Indigenous languages of the Americas

High school (ages 12+)
People & Society

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/indigenous-languages-of-the-americas

1. What is the estimated pre-columbian languages?
2. How many different Indigenous languages were spoken in the Americas before Europeans arrived?
3. Why are many Indigenous languages in danger of disappearing?

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the estimated pre-columbian languages?Over 1,000 Indigenous languages were spoken across the Americas before European contact
2. How many different Indigenous languages were spoken in the Americas before Europeans arrived?Before Europeans came, there were more than a thousand different languages spoken across the Americas.
3. Why are many Indigenous languages in danger of disappearing?Because European colonization pushed people to learn European languages, and many young people stopped speaking their native tongues, the languages are now critically endangered.

Phylum (Linguistics): A proposed large grouping of language families believed to share a common ancestor, often debated.
Intergenerational Transmission: The process by which a language is passed down from older generations to younger ones.
Language Shift: The process where a community gradually abandons its native language in favor of another.
Linguistic Phyla: Large groupings of related languages, often encompassing multiple language families.