4
In Micronesia*, there are a handful of people who can sail across thousands of kilometers
15
of ocean without any modern instruments of navigation. Their languages have a special set of
terms for these skills. If their languages are lost, (4) their navigational skills will be lost, too.
|5
Children are often the ones who decide to abandon a native tongue. “(5)It's actually
the children, not the parents, who have the power to make the decision that will affect the
-0 Community and the future of their language," Harrison said. He was encouraged bv an
experience he had in Australia, when he watched a woman in her eighties teaching her
language to schoolchildren. She was one of only three speakers of an aboriginal* language.
Coub
The lesson was about plants which are used as medicine in aboriginal culture.
onie
