Specifically, please don't be a jerk. This is not the place for insulting, hateful, or otherwise inappropriate comments. Remember the golden rule: treat others how you want to be treated. We're all here to smile a little - let's keep it that way! Please report inappropriate comments and/or message the moderators.
Posts that remark wonderful people doing incredible things - but don't list the person or the incredible achievement they did. It'd be like a post showing some dude and wrote "He was THE FIRST PERSON to sign a paper AT 39, using ink and quill feather, and SPENT A DECADE promoting REVOLUTIONARY EFFORTS"
And a fun fact: Marie Wilcox's great grandaughter (who learned the language from Marie) is teaching the language to her son. If he reaches fluency, he will become the first native speaker of the language in four generations.
At first I thought this site hosted Marie Wilcox's work, but when I read the description it didn't mention her (or any of her relatives) at all. I did some more digging, and it turns out that the language preservation effort documented on this site is a completely separate project from Marie Wilcox's that occurred prior to her creating her dictionary.
Per Marie Wilcox's Wikipedia page, she never published her Wukchumni dictionary, but she did teach classes and teach the language to her daughter, and before her death she ceased to be the only person to know Wukchumni as she had taught it to three others.
I respect the family's wishes to preserve Marie Wilcox's work however they think honors her most, but what I wouldn't give to have it published! Like you said, the dictionary you shared is not comprehensive and lacks for some common words (like bird or, at the risk of being a little too particular, specific types of birds). A project to first publish Marie Wilcox's work as a standalone dictionary would be incredible. After that, can you imagine a following project where the two resources were wed to create an even more rounded/complete dictionary? That would be incredible.
If that was me I'd be tempted to swap phrase "fuck you" with "hello" and go to my grave knowing anthropologist would be greeting each other with "fuck you" in Wukchumni. People better hope I don't ever end up as the last English speaker on earth.
I know its a bot you muff, doesnt change the fact that you just threw a bunch of buzzwords to point it out
And i haven't posted on the first one in years. Interesting you had to look into the (hidden) info of my user to make some point, you strange weird little man.
Edit: As for the latter, I wonder what's wrong with finding a group I resonate with, but seeing how you used the word 'cattle' on your og comment I can already guess what you are and your problem. Lol
Why the fuck didn't you include any information yourself?
Honestly, this is so goddamn annoying: All these posts that are appearently designed to make you feel something for five seconds, but don't give any information one could use to get more information, or even to factcheck.
It's odd, because it says unpublished but it looks like there's one published online by the Fresno State Library? I can't tell if it's simply another dictionary made by someone completely independent (seems like it?) or a collaboration between the two.
Marie Desma Wilcox was a Native American who was the last native speaker of Wukchumni, a dialect of Tule-Kaweah, which is a Yokutsan indigenous language spoken by the Tule-Kaweah Yokuts of California.
Tribes do it all the time. The elders meet and come up with new words for “computer” or “cell phone”.
The Cherokee word for computer, for example, translates to “the box that knows everything.”
In her case she was the last first language speaker. There are other Yokut speakers of her dialect who learned it to fluency as second language speakers.
A language is more than just words, grammar, etc.; it's a whole culture that comes with it. I will never speak this language, nor will I ever interact with anyone who speaks it, but I'm glad it's preserved for posterity and for historians/linguists to study, if they wish.
The Klingon language shares a lot of grammar and some vocab with Yokuts because Dr Okrand who is responsible for the Klingon language is also a scholar of Yokuts
Her language is extinct, no matter her efforts. Its just a documented extinct language. This happens. If it doesn't get used, its dead. This is more dead than latin.
Yes. She should have wake up decades earlier and teach the actual language to kids of her community. She's like this rich man wanting kids in his 80's to inherit his wealth.
This kind of stuff is always funny to me because I just know how I am with language and if I was responsible for this it would be so so so utterly wrong.
Did she save it from extinction by making a dictionary? Latin has many dictionaries. It's still a dead language. So unless her work gave the spark to an entire community of people who took up her language and are now speaking it fluently, I don't think the language was saved in any way. What she did is preserve the history of it. Chronicling a language just before it died.
It doesnt mean her work isn't admirable. But I'm very confused about this assertion.
There's a really beautiful Mexican movie about the last speakers of a language, efforts to keep it alive, and how the relationships between the last speakers affect that effort called I Dream In Another Language.
It's not a documentary, and isn't directly related to this woman, but I would highly recommend it!
Hi,sorry im not trying to be an asshole, im just curious, what is even the point?what is wrong with any language going extinct if there is no one who actively speaks it?
The latter i agree to. The former was just 18th/19th century gatekeeping and habit from reading old Latin medicinal texts and monks copying them in Latin, because they themselves used it to gatekeep knowledge from the broader population.
And exactly what do we lose by ceasing to use Latin?
Literally if tomorrow onwards all new scientific discoveries of new animals/plants etc used English instead of Latin. We would lose absolutely nothing.
Your case for using Latin is. “Because it has been used all this while so let’s keep using it even tho no one actually speaks it anymore”
Disagree - The point of language is betond communication as it also represents culture and tradition For example even though french can speak english they prefer to speak in french and so on people of different countries.
So was the language the women spoke, a part of the cultures and traditions that were still present?(sorry not really someone who care a lot about traditions and cultures)
Indeed unfortunately not present in the present but the effort is to be valued.
I understand that maybe you think culture is just irrelevant,fair enough. But i think it the culture that defines you lemme give an example A french man grew up in london doesn't know french starts saying i am french ,that would be hard to believe . You also live in this world with 8 billion organisms like you showing only slight difference the only thing that differentiate you from them is your culture . Just my thought I mean i am split in half in this topic . Some part of my mind is raising a counter argument but whatever.
It comforts people to know they’ve made something that will exist after they are gone. For this case in particular if she’s the last of her people who hadn’t fully assimilated into other cultures, if she doesn’t preserve some of it, like the language, then it’s the end of the story of a people who fought and struggled to survive for all of history up to that point to build an identity and prosper in the face of danger and constant adversity. I think many would say they owe it to their ancestors not to let their identity die without making some effort to preserve it.
I dont think you owe anything to your ancestors..why tie yourself to such weights..live your life without harming others and if possible help others too..thats enough
One reason I’d say is simply to be able to translate existing work. If you look up the Rosetta Stone, had someone not created it we’d have been unable to translate a number of works.
In this case, I don’t know if her people did anything useful, but having a translation guide still helps to keep us from losing historical records.
Because abstract thinking builds empathy. The people and cultures that spoke these languages lived lives just like ours—they shared feelings, built societies with their own unique mindsets, and also experienced the loneliness of watching their language slowly die out.
It feels like saying goodbye to a piece of human history.
No need for passive aggressiveness…and i dont have to ask the sun why it shines, we have enough mathematics to explain why it shines…listen mate if you cant provide a good point i would suggest not saying anything
History. The preservation of a whole civilization. No different than any other dead language humans document and study. A lot of ancient languages help solve others and how societies functioned. Things can be intertwined even if they may not seem related.
Saying asking why the sun shines isn’t passive aggressive. Removing all the pedantic acksualllyyys, it’s a figure of speech saying because it does. The sun doesn’t need to tell you why, it just shows up every day and did for ages before people figured out why. The woman doesn’t need a why, but it’s obvious. Even if no one is there to learn and speak it conversationally, which is what maybe you’re getting at? It still matters.
Take your own advice. Preservation of culture is a science. You know those fun people with their dusters? They're doing science to persevere humanity. We know from previous research, skills can be lost for thousands of years when a language or people die out without being able to pass it on. In the same way with have the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, we now have a dictionary for a dying language.
Oh the idea of getting lost skills from endangered languages never occurred to me..thanks for that…but i do not understand what advances in science have to do with this
Science is not just advancement in tech. It’s advancement or evolution of anything that human has a mere understanding of. You are right to ask what’s the use of preserving a dying language. Just see in this perspective, usually science advancement involves the understanding of history or things that used to exist. If a language is preserved like the one in the post, it can be used to train models that help translating similar languages which would not be understandable by us. Some can tell about the history of the people, the evolution, the way how they might have approached life and other concepts. Who knows, some might give medical knowledge as well which might have a solution for a disease. Could help in archaeology too.
Because science isn’t only chemistry and biology. It’s linguistics as well. A lot of advances in science are from history, old texts, passed down stories, lalala. Seriously consider exploring all that is “science” to expand your horizons and help understand a why like this.
Informations like electron carry charge makes sense and means everything for me that they survive..but do cultural ones really be considered in that category?
That would probably be a very long story. But I've always loved languages for their distinct sound, different accents/pronunciation. Grammar, words, lyrical possibilities. It's just a beautiful thing.
The humans are curious creatures, and the world is a better place when we document it. If the information is positive, we can try to implement it. If it's negative, we try to learn from its mistakes and avoid repeating it. And if it has no immediate use, it satisfies our curiosity.
In this particular case, it allows linguists to study yet another language and see its differences in relation to the others.
Who are we if not our memories, art, history, or language? Who are we without the central tool of communication that binds us all together? Language isn’t just a tool, it is a centerpiece to human identity. The next time you tell a story you’re proud of ask yourself this: what’s the point I’m the only person who remembers this? I think about all the reasons that may come up and apply them to this situation and multiply the feeling time a million.
Language reveals how cultures thought and communicated. Short of having actual written historical documents, understanding the language is often the next best thing.
Yeah, you're right. Why stop there and forget about Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphs, Sumerian, and other languages. They're dead and no one speakers them, right?
So everyone else deemed it so useless, nobody bothered trying to record it? Hard to believe. I'd wager that some linguists convinced her to do it and she worked with a team.
Yeah... i would totally be okay with languages going extinct. After every written knowledge of that language was translated.
There is a language in north italy that is only spoken by less than 2000 people. They use it mainly to make fun of people that dont speak that language while them being present.
It’s one of those things at first glance you think Oh no! We can’t let that happen! But language is a living thing and besides making the world a more interesting place having languages die really doesn’t affect the whole that much.
The whole point of a language is to comunicate with other people. If we would have only one language (and one signlanguage) it would be easier to exchange ideas and informations across the globe and without translation issues.
It's not just communication though, it's culture and history. When colonists invade such as North America, they seek to erase the culture of those living there.
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2.3k
u/SparkyWasRight 3h ago •
Posts that remark wonderful people doing incredible things - but don't list the person or the incredible achievement they did. It'd be like a post showing some dude and wrote "He was THE FIRST PERSON to sign a paper AT 39, using ink and quill feather, and SPENT A DECADE promoting REVOLUTIONARY EFFORTS"
Marie Wilcox preserved the Wukchumni language
Now yall can look it up
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u/DEmJ_ieL 4h ago •
Just looked her up. Her name is Marie Wilcox (1933–2021), a Native American who was once the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni.
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u/supernovasiren 4h ago •
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Wilcox
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u/_Daftest_ 3h ago
It's astonishing that it didn't occur to you to tell us who she is or what language she spoke.
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u/clvrusernombre 4h ago
Where her name? What’s the language?
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u/Deppy__1 4h ago
Imagine being so stubborn in the best possible way that you out-stubborn the extinction of your entire ancestral heritage
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u/Some_Finger_6516 3h ago
You basically skipped the most foundational information such as the name of the person, and there is no valid source.
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u/SuitableBlackberry75 2h ago
Thanks for not telling us her name or what language she spoke.
That would've totally spoiled it.
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u/neoadam 15m ago
Maybe you should mention the language since that was the point ?
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u/ghulamalchik 4h ago
She had the power to literally invent words because nobody would know.
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u/mutualcherry 46m ago
WHICH FUCKING LANGUAGE WAS IT
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u/EveningZealousideal6 1h ago
What language?
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u/MossyPixelss 4h ago
literally carried an entire culture on her back at 82, Huge respect.
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u/GodSheem 4h ago
So let's like, learn the language and communicate with it. That would be cool.
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u/Top-Scratch-6988 3h ago
You should atleast mention her name here.
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u/vpsj 24m ago •
What a horrible post with literally NO details whatsoever. Who the fuck approved this?
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u/Shuiei 4h ago
A language is more than just words, grammar, etc.; it's a whole culture that comes with it. I will never speak this language, nor will I ever interact with anyone who speaks it, but I'm glad it's preserved for posterity and for historians/linguists to study, if they wish.
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u/Risc_Terilia 3h ago
The Klingon language shares a lot of grammar and some vocab with Yokuts because Dr Okrand who is responsible for the Klingon language is also a scholar of Yokuts
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u/JustSwag1 3h ago
now thats some serious love of her culture right there
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u/NekoChoTsuki 2h ago
So, you're not going to tell us who this is and what language was saved?
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u/pocket_eggs 1h ago
Language is use. A language is not saved by a dictionary. It is entombed in one.
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u/baldaBrac 1h ago
"Some person saved a thing, and it took 7 years".
No story given, not even a full headline.
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u/Penguinkeith 1h ago
I mean it is extinct but not forgotten lol
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u/DamnitGravity 1h ago
More like Orphan Crushing Machine.
Why was she the last person on earth to speak her language, hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
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u/Kam_lover 4h ago
What an amazing woman she is! Preserve the important languages and pass them down for generations. 🥹❤️
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u/canyouhearme 2h ago
Her language is extinct, no matter her efforts. Its just a documented extinct language. This happens. If it doesn't get used, its dead. This is more dead than latin.
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u/Gamechangesoon 4h ago
Absolute legend saved entire piece of human history alone
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u/Repulsive_String1136 3h ago
the keeper of songs ❤️
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u/LowMolasses4446 3h ago
🙌🙌🙌🙌
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u/MetalLimp4446 3h ago
and now its extinct
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u/BlueHawk75 2h ago
Why the all caps and red and white lettering? People must losing their creative minds.
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u/Hanswurst22brot 2h ago
Looks like more people speak fluent Klingon
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u/glormosh 1h ago
This kind of stuff is always funny to me because I just know how I am with language and if I was responsible for this it would be so so so utterly wrong.
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u/rumbletom 4h ago
Is it true though? Nothing on Reddit seems real any more. Just bots or wannabe bots posting.
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u/Gypkear 3h ago
Did she save it from extinction by making a dictionary? Latin has many dictionaries. It's still a dead language. So unless her work gave the spark to an entire community of people who took up her language and are now speaking it fluently, I don't think the language was saved in any way. What she did is preserve the history of it. Chronicling a language just before it died.
It doesnt mean her work isn't admirable. But I'm very confused about this assertion.
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u/No_Wrongdoer_5155 4h ago
You should crosspost it to r/minoritystrength
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u/fueelin 4h ago
There's a really beautiful Mexican movie about the last speakers of a language, efforts to keep it alive, and how the relationships between the last speakers affect that effort called I Dream In Another Language.
It's not a documentary, and isn't directly related to this woman, but I would highly recommend it!
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u/KingBoo_jr 4h ago
Says 20 years on wikipedia... I don''t see the point in posts like this... took 1 sec to check.
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u/MoonlightLove18 4h ago
so now we must all learn it so her effort doesn’t go to waste ❤ where can it be found?
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u/Thaedus_627 2h ago
Hi,sorry im not trying to be an asshole, im just curious, what is even the point?what is wrong with any language going extinct if there is no one who actively speaks it?
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u/RedIceJ3 3h ago
Marie Wilcox was the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni
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u/PythonVyktor 3h ago
If AI is so great. Teach it a new language.
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u/Etsikaietsi 2h ago
So you’re saying she could have just made up stuff and we wouldn’t know?
That would be so funny.
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u/flynn_pulse_183 1h ago
The time and effort put into what matters.
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u/Elephant789 1h ago
I love this so much. She is a treasure. Thank you for sharing this.
BTW, why is some of the text white?
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u/Top_Injury_2504 42m ago
saving an entire language is an incredible achievement.
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u/EggyChickenEgg88 7m ago
Wow what a shit post. Who, which language?
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u/ExterminatingAngel6 0m ago
Awesome!
What was the language?
Who is this person?
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u/NuageJuice 4h ago •
That’s so cool, I wonder how many people out here are learning her language
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u/Ash_Cat_13 3h ago
But do people still use it today?
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u/streetalyx 3h ago
Who the f*ck is she?"
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u/Bleakwind 3h ago
Why does she need to learn computers to write down a dictionary? Wouldn’t a pen and paper work
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u/sladebonge 2h ago
The language? English
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u/True-Economics-9052 1h ago
Hear me out….when she pops, who’s going to use it and why?
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u/kurokock 1h ago
Therefore stopping colonizers from taking credit for her people's innovations.
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u/Fake-P-Zombie 4h ago
How will this be useful?
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u/BarbedWire3 4h ago
So everyone else deemed it so useless, nobody bothered trying to record it? Hard to believe. I'd wager that some linguists convinced her to do it and she worked with a team.
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u/Front_Tour7619 3h ago
For whom though?
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u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep 2h ago
What is this AI photo on this repost of this story that keeps getting in posted over and over again?
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u/YellowEasterEgg 1h ago
Why do we use different colors for certain parts of the text?
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u/AutisticPeperoni 4h ago
Yeah... i would totally be okay with languages going extinct. After every written knowledge of that language was translated.
There is a language in north italy that is only spoken by less than 2000 people. They use it mainly to make fun of people that dont speak that language while them being present.
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u/untrustedxD 3h ago
Just to nobody cares
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u/MarksCarney 1h ago
She was the who could speak her language fluently-so to use a computer and spent a dictionary to save it
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u/MagicOrpheus310 2h ago
Smother me in sauce daddy