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Book: The Five-Minute Linguist

Chapter: 50. How Many Native American Languages are there?

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.38170

Blurb:

Many people believe there is just one language native to the U.S.: ‘Indian’. However, there is evidence of nearly three hundred languages spoken north of Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. Each shows us unique ways of looking at the world, ways that have been shaped by millennia of daily interactions among their speakers.

Chapter Contributors

  • Marianne Mithun (Mithun@linguistics.ucsb.edu - mmithun) 'University of California, Santa Barbara'