Carlos Apache, White Mountain Apache,
Dilzhe’e Apache
Western Tlacolula Valley Zapotec
Wonnarua Wannaruah/Wanarruwa
Wopanaak Wampanoag
Wubuy Nunggubuyu
Yabarana Yawarana
Yinhawangka Innowanga
Yokot’an Chontal De Tabassco
Yokot’an Chontal De Tabasco
Yorùbá Yoòbá
Yup’ik Central Yup’ik
Zapoteco Dillzaa
Zapoteco

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Language Name Alternate Name(s)

Zapoteco Diiste, zapoteco de Miahuatlán, zapoteco de la
Sierra Sur Central
Zapoteco Dixza
Zapoteco Diidxza
Zapoteco Zapoteco Sureño
Zapoteco Dill Wlhall
Zapoteco Didxa Xhon
Zapoteco de Macuiltianguis Xtisa’ Tagayu ”language of Macuiltianguis” or
Xtisa’riu ”our Language”; Macuiltianguis
Zapotec; sometimes grouped with other varieties
as Ixtlán Zapotec Or Sierra Juárez Zapotec
Zapoteco del Valle Didx Zaa
Диалект Села Старошведское Dialect of Gammalsvenskby
Ингушский Гiалгiай
Карельский Карельский
Кетский
Нанайский Наани, Хэджэ
Удмуртский Вотяк
Эрзя-Мордовский Эрзянский

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